Difference between revisions of "Except Your Righteousness Shall Exceed . . . 9"
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Latest revision as of 13:50, 4 May 2022
Except Your Righteousness Shall Exceed . . . 9
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. (Matthew 3:8—NIV)
First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds. (Acts 26:20—NIV)
The four steps of salvation:
God has proclaimed that the soul that sins shall die.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
The Lord Jesus shed His blood as an atonement for our sins.
If we will confess the Lord Jesus with our mouth and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead we will be saved from Hell and enter Heaven when we die.
These are the "four steps of salvation." The custom today is to inform the unbeliever that there is a Hell to shun and a Heaven to gain. He will go to Hell when he dies unless he accepts the four steps of salvation presented above. If he confesses the Lord with his mouth and believes that God has raised Him from the dead he will escape Hell and go to Heaven when he dies.
One would look in vain in the Book of Acts for such a presentation of salvation. The Book of Acts always emphasizes repentance, that is, a change of behavior from sin to righteousness.
What is the nature of the problem?
First, the salvation that is in the Lord Jesus is never presented in the New Testament as a means of escaping Hell.
Hell is God's prison where He incarcerates wicked people. Wicked people always belong in Hell until they are delivered from their wickedness. The Lord Jesus is not the Divine means of evading the fact that wicked people will always be cast into Hell.
The scriptural issue is life and death. The soul that sins shall die. The soul that follows the Lord Jesus shall live.
Second, Heaven is never presented in the New Testament as the goal of salvation.
Third, the four steps of salvation ignore the basic role of transformation of personality in the Christian salvation. The all-important role of righteous and holy behavior is ignored as being of little or no consequence. The truth is, the purpose of receiving Christ is not so we will go to Heaven but so we will stop sinning. The purpose of stopping sinning is so we may have fellowship with God, not so we may go to Paradise. Salvation is release from the power of Satan to fellowship with God, not from Hell to Heaven.
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. (I John 1:3)
What good is Paradise until we are changed? After all, mankind at one time did enjoy Paradise on the earth. But living in Paradise includes having fellowship with God, and we can neither enjoy nor maintain fellowship with God until we have been transformed through Christ.
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (II Corinthians 6:17)
God will not receive us until we come out from the uncleannesses of the world spirit.
To be continued. Except Your Righteousness Shall Exceed . . . 10