The Daily Word of Righteousness

Making the Glory Our Own, #7

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (II Timothy 2:3 NIV)

We are entering a time of spiritual warfare. The hymns and choruses are becoming militant. Pageantry in the form of banners may be employed to emphasize the songs of war. No more are we to be just a crowd of believers. It is time to be disciplined as good soldiers of the cross. The lackadaisical approach to salvation no longer will suffice. It is time for war in the spirit realm.

Are we willing to be identified with those who are calling the churches to war instead of lulling them to sleep with the unscriptural teaching of the "rapture"?

Christ has forgiven our sins through the blood of the cross. Now He is ready to finish the job by taking away our sins. Because of this we must come to understand that Divine grace is not an alternative to righteous living but the power and wisdom through Jesus Christ to live righteously.

If you decide to help build the wall against sin, if you teach that God is not seeing us through Christ, as the unscriptural tradition states, if you portray God as ready to judge the worldliness, lust, and self-will in His churches with a view to removing them from us as we confess them and turn away from them, you are going to face much criticism and unbelief. But this is the wall that must be built in our day.

The churches are filled with unjudged sin. It is not true that God does not see this sin. He does and He wants to remove it from us. He wants us to judge our own conduct as sinful, as He directs us, and confess the sin, renounce it, and by His Spirit drive it from us.

Our Evangelical teaching concerning the grace of God, and the unscriptural "state of grace," is so deeply entrenched that to challenge it is to seriously disturb the supposed security of the believer. Because of their fear they will howl with unbelief.

Yet, it must be challenged for it is not scriptural. The days we are approaching will be so dark spiritually that the only reality we can be sure of is what the Bible states. The Bible does not state God sees us through Christ, or God sees us through the blood, or we who believe are living in a state of grace such that our behavior does not affect our salvation. The Bible does not teach these things any more than it teaches we are going to a mansion in Heaven.

It is time to get back to the Bible. Can you say Amen!

The removal of our sins is the spiritual fulfillment of the Old Testament Day of Atonement.

It is time for Christ to be formed in us. We have supposed that because we have received the blood atonement and have a portion of eternal life that we have the fullness of Christ. The Galatians had received the blood atonement and had been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Yet Paul was travailing in birth that Christ might be formed in them.

To be continued.