| E-MAIL SERVICE | Sign me up to receive the daily Word of Righteousness free via my E-mail address! ( ONLY AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH ) | |
| ARCHIVES | I want to check out the daily Words of Righteousness for any of the last fourteen days or from previous weeks. ( ENGLISH ONLY ) | |
| FEEDBACK | I have a question or comment about today's Word of Righteousness. ( ENGLISH AND SPANISH ONLY ) | |
| BOOK LIST | I would like to see the complete book list of the Words of Righteousness author Robert B. Thompson. (SOME SPANISH TITLES AVAILABLE ) |
The Daily Word of Righteousness
Grace—What Is It?, continued
He made no distinction between us and them [Jews and Gentiles], for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are. (Acts 15:9-11—NIV)
The grace of God in Jesus Christ came as a relief to the Jews, as we have stated.
This sense of relief has been carried over in a destructive manner to us Gentiles. We conceive of grace, not as an operation of God to create righteous people, new creations in Christ, as a righteous Jew would normally view the new covenant, but as a blanket forgiveness of our sins. It is as though God has given up trying to make people righteous and has extended a complete amnesty. Now we can please God and go to Heaven without much regard for our conduct.
Oh, we ought to try to do good, but God is saving us by "grace," that is, by an amnesty that disregards our conduct.
So we have the concept that the purpose of the Law is to show us we cannot please God, we must be accepted by Him on the basis of forgiveness alone.
Have I presented a fairly accurate explanation of the current view of "grace"?
The Law of Moses commanded us to live righteously, but the grace and truth of Jesus Christ are an amnesty, a perpetual forgiveness through which we are able to approach God and be received of Him.
This is true at the beginning. The Law, the tutor, has brought us to Christ. Now we are in the school of Christ. We no longer have to be concerned about the Law of Moses.
It is right at this point that the Evangelical understanding has departed from the Scriptures, not recognizing God's goal under the new covenant. We think God's goal is to forgive all who will receive forgiveness so they may be permitted to enter Heaven. This could not be more opposed to what God is seeking.
God is not seeking to bring people to Heaven. This is not the purpose of the new covenant. The purpose of the new covenant is to transform the human personality so it obeys by its new nature the eternal moral law of God.
Until we realize that God's purpose in the Christian salvation is to transform the believers so they keep His moral laws, bringing forth righteousness and praise in the sight of the nations of the earth, we have little understanding of what is supposed to be taking place in us.
Now consider how far apart these two understandings of God's purposes are.
The first understanding is that God wants us to make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ so we will be forgiven and eligible to go to Heaven when we die.
The second understanding is that God wants to so transform our personality that we become a new creation in which all the old has passed away and all that we are is new and of God's Divine Nature.
Can you see that these two understandings are totally different? They are not the same at all!
To be continued.