compromise before truth?

i see grace


I have heard a few fair assumptions about the bare-bones belief I have on what it takes to be saved. Too, I have heard a fair assumption of the kind of ministries I take, mostly with promiscuous, poor, young women, both professed believers and non-believers. One more time, I have heard people make a comparison between my childhood environment and my current beliefs.

They sound like this:

"Well I can understand that you are probably reading your experiences of salvation into it, letting them dictate what you believe about the Word."

"It's good that you can understand that scenario better than me and so you're just trying to take their side since no one else will."

"Oh, well when you were growing up every detail of life was controlled and now you love freedom."

I can understand why these things are said, because it certainly looks like it.

But what really happened? You remember my testimony, right?

What was it that made me start reading the Word of God? It was someone telling me that without baptism I could not have truly been saved. So I started reading the bible on baptism. (By the way, I had had enough with being told answers so I did not consult anything except the bible itself.) There are only a handful of verses. Then I noticed that Paul was explaining what did save, which was faith. Good. But I needed to prove to myself that somehow, baptism was not the act which invoked salvation in tandem with faith. I noticed that Paul wanted to say that faith is separate from law. I didn't understand what that whole thing really was about. But I could prove that baptism was a command, so therefore, it must not be part of what saves.

But how could I prove it to someone else, in a way that would be indisputable? I had to make such a clear separation that salvation could not include any requirement for a commandment -- I mean, if I indeed was on the right path. So I began to study law versus faith. I found a whole treasure of passages where Paul makes it very clear that law was something to be discarded. Wow! Now that I know how finite law would be to include in salvation, and how sufficient faith is, I knew that whatever other issue might come along, it must all pass the test of Paul's teaching that salvation was by faith, apart from all law.

That faith could be defined in such a way that it meant works, could not be true.
That law could be defined in such a way to not include every kind of law, ever given, could not be true. In fact, I prove so here.

Everything must pass the test of the principles of grace reigning over any kind of law.

Some people, when they read my conclusion that "the law is inappropriate for Christians," hear chaos.

But that's not what I hear.

When I see the vacancy left by law, I see grace having all the room, the Spirit of God having the freedom to work, and the power and glory all being given to God as He has already set forth to receive in the New Covenant.

And indeed, it is the reason why Paul writes things like:

"But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person..." or for anyone who walks by faith with God. 1 tim 1:8

Oh, so essential to victory!

"But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." rom 7:6

Even our sanctification should be guarded from intrusion of law!

"Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?—just as Abraham 'believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.'" gal 3:5-6

And now, wherever I go in scripture, I see grace, covering over everything when a man gives his trust. I see Abraham justified because God simply made a promise. This is the "promise" by which we are included as described in Romans chapter 4!! God made that promise and Abraham believed it in chapter 15. That was before God said: "I make a covenant with you" in chapter 15, and before God inaugurates it in chapter 16, when the LORD walks in between the carcass broken in two. All these details of the covenant took place after "it was credited to Abraham as righteousness."

Why do I hang with the unlovlies? Why do I speak secondarily of the facts of what Jesus has done?

Because I know that faith has preeminence over all. Where there is faith, there is the power of God. The bible told me so.

Two years after I had made this discovery of Paul's teaching of law versus faith, I looked back over my testimony, my story of being converted, and noticed the grace being woven throughout. I just woke up and saw the beauty in it, one day. And now I talk about it.