Recently the Lord spoke to a minister who was preparing to teach a seminar. God said, "Do not preach about Christ. Preach what Christ preached."

When the writer first heard about the Lord telling this to a man the writer does not know, it rang true. It was difficult to understand but somehow it seemed to be correct.

Since that time we have come to see how very important that word was (and is). When reading commentaries and footnotes, especially concerning the New Testament Gospels and Epistles, one can find many paragraphs telling how great and exalted Christ is. We agree wholeheartedly with the descriptions of the majesty of the Lord.

But the paragraphs that advise us to practice and preach Christ's commandments are few and far between. One is more apt to read that it is not necessary to keep Christ's commandments than he is to find that if we do not keep Christ's commandments we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

It is a massive, grievous error. We are calling Jesus Lord! Lord! but not doing what He commands. We are building our house on the sand instead of on the rock of His commandments.

How terribly frustrating this must be to the Lord!

There is something wrong here. It is a mental assent to theological facts, not expressing itself in godly works, while the Scripture informs us that faith apart from godly works (an abstract faith) is dead.

It is true that the Scriptures stress faith. But the "faith" of the Scriptures is the faith of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. It is the faith that seeks Christ day and night. "The just shall live by faith" has little or nothing to do with belief in doctrine, it is speaking of the life lived in humble dependence on God.

We can understand how the current emphasis could be derived from certain verses of the Scriptures. But let us keep in mind that the majority of the passages of the New Testament (including the four Gospel accounts) emphasize how we are to live the Christian life, not that we are to take the Name of the Lord Jesus or acknowledge the fact of His blood atonement or His bodily resurrection.

It is possible to adopt the name of the Lord and continue in our own ways, like Queen Vashti who prepared her own banquet and ignored King Ahasuerus. This is not acceptable to God.

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. (Isaiah 4:1).

"We do not desire you or your ways, we just want to adopt your name so people will think we have a husband."

We repeat, there is something radically wrong here.

Let us take, for example, Romans 5:9:

Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:9)

It is easy to see how such verses as this, and Romans 10:9,10, would lead to the conclusion that if we acknowledge the Lord Jesus we will be saved regardless of our conduct. If we add to this conclusion the unscriptural tradition that the goal of the Divine redemption is to live forever in a mansion in Heaven, we have the customary belief that "by accepting Christ you will escape Hell and go to Heaven by grace."

But if we take the entire Book of Romans and add to it the teaching of the remainder of Paul's epistles, of the other Apostles, and of Christ Jesus Himself in the Gospel accounts, we soon discover that the current presentation of the plan of salvation is incomplete to the extent of being dangerously misleading.

It never was God's intention that a profession of belief in Christ would be the whole scope of the Christian discipleship and that the behavior of the believers would be cast into an inconsequential role. This is obviously unscriptural.

It is God's intention that the Lord Jesus Christ be the Rock, the chief Cornerstone, the Door of the Kingdom of God, the Center and Circumference of the entire creation.

On this Rock the glorious Church is being built; not glorious because it professes belief in Christ but glorious because of the radiant Glory of the indwelling Christ revealed in the character and works of the Church.

The Christian who is not growing in good works is defeating the purpose of God in saving him or her.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

To be continued.