Believe for salvation – confess for restoration and communion:
- The salvation of the unbeliever results in initial union with God.
- The confession of the strayed believer results in restored communion with God.
Believing for salvation and confession of sin are two completely different concepts and should never be interchanged. The unbeliever is never saved by confessing sin, and the believer is never restored by believing.
God’s plan toward all humanity is grace, and grace excludes any and all works we may bring to the table – our works are worthless to Him. God gives His works – man receives. Only His work was and is the perfect sacrifice by God the Son on the cross – God was propitiated by the Son and the Son alone. Believe it or not. Believe and be saved (Acts 16:31).
God remains within the bounds of His own perfect attributes, and two of those attributes are justice and righteousness. The justice of God for the unbeliever is based on the shed blood of Christ. The legal justice of God the Father forgives the unbeliever by their faith in the cross of Christ, and the legal righteousness of the Father is therefore propitiated.
The believer, upon confession of sin, is cleansed and forgiven as a judicial act of God the Father, because the believer is forever covered by the blood as a child of God. Christ is the believer’s advocate, and the judicial action of the Father will be forever be propitiated because of this.
True confession is based on repentance as a result of conviction by the Holy Spirit and a Bible doctrine in the soul of the believer. True confession means turning from the sin – a change of mind – a turning back to God. In the military, the term “About, face!” is a good example. It means turning from action or thought contrary to or independent of God. When the believer confesses, he turns back to God, and God always forgives. To me, the believer recognizes he is out of fellowship by the Holy Spirit’s conviction, therefore he names his sins. The believer is assured of forgiveness, and because of his love for God and his appreciation for the cross, he will learn not to be abusive to the blood. He will rejoice in the faithfulness and justice of the Father and the advocacy of the Son. Conscience and conviction will overtake the believer if he stays in the Word. Herein lies the key to the Christian life by divine plan: faith equals salvation, and confession equals fellowship after salvation. The blood of Christ is the incentive for salvation and living a victorious Christian life.
We are saved by grace, kept by grace, and taught how to live victoriously by grace. Believers receive from God, who gives and gave all in Christ, through Christ. The Bible is the revealed will of God for the world.
There are two categories of people on earth: the lost and condemned, and the found and justified – in other words, the unbeliever and believer. A third way to explain this is made even more simplistic: the unsaved and saved.
It is blasphemous to proclaim moral betterment on the unsaved in lieu of the Gospel of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone. God forbid (Galatians 1:8-9). Sinners are saved only by grace, through faith (Ephesians 2:8,9). It is a disgrace to preach merit for salvation, which is satan’s counterfeit gospel. The counterfeit gospel perfectly aligns with humanity’s meritorious thinking – our human nature. In Ephesians 2:10, the believer is God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.” The Law is never applied to believers (reference Romans 3:21; 10:14; 13:14; 14:17-19; Philippians 1:9-11; 4:8-9; Galatians 2:4,5; 6:14-16; 5:5-6; Acts 15:28-29).
Like Genesis in the Old Testament, the upper room discourse is the Genesis of the New Testament. The great doctrines of grace are announced by our Lord Himself. This discourse was the transition from the law to grace. These new commandments are not of the Law but of love and liberty (please note the following Scripture references: John 13:34; 15:12; 1 Corinthians 14:17; 1 Thessalonians 4:2; Galatians 6:2; reference also Matthew 28:18; Acts 1:3; Luke 24:46-48; Hebrews 2:3,4).
The epistles of Paul are uncompromising concerning any combination of the old Law and the new grace (reference Philippians 3:4-9; Colossians 3:11). It should be noted that Gentiles when saved are no longer Gentiles (Ephesians 2:11-13); this refers to the new creation in Christ. Through the new birth by the Spirit, a new species of humanity is being formed from both Jews and Gentiles to become the body of Christ, the church of Christ, His chosen ones. Included are all those from Pentecost to the rapture.
The supreme issue lies not in correcting the outward life, but in believing on Christ through salvation. If we compare the Law versus grace, we are really comparing the Law and the work of Christ.
Suffice to remember that the fantastic governing principles of grace are expressly for the believer and not the Christ-rejecting world. Christ is offered as the only perfect keeper of the Law. Christ fulfilled the righteousness of God and He alone can save.
Walk worthy of the grace wherein we stand as believers.
The yoke of bondage to the law of Moses (Acts 15:10) is unbearable for Jew or Gentile – only Christ fulfilled the law – only Christ therefore was qualified to pay for sin. Christ’s yoke is easy and light (Matthew 11:30). Believers are never again to be entangled with the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1, compare also 1 John 2:7 with 1 John 3:11) There is no compromise of grace – Christ paid it all completely, once and for all. Every member of humanity is lord over their own life. One must open their heart to receive the light of God – Jesus Christ. One has the mournful prerogative to refuse the light and remain in the prison lordship of self. Blinded by the darkness of one’s own soul, they are at strife with their own blessedness. One shall remain as they have so chosen to be – a miserable conqueror, conquered by their own self-destruction. Sin reigns in death – the biggest sin, perhaps, is self.
Grace reigns to righteousness in Christ Jesus my Lord.
The self-enthroned of this world will face terrible destruction. Only Christ earned the right to be Lord over all. Therefore, self-enthroned unbelievers, acting as God, consciously and unconsciously defeat themselves. The world is either in Christ or it is anti-Christ (1 Corinthians 15:25; Psalm 2:9). Satan was the first created being to attempt to replace God on the throne of life. Every man since Adam has done the same in arrogance (even believers, until they were saved) but the redeemed who have humbled themselves before the cross of Christ, they have made Christ the Lord of their life. They have accepted God’s free gift of salvation by trusting the death of Christ on their cross. Christ died in your place; for you He paid the penalty, which is suffering and shame by blood and death for your sin and sins. That’s the good news. But there is more. He then rose, victorious, defeating death so that you never have to depart from this life in spiritual death, forever lost. Christ died so we could live with Him, forever found. Therefore, we must see our world of pain through the eyes of Christ.
Christ sees the pain. Christ sees the brokenness. Christ sees mankind separated from the Father for eternity because of the fall – the inherited nature to sin – the ego. Our thinking is contrary to God. If the unbeliever’s thinking is to be like God’s, two things are needed: one, salvation – a change of heart, being born again, and two, renewal – a change of thinking by God’s Word. Both situations require God to do the work for helpless humanity. God must do the work, and He did so through Christ. God must warm the heart – call us. We must respond to conviction, which is made possible by our conscience, which He gave us, and by knowledge, His knowledge, which He also gave us – the Bible. His written Word.
In the grand panorama of life, Jesus Christ is the Word, the way, the truth, and the life – the only way to the Father is through salvation, which is freely provided by Christ on our behalf. We live in a world of untruth. We are mortals in need of immortality. We are mere humanity, lost and perishing without God in our lives. We are spiritually dead in trespasses and sin.
God initiates, man responds. God works, man responds. God provides, man responds. This is the core of the plan of God. God has given Himself to replace the enthroned self, which must be dethroned just as satan must be thrown down. God’s love is unfathomable, unfaltering, and unequivocal.
Jesus Christ is the thread of life, woven into the unique design pattern of our lives. Christ is what truth is made of. Christ is eternal life. Christ is the fabric of the eternally woven plan of God throughout all forms of life and matter. Father God is the grand weaver. The Holy Spirit is the revealer of our need, which is the cross and the Word. Unbelievers cannot see the light of Christ until they see the darkness of their own soul. At salvation, the light is turned on. It is a bright light of heavenly virtue seen all the way to Heaven, but it is bright to God’s eyes because He sees the end from the beginning of it.
As the new believer lives and learns the Word, may their light become increasingly brighter. So let your light so shine before men, that they may see the Lord of hope within you and inquire of its source. Isn’t it because of our actions and example before lost men that we are able to share the Gospel of Christ? We are candles, passed from one person to the other. We are candles in the wind called to pass the light on to other of each generation, candle to candle.
The fire of the cross purifies one soul at a time.
The Word is the breath of God. When we exhale our last breath, God inhales that breath and we are passed from death to life to be with Him forever. Regeneration requires eternity and grants it as a free gift, paid for by Christ. Meditate on the following verses: Isaiah 53:4-6; Matthew 20:28; John 1:29; Romans 3:25; Romans 5:8-9; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 1:3-5; Hebrews 10:11-14; 1 Peter 2:4; 3:18; 1 John 2:2.
From Scripture we learn that even during the time of the apostle Paul among the congregation of Philippi, there were religious admirers of Christ, but they hated the cross (Philippians 3:18). Paul apparently knew them well enough that he wept because of their disbelief. What a shame that religion blinds many a person from the Gospel of light. Christ is the light of the world but men love darkness, for their deeds are evil, being unregenerate (John 1:9-13). These followers were not true followers in Philippi because they hated the cross. Can you as a believer possibly understand how anyone could hate the cross? God forbid. They actually hate the redemption of the cross, preferring their own ego trip for salvation (reference 2 Peter 2:1,2). Here again the denial is against the cross, not the character of Christ. Could you imagine? How can people be for the teaching regarding Christ but so adamantly opposed to the cross of salvation?
Heresy always surrounds grace at the cross. Humanity wants to redeem themselves. This comes as natural to the unregenerate.
Many of the educated see themselves as advanced, not beyond but above the cross, above the grace and wisdom of God Himself. The cross is God’s redemptive plan for all humanity, yet some have gone beyond God to self – the same pride and arrogance possessed by satan.
It is fair to state that the mentality of unregenerate humanity rationalizes that we are not righteous enough to save ourselves, and calls upon God to help us save ourselves. Likewise, the regenerated person seeks the help of God and the exercise of their own power toward their personal Christian life. The principles of faith and works therefore must be understood and received as either God’s power working in the regenerate, or self-powered. Self-power is helpless in both salvation and the victorious Christian life – it amounts to absolutely nothing. We are to rely on Him for everything.
We are called and rescued by God through Christ for salvation. We are, after salvation, empty vessels that must learn the doctrines of the Word. We must fill up on God’s Word daily – just as we feed and nourish our bodies daily, so must we do so for our soul. In doing so, God receives the glory and we receive the benefit – the benefit is the filling control of the Holy Spirit. God performs the work of salvation and the Holy Spirit performs/executes the believer’s spiritual life – this is grace (Philippians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 1:5&10; 2 Corinthians 3:5: Galatians 3:3; Ephesians 6:10).
Only God has the power to save, and only God has enough power to produce a victorious Christian life. Give God the glory by giving him control of your life and thinking – God produces divine viewpoint exclusively through his Word (reference James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8&9; Ephesians 6:16; 1 John 4:4; 5:4; also 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; Philippians 4:13; John 15:5). How do we walk in the Spirit? Galatians Chapter 5 through Chapter 6, verse 10.
Happy Studying in Fields of Grace.