The Foundation Under the Pillars

I: Do we fully Grasp our Depravity Apart from Christ and the Priceless Value of Salvation?
The churches are full of people who “believe they are saved” but when we hold our lives up to the perfect standard in the law, it should be obvious how impossible the task of earning salvation through what we do is to accomplish. Yet, the Word is clear that the law was not designed as a list of tasks or rules to be performed but to show how much we need a Savior.

For fear of turning people off to the church by giving them “the bad news” of the law (“fire and brimstone”) prior to the “good news” of salvation, much of the church has dumbed- down the gospel by creating a “love-only” presentation, thus misinforming them that God is loving only… yet He is holy and just and MUST punish sin.

Jesus taught about this in Matthew 13:47-50

47 Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The net represents the gospel and the fish in the net are those who responded to the gospel. Yet, not all were saved! There is such thing as “false conversion”; a conversion where someone may pray a tear-filled prayer, but go right back to their life style, never having made a change of heart.

This is not a question of “can a person lose their salvation… but a question of was a person ever truly saved in the first place. And THAT’S where we want to start!

Once we understand how lost we truly are apart form Christ, only then does the true value of His sacrifice on the cross change us -right down to our DNA. Every deed, every word, every thought becomes an outpouring of our gratitude for such an undeserved gift of grace.

For a fantastic, in-depth study on the subject of the “fast-folded gospel” and how to effectively share the entire gospel message that has the power to “turn a heart of stone to a heart of flesh”, I strongly recommend the following book by Ray Comfort. This book brought me back to my knees before God, finally, fully grasping my sin condition and the value of Christ’s death and resurrection as the only antidote for the poison of sin.

II: Accepting the Word of God as Inerrant, Perfect, Trustworthy and TRUE
This is where it all starts -the Word of God. If you or I have even a thread of doubt that God wrote this book, we need to deal with it immediately. Satan is many things; “the accuser of the brethren”, a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”, on and on. But the one that concerns me most is “Angel of Light”. He doesn’t always run around in red tights wielding his pitchfork like a Conan. He prides himself on looking “just like the real thing”.

We’re gong to spend extensive time spotting those areas that fool young believers into doubting the Word, and eventually turning from God.

We will also constantly refer to the Greek and Hebrew meanings of words to open our eyes to what the writers were actually saying; the culture around which it was written and the people of that time, to much more deeply understand the Word.