The Grace Gospel Levels the Field of the Religious Spiritual Hierarchical System, Thus, Their Reason for Fearing it.


Religious systems fear and discredit the gospel of grace because His grace places all people on the same spiritual level ground..."All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). That means we sin ourselves, yes, even though we are believers, we have no ground to feel spiritually superior, judge or condemn people who sin sins that that offend us. Others are against the grace gospel because it requires them to believe that God will save people in spite of their sins. We have a hard time trusting God to do exactly what he promised to do...forgive us our sins, past...present and future.

Sure religion tells us; "the ground at the foot of the cross is level", but from that point on, when it comes to spiritual maturity and authority, religious positions and the religious hierarchy structural system, the level ground at the foot of the cross soon changes to climbing the spiritual ladder of recognition because of what are the do's and don'ts that is participated in to gain the approval of the religious system. 

Because of our religious upbringing we want to show to God and our religious system we can "do it." We want to show we’ll be faithful, that we will be obedient, that we will be "good Christians", we will attend Bible School, we will abide by our denominational doctrine, by our keeping of the rules of the institutional system and in keeping the law. But the truth is, no amount of our doing will keep us from sinning. We will sin, and we will sin again, and again. And until we believe the gospel, instead of some fairy tale story about having to please God before He will accept us, we will not enter God’s rest. God saves us so our behavior will change; changes in our behavior do not do not make us right with God.

We may change some bad behavior because it irritates and upsets people, but that does not mean we are right with God. Also if we are a child of God and do some bad behavior we do not lose His favor neither does it mean He stops loving us.

We can live in misery, struggling to be found worthy by perfect obedience and constantly failing at the trying and end up fearing that God is waiting to swat us for making a mistake. Or even worse, we can live in appalling arrogance, actually believing that we are worthily obeying God and trusting Him to accept us for our "good and holy deeds" instead of trusting His Word that He has accomplished it through.

God is our salvation; our improved behavior is not. To repent is to turn to God and away from ourselves. It is to concede that we are sinners and that we need God’s mercy. It is to trust God to be faithful to His Word of grace spoken in his Son before the world began that was revealed to Paul by Jesus for us on this side of the cross To repent it is to remove our little man-made self-righteous religious crown and hand it over to our Lover, the author of eternal salvation for people.

God is our righteousness; our illusions of good behavior is not. When we come to see our righteousness as filthy rags, then we can begin to see our need for God’s grace, love and mercy. When we believe His Word of salvation...His Son..., then we can begin to trust Him to forgive all our sins...past, present and future...and save us to the uttermost from the gutter-most, even though in our humanity we continue to commit sin!

When people are saved they are not saved from committing sin, they are saved from the sin they commit...past, present and future, and by God's Gospel of Grace is endued with His power to live above sin, but when we revert to self being our motivator we will sin...the thing is...even that sin is forgiven! 

The spiritual level at the foot of the cross is maintained throughout our spiritual journey from the cross to the grave. Any spiritual elevated plateaus are the doing of man and are not ordained of God. "It is not of works lest any man should boast"!

Such is the Good News of the Gospel of His Grace!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DO NOT FORSAKE THE ASSEMBLING OF YOURSELVES TOGETHER! by David Yeubanks

The Abusive Tool of Fear-Mongering.

A Bloggers Take on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "Hell".