Please allow me to start by apologizing (kind of) for the length of this article when looked at as a whole. However, in the interest of saving the readers from an overload of information, I will break this up into a few separate articles for the Real News Review. I pray you will bear with me on the length in light of the importance of what I want to say.
Life would be much easier, I suppose, if I were to simply tune out and live like most individuals in the world; but I know God’s Word and I see what is coming upon this Earth – the judgment of God! I also see the downfall of our great nation falling into place just as His Holy Word predicts. Consequently, my heart hurts at our current situation even though I welcome the coming of our Lord.
If you open your Bible and turn to 1 Peter 4:17 you will read:
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
Did you catch that? God’s judgment will BEGIN with those who claim to be a part of His Church!
In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus said:
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Given that I have found many “churches” that refuse the teach through the entirety of the Bible, consider Genesis a nice story but not to be believed, or choose to teach on grace alone and forget the moral law that the Lord wrote on tablets of stone – the Ten Commandments! As a matter of fact, how many individuals sitting in a pew/chair on Sunday morning can even recite the Ten Commandments? Has anyone ever told you where to find them even? For those who are unsure of them, I will set them out for you here and would hope you make note of their location – Exodus 20.
20 And God spake all these words, saying, 2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 13 Thou shalt not kill. 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 15 Thou shalt not steal. 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
That’s quite the list of rules that the Lord God, himself, set in stone for all believers. The unchangeable Law that cannot be satisfied except by the shedding of blood! The unchanging law with its unrelenting death sentence! The moral Law that tells us that the guilt of the past cannot be erased by a promise of good behavior in the future.
So, then we come to the question that confuses so many Christians: if the works of the Law cannot save a person, is it necessary to keep them?
I can’t pretend that I am the first to ask this question, especially since Paul asked the same question in Romans 6:1.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Does grace give us a license to disobey the moral Law of God? Paul’s answer in Romans 6:2 is:
2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
Isn’t it interesting that Christians in this age can invent their own definitions to condone lawbreaking? The Bible distinctly says that sin is violating the Ten Commandments, yet so many churches today describe these as irrelevant in light of grace! Nothing has happened under the sun that makes them any less binding. In fact, Jesus came to magnify the law! Jesus Christ came to live a life of perfect obedience so that we, in our present day and age, can see the spiritual details of the Law which are not possible apart from Him!
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