There’s been an ongoing feud among Christians for a long time. A battle between the holiness camp and the grace camp. The holiness side is preoccupied with your works, the things that you do, your behavior, and a checklist of things that you must accomplish to please a perfectly holy God. And they often sound something like this:
“God is coming back one day! He’s not coming back to give you a big hug! He’s coming back to execute his wrath! You need to fear and tremble before him! The scripture says Be holy for I am holy! Tremble, fear, condemnation! Bwahahahahah!”
So, the holiness camp is completely focused on the wrath of God, and uses fear to promote human works.
Now, the grace side is on the opposite end of the spectrum. The grace camp often completely disregards the judgment and even sometimes the respect worthy of God. On the extreme, the grace side sounds like this:
“Oh, don’t worry! God loves you! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and everything’s just fine and dandy all the time!”
So which is it? Is God suffering from multiple personality disorder?
As you might expect, neither of these positions tell the whole story, and the truth of God’s character, His nature, and the Gospel message, is far greater! Let’s talk about it!
Welcome back again to the third-part of our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. So far we’ve seen some powerful truths regarding how sin is far deeper than actions that we commit, but it is an identity. Likewise, righteousness is also an identity. We also began to examine how Jesus changed our identity from sin to righteousness, and has cleansed us and given us a good and clean conscience.
Today, we are going to delve deeper into the cleansing of our conscience by Jesus Christ, and what a good conscience truly means.
Welcome back to part three of our series on how to fight and win your spiritual battles, in Christ. Being “in Christ” is more than just a high-minded, ethereal idea, it is a reality of your present position and standing because of His finished work, and your reception of His payment for you.
Last week we began looking at the armor of God with an overview of why the armor was given and where it comes from. Now today, we will continue by examining the pieces of God’s armor to understand their individual benefits, and how each pieces combines to be a fully effective whole unit.
Works versus grace has been a long-held debate among people inside the walls of church buildings. Such a discussion is supremely important, because it strikes at the heart of our union and relationship with God. Are we saved by works which we perform, or is salvation purely an act of God’s grace? Or is salvation some kind of synergy between our God’s grace mixed with our works?
Your response to this question will change absolutely everything about your relationship with God, how you interact with Him, and what you can expect from Him.
Today we will be exploring the most important aspect of our relationship with God, salvation, to answer the question of whether salvation is earned by our works, or is received as a gift from God.
Righteousness – it’s one of the main focuses of the Christian life, and many people are constantly striving towards the goal of being righteous; or being more righteous. There are entire books, study guides and conferences all centered around living righteously, and learning how to be more righteous.
There are countless numbers of Christians today who are on a quest to “better themselves”, to be more righteous, and be more like God and please Him. I used to be one of those people, as well. I know exactly how it feels, and it seems right; it seems like a very good thing. You may even be asking right now “why wouldn’t that be a good thing?! We need more righteous people, who want to please God!”
And I do agree that it is a very good thing for people to be righteous, and of course to please God – we all want that. However, the question isn’t really whether that’s a good thing or not; but rather how do we accomplish it?
You see, no-one is questioning the importance of being righteous, but rather where we diverge is how to be righteous. Because when you ask this question, most people immediately jump to their own works and performance, and what they need to do for God.
So today, we will be examining what the scriptures actually say about how to be righteous; and the answer may surprise you!
Welcome back to the third part of our series of studies focusing on seeing Jesus and pictures of Him and His finished work, right there in the first part of His sermon on the mount, known as the Beatitudes.
So far we have just begun to scratch the surface as we began looking at the first three of the Beatitudes; and already we have seen some amazing pictures of Jesus.
Today we will obviously continue with more of the Beatitudes as we see more pictures of Jesus
Last week, we looked at one of the most important names of God, which was יהוה צדקנו – The ever-exiting God is our righteousness. And we saw how that righteousness is not merely a separate thing that He gives to us, but that He Himself is our righteousness. A very important distinction that highlights His glory, His grace, and the amazing union that we have with Him today in Christ.
Now in this study today, which is part four of our series looking at the names of God, we are continuing this theme by looking at the name of God יהוה מקדשכם, the ever-existing God, who is your sanctification.
This goes hand-in-hand with His name that we studied last week. And as before, it highlights His glory and His grace. As as we see this today, we will be able to enjoy deeper levels of unity with Him as we rejoice in the fact that, yes, He is both our righteousness and our sanctification.
On several occasions, I have been in conversations where I have bluntly asked someone, “are you righteous in the sight of God?”, and then the person in question would hesitate, they would pause, and consider their life and their behaviors, and then with shakiness in their voice answer “I think so...”. This reveals the fact that when it comes to righteousness, such people as the ones I have spoken with, really have no confidence at all in their righteous standing before God; and it’s precisely for this reason that they aren’t standing on the proper foundation… they aren’t standing in Christ, but instead are looking at their own behaviors and performance and judging their righteousness and their standing before God based on that, instead of on the finished work of Christ.
This has a more damaging effect than you may imagine at first, because righteousness by faith in Christ is at the very core of our new identity, and it is very important to successful spiritual warfare; to the utilization of our power in Christ. As we studied last week, God has given us power; He wants us to have it and make use of it… but we will never have success, unless we stand on the proper foundation, and approach from the correct perspective.
So today in this study, we look at the importance of knowing, truly knowing beyond doubt that you are righteous.
Jesus is perfect. As believers that statement might not be too surprising. Most Christians would say “Amen” to it, and agree with the statement without thinking twice. Yet in practice there are some areas where we don’t take into account just how very deep His perfection runs. For example, let me ask you a simple question: If you could obey the Law of Moses perfectly, would you be righteous?
Most of the Christians that I have discussions with, would answer “yes”, and indeed many are trying to do exactly that… they are trying to continually improve their behavior to align to what they call the “moral law” (even though the Law of Moses really has no divisions or separate categories).
Additionally, many of the Christians that I speak with, believe that this is all that Jesus did; they believe that the reason Jesus was the perfect sacrifice was because He simply kept the Law of Moses perfectly.
And what I want to share with you today, is the fact that Jesus’ perfection is so much deeper than that! I want to expand your vision and broaden your horizon to see much more of His perfection than what is generally seen. And as you see the perfection of Jesus today, you will be able to more fully appreciate what He has accomplished for you.