Paul's Passing Thoughts

While we hear the same worn-out calls for revival, most Christians don’t even know what the gospel is. It is those under grace  calling to those under law to be “reconciled to God.” If Christians really understood the difference between, under grace and under law, preaching the gospel to ourselves would be rejected out of hand.

Christ, as an apologist for truth, focused on one principle: the traditions of men replacing the truth of God’s word resulting in antinomianism. That’s it. He also stated that this would be particularly pervasive in the last days. And that is exactly where we are at today. The full counsel of God’s word has been replaced with seeing every verse in the Bible as salvific. The full counsel of God’s word (for life and godliness) that is the only cure for our new addiction to righteousness has been circumvented by denying that Christians are born again. Yes, there is a reason that we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day: “The believer is no whit different than the unregenerate.”

They need the gospel; we still need the gospel. We “grow” by the same gospel that saved us. So-called “application” is a gospel application to every need of life. And the news is good. Tragedy need not upset us anymore because it pictures the cross. Wives being beaten by their husbands can glory in the fact that it “shows forth” the beating Jesus received before dying on the cross. Our own decadence serves to show how great our need is for Jesus; the more decadent the better. Anyone who “passes judgment” on the church’s resident pedophile doesn’t understand the depths of grace. Christians want to believe what is going on in the church isn’t connected to doctrine—whining about symptoms is easy; thinking is hard. Supposedly, lecturing people who believe Christians are still totally depraved will solve the problem. I think not.

“Change” is really “manifestations” and “experience.” We don’t change, but we can change our “sphere” and what we “look like.” Much of today’s “gospel-centered preaching” explains what Jesus’ manifestations in our life “look like.” This is the focus of James MacDonald’s Vertical Church program verses horizontal helps. Even John MacArthur bragged recently that he merely presents the text and the application is determined by the Holy Spirit and because of this, his people obey biblical truth without even being aware of those specific truths intellectually. This is what they mean by “new birth.” Our realm changes and we “experience” it, but it is really Jesus doing the work. That’s why these “experiences” are always experienced by a willing spirit and joy. As MacArthur has also said, true “obedience is always sweet, never bitter.”

The crux of antinomian sanctification is the fact that it sees the law in justification (it unites law and justification); therefore, sanctification must be lived by faith alone in sanctification in order not to make “sanctification the ground of our justification.” Hence, believers are still, “under the law,” and by biblical definition, LOST! It all boils down to the simple understanding of the difference between, under law and under grace in the book of Romans. This is a simple thing: if Christians still need the gospel, they are still under law; if Christians are still totally depraved, they are still under law; if they are still under law, they are not saved; those under grace are enslaved to righteousness and therefore need the law; but if they are NOT enslaved to righteousness, they are under the law which produces nothing but fruits for death.

Christians have to stop pretending if anything is going to change. You’re not giving your time and money to Christ if it goes to ANY ministry that tolerates ANYONE preaching the following:

“We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.”

paul