My mind has been on discipleship a lot lately, after having journeyed through Luke 14. Jesus' call to discipleship is a far cry from the discounted version that is so popular today, where Jesus is offered as fire insurance. A Savior -- but not a Lord. So Tozer's dailly devotional from the weekend was very timely.
Therefore, I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles--the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Savior and we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to!
I think the following is a fair statement of what I was taught in my early Christian experience and it certainly needs a lot of modifying and a great many qualifiers to save us from being in error.
"We are saved by accepting Christ as our Savior; we are sanctified by accepting Christ as our Lord; we may do the first without doing the second!"
The truth is that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred Scriptures. Peter makes it plain that we are "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience" (1 Peter 1:2). I Call It Heresy, 1-2.
1 comment:
Good thoughts.
I was listening to a preacher yesterday from the Mennonite faith. I don't know anything about them so I am trusting what he said. He said the difference between many Christian traditions and the Mennonites is that while many traditions think the call is to "believe" the Mennonites think the call is to "follow in every action." I want to do some follow up but his comment rang true with me - we need to be much more than believers.
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