Its more complicated than you think -- or is it?

Paul wrote, “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3).”

Satan’s first attack upon mankind in the garden was to question the Word of God. He hissed those insidious words into the ear of Eve, “Did God really say (Gen. 3:1)?” His deceptive tactics have not changed much since that first attack in the garden. He continues to challenge the veracity of God’s written Word. He questions the simplicity of God’s good news of salvation. Unfortunately, he uses theologians to distort the gospel.

Dr. Alan Stanley wrote a book entitled Salvation Is More Complicated Than You Think. Dr. Stanley is not the only Bible teacher who thinks that salvation is complicated.

• John Piper wrote: “Saving faith is no simple thing. It has many dimensions. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus’ is a massive command. It contains a hundred other things. Unless we see this, the array of conditions for salvation in the New Testament will be utterly perplexing.”
• Michael Horton wrote: “The New Testament lays before us a vast array of conditions for final salvation. Not only initial repentance and faith, but perseverance in both…”
• R. C. Sproul wrote: “There are all sorts of conditions that must be met for someone to be saved. Chief among them is that we must have faith in Christ. The Reformed view does, in a narrow sense, see obedience as a ‘condition’ (but never the ground) of justification.”

Sadly, many theologians complicate the simplicity of the gospel by not distinguishing the difference between the requirements for salvation and the requirements for discipleship. The requirements for discipleship are not the same as the requirements for salvation. Discipleship is costly. Salvation is free. God’s Word teaches that the only condition for salvation is to believe. The single requirement for salvation is vastly different than the many conditions for discipleship. To be a disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Christ, abide in His Word, love Christ more than your family, etc. The commitments of discipleship should be the result of salvation, not requirements for salvation.

Blessings,

Bob

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Imputed Righteousness
by Lance Latham

There is simply no possibility whatsoever that a person can achieve standing before God on the basis of his own defaced, despicable righteousness. A Christian, therefore, is not merely one who has been through the emotion of a moment, or who has newly purposed or has newly promised. Rather, a Christian has abandoned all hope of his own personal moral credentials and receives as his sole and complete basis for standing before God the finished and complete righteousness which Jesus Christ purchased on Calvary’s cross and imputed to him. To “impute” means to “ascribe,” to “put to one’s account.” Personal righteousness does not save us; imputed righteousness alone satisfies divine holiness and makes the sinner acceptable before God.