One of the core beliefs of Christianity can be stated as follows:
Each person who responds to God’s grace and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ by confession of sin, remorse, repentance, faith and obedience receives the great gift of salvation. Each person who resists God’s grace is condemned to everlasting punishment.
- Each person who responds to God’s grace and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ by
- confession of sin (Ps 32:3-5; 1 John 1:8-10),
- remorse (Ps 66:18; Luke 18:13),
- repentance (Mat 3:8; Rom 12:2, 13:14; Eph 4:23-24; Rev 2:5, 16, 3:3, 19),
- faith (John 6:29, 3:16-17; Acts 16:31; Eph 2:8-10) and
- obedience (Mat 28:20; Luke 11:28; John 14:15; Rom 1:5, 6:16; Heb 5:9)
- receives the great gift of salvation (Acts 4:12; Rom 1:16; 2 Cor 7:10; 1 Thes 5:9; Heb 5:9; 1 Pet 1:9, 18-19).
- Each person who resists God’s grace is condemned to everlasting punishment (Mat 25:46; 2 Thes 1:8-9).
The requirement of obedience means we must reject that terrible curse placed on us by Satan when he helped Adam and Eve realize something that had eluded them since their creation by God. In the words of Oswald Chambers (See also Section 8.11 of Theology Corner):
“The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz. my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb 9:26) – an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization – I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has one basis, my claim to my right to myself.” (Chambers, October 5th)
Without using a specific name for it, Satan introduced Adam and Eve to humanism. A humanistic culture is one embracing the concept that men and women can begin from themselves and derive the standards by which to judge all things. There are, for such people, no fixed standards of behavior, no standards that cannot be eroded or replaced by what seems necessary, expedient, or fashionable. There is no essential difference in legitimacy between ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Any perceived difference between good and evil is an illusion, an aberration for the puzzlement of limited intellects; what one might call evil, another might call good. Embracing humanism means following your own intellect, your own will and your own heart. In each of their individual souls, Adam and Eve embraced the teaching of Satan who said they had a right to themselves. They believed, on that fateful day, they had been liberated from oppression of God! They became WOKE.
But why did God allow the generations of Adam and Eve’s offspring to be born with a sin nature? We had no part in Adam’s sin! It is because God knew it would be pointless to allow the offspring of Adam and Eve to be born sinless. He knew each offspring would follow exactly the same path as Adam and Eve. So, He allows each descendant of Adam and Eve to be born with full instinctive knowledge that they have a right to themselves. All progeny are born embracing this sin nature, sometimes called original sin, inbred sin or inherited depravity. But God had a contingency plan devised before the universe was formed. This was a radical plan necessitated by the fact that God Himself is the ultimate victim of every sin. It begins with prevenient grace which is a cornerstone of Wesleyan/Arminian theology. Without God working in your corrupted heart, intellect and will, without God calling you, trying to awaken you, trying to draw you near and convict you of your sins, you could never be saved! You are drowning in a bottomless sea of sin and the Holy Spirit is nudging you to within arm’s length of a life preserver. You need only grasp the preserver and be pulled to safety. But the deep need for reconciliation, expiation and propitiation between God and His creation and God and the souls of all mankind demanded even more drastic intervention: the substitutionary atonement. Salvation is received by faith which is defined as belief preceded by repentance and followed by obedience – we are saved by faith, the grace of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.
What are some ways we can show obedience? What are the duties we owe to God? In the words of Richard Watson:
SUBMISSION: The will of God is the only rule to man, in everything on which that will has declared itself; and as it lays its injunctions upon the heart as well as the life, the rule is equally in force when it directs our opinions, our motives, and affections, as when it enjoins or prohibits external acts. We are his because he made us; and to this is added the confirmation of this right by our redemption; ‘Ye are not your own, but bought with a price; wherefore glorify God in your bodies and spirits which are his.’
LOVE: Love is essential to true obedience; for when the apostle declares love to be ‘the fulfilling of the law,’ he declares, in effect, that the law cannot be fulfilled without love; and that every action which has not this for its principle, however virtuous in its show, fails of accomplishing the precepts which are obligatory upon us. But this love to God cannot be felt so long as we are sensible of his wrath and are in dread of his judgments. These feelings are incompatible with each other, and we must be assured of his reconciliation to us before we are capable of loving him. Thus the very existence of the love of God implies the doctrines of the atonement, repentance, faith and the gift of the Spirit of adoption to believers; and unless it be taught in this connection, and through this process of experience, it will be exhibited only as a bright and beauteous object to which man has no access; or a fictitious and imitative sentimentalism will be substituted for it, to the delusion of the souls of men.
TRUST: But as to men, the whole Scripture shows, that faith or trust is a duty of the first class, and that they ‘stand only by faith.’ Whether the reason of this may be the importance to themselves of being continually impressed with their dependence upon God, so that they may fly to him at all times, and escape the disappointments of self-confidence, and creature reliances; or that as all good actually comes from God, he ought to be recognized as its source, so that all creatures may glorify him; or whether other and more secret reasons may also be included; the fact that this duty is solemnly enjoined as an essential part of true religion, cannot be doubted.
FEAR OF GOD: The Scriptural view of the fear of God, as combining both reverence of the Divine majesty, and a suitable apprehension of our conditional liability to his displeasure, is of large practical influence. It restrains our faith from degenerating into presumption; our love into familiarity; our joy into carelessness. It nurtures humility, watchfulness, and the spirit of prayer. It induces a reverent habit of thinking and speaking of God and gives solemnity to the exercises of devotion. It presents sin to us under its true aspect, as dangerous, as well as corrupting to the soul; as darkening our prospects in a future life, as well as injurious to our peace in the present; and it gives strength and efficacy to that most important practical moral principle, the constant reference of our inward habits of thought and feeling, and our outward actions, to the approbation of God.
PRAYER: Solemn addressing of our minds to God, as the Fountain of being and happiness, the Ruler of the world, and the Father of the family of man…When vocal it is an external act, but supposes the correspondence of the will and affection; yet it may be purely mental, all the acts of which it is composed being often conceived in the mind, when not clothed in words…It follows, therefore, [from Scripture] that prayer is a duty; that it is made a condition of our receiving good at the hand of God; that every case of personal pressure, or need, may be made the subject of prayer; that we are to intercede for all immediately connected with us, for the Church, for our country and for all mankind; that both temporal and spiritual blessing may be the subject of our supplications; and that these great and solemn exercises are to be accompanied with grateful thanksgivings to God as the author of all blessings already bestowed, and the benevolent object of our hope as to future interpositions and supplies. (See also Sections 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 of Theology Corner)
(Watson, v2, p 481-488)
(See also Sections 11.1, 11.8 and 11.13 of Theology Corner)
