Grace is only Grace if it is Without the Input of Man.
The fear-mongering preaching of "Hell Fire" and "Brimstone" to
frighten people into the kingdom of God is not presenting the Good News
of God's Grace, no matter how hot you deem hell to be.
John G. Lake said it this way;
”There were days when the Church could club men into obedience by
preaching Hell to them, but that day has long passed. The world has
outgrown it.”
Grace seeks people.
Grace saves people.
Grace keeps people.
Grace secures people.
Grace empowers people.
Grace satisfies people.
Grace sanctifies people.
Grace forgives people.
Grace understands people.
Grace frees people
Grace loves people.
Many
in Christendom today believe that grace saves, but to maintain that
salvation the keeping of the law, or religious traditions and rules is
our doing. this mixing of grace and law pollutes the purity of Grace.
Grace has no impurities of man's involvement in
it...Grace is pure....If if a chemist were to describe Grace he would
say that grace is an element, not a compound. In scriptural terms,
grace is never a mixture of God's benevolence and human effort: "Now to
the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor but as what is
due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies
the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness." (Romans 4:4-5).
"But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace" (Romans 11:6).
Grace
is entirely the work of God, unprompted by man, unaided by man
undeserved by man but...it is polluted by men who mix Grace and the Law
as call it the Gospel of Grace, and that is a disgrace!
The Law is the standard of righteousness, but Grace
is the source of righteousness. While the Law defines righteousness,
only Grace can deliver it. The Law was never intended to be a means of
obtaining Grace; it was given to demonstrate to men that Grace was
desperately needed: "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks
to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all
the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law
no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the
knowledge of sin. But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God
has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets"
(Romans 3:19-21).
GRACE is PURE!
Some grace preachers say they don`t preach on hell because it is bad news. But Apostle Paul tells us about these preachers and those who listen to them.
ReplyDelete2 Timothy 4:3King James Version (KJV)
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
If I believed this hyper grace theology I`d have to believe that Christ was a bad news bearer. Christ spoke about hell just as much as heaven. And He was constantly talking about the judgment and the wrath and destruction that was to come. Even though Christ brought a lot of good news He also brought a lot of bad news.
Hubert, in your comment you stated that “Christ spoke about hell as much as heaven”.
ReplyDeleteI see you have softened somewhat on your former belief about Christ and hell somewhat, for in your previous responses to a number of my posts you states and I quote...”Jesus spoke more on the subject of hell than he did heaven”. Maybe there is hope for you yet.
Even though you are relinquishing somewhat in your belief you are still speaking from the religious deception of denominational leaders without qualifying or quantifying the facts by the scripture which you so adamantly claim you know, therefore you cannot be deceived.
Obtaining the truth of your statement is not a matter of theology is is a simple mater of mathematics. And since you believe the Bible is without error, let it be the basis for what you believe on the matter and not what you have been told by those you consider to be “God’s spiritual giants”.
My thanks to John for the following Bible Study on the subject.
Did Jesus Really Speak More About Hell Than Heaven?
There is a widespread belief that Jesus speaks more about hell than heaven. I have often heard it said. Recently I kept hearing it, reading it and encountering it on line and on Twitter. So much so that I decided that I needed to investigate further. I did a search on line and found scattered references to both the acceptance of and rejection of the statement. All of the sites offered very little in terms of verifiable data. To counter this I decided that I needed to further investigate. Here is the results of my investigation which I hope will be useful to some, a challenge to others, a presentation of the facts as they stand and, overall, an enlightenment for everyone.
First let’s examine the statement as this is the starting point for this post. It usually reads something like “Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven you know”. So in order to be certain of this we need to count how many times Jesus speaks about both realms. Therefore we are only interested in the Gospels and we are only interested in the “Red Letter” verses of the Gospels as this is where we encounter the direct quotations of Jesus. We need to be careful also not to count all parallel verses that occur in the Synoptic Gospels. These must be only counted as one occurrence. Where a parallel verse occurs we will count the verse that uses the relevant word most frequently.
Now this is where things get tricky. The words Hell and Heaven do not appear equally in different translations of the Bible. For example in the King James Version Heaven occurs 144 times in the Gospels whereas in the English Standard Version it occurs 133 times in the Gospels. Therefore we need to go back to the original Greek to be accurate. The plot thickens even further at this stage. There is no single word for either Heaven or Hell in the original Greek of the Gospels (as a technical aside I am using 1894 Scrivner Textus Receptus) . There are several words used for both realms. I will avoid at this stage examining the meaning and context of each word and instead just list them.
Words used for Hell
Deleteγέεννα – gehenna - literally Valley of the Son of Hinnom. Directly from the Hebrew understanding and firmly rooted in Old Testament understanding.
ᾅδης – Hades
πῦρ – pyr - Fire as in (Mat 7:19 ESV) Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Sometimes γέενναν is used with πῦρ as in γέενναν τοῦ πυρός (hell fire) as in Mt 5:22
βασιλεία – Basilea – meaning Kingdom i.e Satan’s Kingdom as in Mk 3:24
σκότος - Darkness or the realm of darkness
Words used for Heaven
βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν – Basilea ton huranon - Kingdom of Heaven Favourite of Matthew
βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ - Basilea tou Theo - Kingdom of God Favourite of Luke
βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρὸς - Basilea tou patros - Kingdom of their father as in Mt 13:43
τῆς βασιλείας – Basileas - just the kingdom (not Kerry) as in Mat 13:38 “The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.”
τῳ παραδείσῳ - to paradise - Paradise which occurs only once in Luke 23:43 when Jesus speaks to the thief.
On analysis we instantly see that there are certain verses that must be left out. These are verses where the context of the word is used very differently from our understanding of Hell and Heaven. You see interestingly οὐρανός is used interchangeably to refer to the Heavenly realm or to the sky as in the reference to Birds of the Sky (πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ) in Mt 13:32. οὐρανός is also sometimes used in the strictly ecological sense as in ‘heaven and earth’ in the sense of ‘sky and earth’, we see this in such passages as Mt 5:18.
Mt 24:29-31 also poses a problem, is Jesus using οὐρανός in the strictly Cosmological sense or the Theological? One could argue either way. For the sake of erring on the side of caution these types of verses are also omitted. As well as refering to the Heavenly KingdomΒασιλεία is also used in the sense of an earthly kingdom as in Lk 19-12. Where this is obvious these verses have also been omitted.
When we examine the data we see that Heaven is used by Jesus 123 and Hell is used only 27 times. This is a ratio of a little more than 4.5 to 1. So we see that Jesus speaks of Heaven almost 5 times more than hell. Therefore the myth that Jesus speaks of Hell more than Heaven is well and truly busted.
The word Heaven is spoken by Jesus 123 times and Hell is spoken by him only a mere 27 time.
In other words Jesus speaks about Heaven roughly 4 ½ times more than Hell!
This certainly blows the statement that we are examining out of the water.
So the next time you hear someone state ““Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven you know”, you can counter with “em…, no he didn’t actually, Jesus uses the words for Heaven a little more than 4 ½ times more than those for Hell.”
Hubert, now that the falsehood of your belief is disproved by the Bible. “Let the bible be truth and every man a liar”, as you often say...now let’s see if you are a man of your word!
I have read this article and similar ones years ago. To me it doesn't matter whether the Bible mentions hell 20 times or 100 times. If Jesus just mentioned it one time it is enough for me to believe it. But I find that in one sermon alone Christ mentioned it at least twice.(Matt. 5:)
ReplyDelete29And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
If Christ felt need to warn people to stay out of hell then that's good enough for me. I don't need to listen to these itching ear preachers who want to tell me different.
If it doesn't matter to you, why tell the lie, and I quote, "Christ spoke about hell just as much as heaven." what do you get from lying about Christ?
DeletePerhaps I was misinformed but now that you have informed me instead of saying that Christ spoke of hell just as much as heaven I will just say that Christ spoke enough about it to warn us not to go there and that we should warn others also.
ReplyDelete