For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.
(Ephesians 2:8)
How sad it is to see the church in general throughout the U.S. and Europe abandon real biblical knowledge and the searching of the scriptures in favor of shallow man-centered feel-good religion. This is the wide path and easy to follow, but will lead to destruction. Our heritage of Christian doctrine and knowledge of what the bible teaches has been shoved aside to the point that countless churches and congregations say they are Christian but have a profound disdain for dogmas, creeds or statements of faith which define the doctrines that Scripture declares. Scriptural Doctrine seems to be most uncomfortable to the average churchgoer. Anyone who stands firmly on the doctrines of sovereign grace, for example, is considered to be unloving, narrow-minded, uninformed, bigoted, etc. However, no amount of name calling will remove from Holy Scripture its clear declaration of these great pillars of truth.
How important it is to stand where Scripture stands. Truth is no stranger to the scoffer. Many early followers of the Lord left him because of His declaration of sovereignty, recorded in John chapter 6. Christ turned to the Twelve and said, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” To which Peter replied, “Lord, who will we go to? You have the words of eternal life.”
Don’t turn away from Truth because it offends you. It is by divine grace that we are saved; it is by divine grace that we are given faith to believe; it is by divine grace that Christ is revealed to us in all His saving sufficiency; it is by divine grace that we are kept by the power of God; it will be by divine grace that we enter the portals of heaven. (Eph. 2:8; Matt. 11:27; 1 Pet. 1:5; 1 John 3:2, 1 Pet. 1:5).
Our relationship with the Lord is by GRACE, from conviction to conversion to consummation of our salvation in glory.
“The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.”
— D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones