A Message For Sovereign Grace Believers

 

I read some disturbing teaching today, where the pastor said that it isn't his responsibility to teach people how to live, because he fails miserably himself. He only wants to preach “how our Savior lived, died and resurrected, doing everything perfectly for and in the place of hell-deserving sinners”.

This sounds nice, but it is NOT the gospel. Paul was chief of sinners, and yet he showed us clearly how to live, saying, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1). He says, elsewhere “Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering”, and again, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (Col 3:12; Eph 4:1). He definitely... and all of God's messengers DEFINITELY... teach us how to live. It's bible.

This doesn't mean that we're perfect, that we don't fall, or that we don't blush. We are all sinners, but like John Newton said, “Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say that I am not what I once was, a slave to sin and Satan. And I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge, “by the grace of God I am what I am.” We proclaim this too: I'm not what I want to be, but I am a child of God, forgiven, not condemned, and I have the power of Christ upon me. I can't live perfectly, but I can improve, grow, change, repent, and believe Him in newness of life. I can't DESERVE a blessing, but I can take the water of life freely, calling upon the name of the Lord, and be saved continually from the flesh within.

I believe God and not the god of men. I believe the gospel and not the human conception of it.

My depravity hasn't stopped me from being saved, and I will focus on who I am in Christ and what I'm to do with my life, improving in every area of it. I’m not to say, “It is OK to continue in sin... or there's no need to teach Christian living... because we're sinners anyway”.

This is NOT the gospel of how we think it should be, but exactly what God says. Anyone who doesn't teach lifestyle is unfaithful.

Doctrine Unto Good Works

If you only hear “sound doctrine” but do not zealously live a sound life, then you have not heard the gospel unto good works, and you have not heard all that you can or need. You have not ARRIVED because you know election; you arrive only as you live as God’s elect in love to a lost world. If I merely say, “I’m better than”, but I do not go out with the gospel and fight by the gospel against my sins, then I DECEIVE myself. I say, “I’m better”, when I need to be healed myself. Rather than CONGRATULATE ourselves for what we know and where we worship, we should be encouraged by grace to save the world. Any knowledge of God that doesn’t lead to SAVING love is false and empty; it is NOT complete.