It’s difficult for people to find biblically sound middle ground on some topics. If cheap grace is at one extreme, then legalism is at the other. Although legalism is not a word found in the Bible, the concept of legalism certainly is. Legalism is the heresy that motivated Paul’s letter to the disciples in Galatia. The dictionary defines legalism as:
Continue reading →Law is a very important part of several covenants documented in the Bible. The Old Covenant was given by God through Moses to the ancient Israelites. It was a national covenant and only Jews were subject to it. More than 600 commandments comprised the law under this covenant!
Continue reading →There is a dangerous and unbiblical concept taught by some which states that people can be reconciled to God merely by acknowledging that they have faith in Jesus. There is little to no emphasis on instructing the new Christian to turn their back on sin (repent), make Jesus their king, allow Jesus to transform their life to be more like Him, live a clean life filled with good works, etc.
In other words, the emphasis is on the benefits of Christianity without acknowledging the commitment. The end result of this teaching is a person who believes they have obtained eternal life from Jesus, but displays no signs of a changed life and gives no indication that they understand the need to obey Him.
Continue reading →Christians can and should have complete confidence in their salvation. However, salvation is a gift that can be “returned”. The bible is quite clear that we can relinquish our salvation, but only if we reject it willfully. We don’t “accidentally” lose our salvation each time we commit a sin nor even during periods of time when we relapse into sinful behavior. We can forfeit our salvation, but not as easily as many people think.
The writer of the Hebrew letter gives some very important information to help us in our understanding of the conditions under which a saved person rejects God’s gift.
Continue reading →Grace, properly understood, should leave us feeling assured of our salvation. However, it is common for people to doubt their salvation at some point after becoming a Christian. There are several reasons for this. One reason might be that as we learn, we realize how good God is and how bad we humans are. Being more aware of our sins may lead us to question how God could love someone as “bad as I am”. We feel there are sins we can’t overcome, we have thoughts we shouldn’t have, we keep failing, etc. We feel we are a failure as a disciple and therefore God will reject us.
Sometimes bad theology is to blame. Some Christian teachers/preachers erroneously teach that each time we sin after becoming a Christian we have lost our salvation until we repent and pray to God asking forgiveness. A variation on this teaching is that we don’t lose our salvation every time we sin, but we lose our salvation when we “backslide”. The term “backslide” means to relapse into patterns of sinful behavior. Fortunately, the Bible does NOT teach these ideas of “intermittent salvation”. The bible is quite clear that Christians can and should have assurance of their salvation.
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