| 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
Scripture or Myth?, #4
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8,9)
There are hundreds of other verses that teach the same doctrine of righteousness.
Ephesians 2:8,9 is a favorite passage and often is memorized by fervent believers:
But what does the next verse state?
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
God has ordained that we should walk in good works. We are saved by grace so we should walk in good works.
Is there a verse that reveals clearly that God sees our behavior and not merely the righteousness of Christ applied to us?
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. (I Corinthians 11:32)
We are judged by the Lord and chastened by Him when our behavior is unacceptable to Him. The purpose of the chastening is to change our behavior.
There are hundreds of passages in the New Testament that invalidate the doctrine that God sees the righteousness of Christ rather than our behavior. But the verse above is sufficient for the honest inquirer.
God would never judge us and never chasten us if He did not see our behavior. On what basis would He chasten us if He did not see our behavior but only the righteousness of Christ? Why would we be in danger of being condemned with the world if God sees only the righteousness of Christ?
There was a man in Corinth who had committed incest. Paul did not exclaim there was no problem because God saw only Christ in him. Paul delivered him to Satan in the hope that his spirit would be saved in the Day of the Lord.
God did not see Christ's righteousness in Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to the Holy Spirit.
To respond that the sinner in Corinth and Ananias and Sapphira were never true Christians is to willfully distort the clear, consistent teaching of the New Testament and to prepare one's self and one's hearers to experience destruction at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Since today's theologians get around such scriptural warnings by claiming that the individual never was actually saved to begin with, let us think about this. Was the man in Corinth ever considered to be a member of the assembly of Corinthians saints?
Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many. So contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. (II Corinthians 2:6,7)
Is there any scriptural indication that this man had not been saved while he was practicing incest and now that he had repented he had become a true Christian? This is the argument currently employed to prove that a true Christian cannot come under the judgment of God no matter what he does.
To be continued.