by Joe La Bianca

Created on: March 09, 2010

There is one way to interpret the Bible. You must understand it in light of the gospel of grace.

Galatians1:6

Paul wondered how Christians could fall away from grace. It amazed him. I feel a little of what Paul must have felt. I look around and see a fallen away church. It fell away from the cross and landed hard on the dung heap of half faith and half works. Good works are filthy outside of the correct understanding of them in the gospel.

The gospel is the Gift of eternal life through our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus for our sins. How can anyone refuse the Gift by trying to earn the Gift? Receive the Gift and don’t try to lessen it with your works. You take away from the generosity of God when you do not receive it fully as a gift. You reduce God’s grace when you add works of merit to it. How would you feel if you gave someone the greatest gift and said that he had something to do with it? We have no contributing factor that adds to God’s gift. We just believe in it without works.

Good fruit will come when you believe. But let them come in the right way, not as an effort to contribute to salvation, but as a result of salvation.

It didn’t take long for the Galatians to fall away and become foolish. Peter and James actually contributed to their fall, see chapter two of that book. Thank God that Paul rebuked Peter to his face and preserved the truth of grace. Peter later came around to Paul’s way of thinking, see Peter’s letter where he tells his readers to listen to Paul.

If you don’t believe in Paul’s gospel, you will be removed from Him who called you by His grace. You will cross back over from life to death. You will move away from God.

You are called into the grace of Christ not by works . If you are going the way of legalism, you are not being led by God. God calls you to the gospel of Paul, which Jesus gave him, not to another gospel.

What do you think of when you hear the word gospel: a type of ethnic music, a religion, a holy message of any kind? These things are not the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus and His crucifixion and resurrection. If you just believe that Jesus died for your sins on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day, you are believing the gospel and answering God’s call. Be careful and hold on to the faith, the true faith.

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