Pastor Curt Crist, www.welcometograce.com www.youtube.com/user/GraceAboundedMore Another wards, a person could not be justified in the eyes of God according to law keeping before salvation. Do you hear what's coming, but certainly, how about a person maintaining a just position before God by keeping the law after salvation! Do you see the thought? This is just another way of says, "I know that God does not save anyone according to how they kept the law, but I'm not so sure God doesn't use the law today as the bases for keeping a person saved." That's in the mind of a lot of folks in religianity and with that idea, some hang on to the notion that the law for righteousness, in order not to lose salvation, is a necessity. Did you know if you're holding on to the law today in order to keep your salvation, you don't understand Paul's good news at all? Paul called it his gospel and it was precisely the fact through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1Cor 5:1-4 ...11 Cor 5:18-21) Acts 13:39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not (never) be justified by the law of Moses. Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. So keeping the law prior to salvation wouldn't get you saved. Keeping the law after salvation will not keep you saved. You can't keep it any better now then you could keep it then when it comes to earning righteousness through the doing of it. There's one thing we can be absolutely certain, the weakness of the law was due to the presence of the flesh. And until we no longer have this flesh to contend with, the indwelling sin nature of this flesh, that weakness will always be present with us. (Romans 8:3) It's a dangerous thing to attribute righteousness to law keeping today. I didn't say it's wrong to strive righteous living today. That's an entirely different story. It's one thing to make correct choices in our lives. Choices we know that God and Paul would agree with through scripture, choices that go hand and hand with agape as Paul relates it. Every believer should strive for righteous living in that respect, but to attribute our righteousness standing before God do to the choices we make is something else all together. It's a dangerous thing when we attribute any of our righteous standing before God to our adherence to law keeping. I don't care whether you include the whole law or whether you narrow it down to the 10 commandments or ever the final two. To attribute a righteous standing before God to law keeping either to become saved or to remain saved is to misunderstand to not see to not fully comprehend the gospel Paul preached. Because the gospel Paul preached has to do with a righteousness totally apart from the law. Understand to refuse to accept righteousness that comes totally apart from law keeping is a very serious matter. 2 Corinthians 4:3 But if our gospel (Paul's good news) be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: "Hid" in Paul's day is the same thing going on in our day. The ministers of righteousness (sometimes totally un-beknowing to these fellows sometimes very know they very well what they're doing) to steal the gospel away by hiding it from your mind. There are some that use the scripture to teach that a righteous standing before God comes only from an adherence to the Law of Moses. Sure you've seen that billboard. "What part of the 10 commandments do you not understand?" Big letter, signed God. What's the implication? You're not doing them. You better get back to them. Why if we put them back on the walls of the school houses, think how good our kids would be. No more discipline problems at home or at school. Is their anxiousness to witness obedience among people who profess to be Christians... in that anxiousness they stress law keeping by tying together obedience to the law to salvation or to fellowship. It does no good to replace the word salvation with fellowship because that's just as damning an idea. If fellowship is not based on performance but based on position as Paul tells us it is, to suppose you can lose your fellowship with God based on your performance is not to understand what Christ's work accomplished where your sins are concerned. This is the hiding of the truth and the stealing of the truth away from folks that ministers of righteousness involve themselves every week. They steal the truth they hide salvation by grace alone through faith alone in the all sufficiency of the cross work of Christ alone in their effort to stick with tradition rather than stick with truth. So they follow the tradition of men. They're doing the same thing the Jewish Moralizers were doing. They were resting in the law and folks are resting in the law today.

• published: 10 Aug 2011
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