Galatians 3:1-3, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”
I intentionally picked this offensive title, because it helps make my point. If you are saved and understand the Scriptures, then you fully know that the title of this blog is heretical. No, you do not have to keep God's Ten Commandments to get to Heaven! But that is exactly what all these people are saying today, who preach that to be saved you must: “repent and turn away from your sin” or “be willing to turn away from your sin.” They are requiring you to keep the law, or be willing to keep the law, to be saved. That is of the Devil.
Some false teachers like Jack Chick and Joyce Meyer, falsely preach that to be born-again you must first BE WILLING TO TURN AWAY FROM YOUR SINNING. Yet, not one verse in the inspired King James Bible says anything about being willing to turn away from your sin to be saved. Jack Chick is a liar! Joyce Meyer is a liar! Proverbs 30:5-6, “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” We've got a bunch of liars like Steve Pettit, Marty Herron, Jeff Redlin, Timothy Zacharias, John MacArthur, Sam Horn, Chuck Phelps and Ray Comfort, going around telling people that to get to Heaven they either must turn away from their sin, be willing to turn away from their sin, or that their behavior will change if they get saved. NONE of what they say is truth!
Today's apostate churches are in agreement with the cults of Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism, Church of Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholicism—who all errantly teach that you must repent and turn away from your sin to get to Heaven! Yet, nowhere do we find such nonsense in the Holy Bible. Effectively what they are all preaching is that you must keep God's law to get to Heaven. If you must turn away from your lifestyle of sinning to be saved, then effectively you must KEEP THE LAW to be saved. That is not the Gospel.
What saith the Scripture? Romans 3:19-21, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 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. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;” The purpose for which God gave humanity the law through Moses, was to give men THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN. That is, the law shows men that we are guilty sinners in need of redemption, and then the law brings us to Christ to be saved by Gods grace through faith:
Galatians 3:24-26, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”
The purpose of the Old Testament law (which centers around the Ten Commandments) is to show mankind our SINNERSHIP. God never intended for men to keep the law to get to Heaven. Men are sinners! Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Our best is filth to God. Salvation is not doing your best, it is having Christ's best put to your account through receiving Him by faith. Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, it is a gift for the guilty! Faith is the only righteous thing that I can do.
So when someone tells you that you must turn away from your sin with all your heart to be saved, tell them to go away. GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN!!! That is what the Apostle Paul meant:
Galatians 3:1-3, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”
Paul asked them point blank: How did you become indwelt with the Holy Spirit? That is, how did you get saved? Was it by KEEPING THE LAW (i.e., the Ten Commandments), or was it by THE HEARING OF FAITH? A person gets saved by placing their faith in the Good News of Jesus Christ crucified, buried and risen when they hear it preached. It is that easy, free and simple to be born-again. But the Galatian churches had succumbed to a subtle religious cult, which had infiltrated and infected them with Lordship Salvation (i.e., the deadly false doctrine which says faith is not enough to be saved, but in addition, you must also turn away from your willful sinning, and surrender your life to follow Jesus as your absolute “Lord”). The latter is a works-based counterfeit plan of salvation, and not the free grace gift of God by faith alone.
The Apostle Paul marvelled that they had started out believing right, but then went astray into some type of cult which requires doing good works to prove that one's faith is genuine...
Galatians 3:3, “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”
That is the same cult as Bob Jones University and company today, who go around teaching people that they must prove the reality of the genuineness of their faith, BY DOING GOOD WORKS. If you don't live above sin and faithfully do good works—Chuck Phelps, Steve Pettit, Gary Walton, Sam Horn, John MacArthur and Marty Herron—all lie and say you never repented, so you're not really saved. No, the Bob Jones camp are not really saved!!!
The Satanic Calvinist crowd today, which sadly includes the Bob Jones University camp, insist that you cannot go to Heaven unless you faithfully live the Christian life. If you doubt what I say, please read what the demonic president of BJU, Dr. Steve Pettit, preached to 2,700 faculty and students in January of 2015 at BJU chapel. Dr. Pettit is an unsaved infidel. When asked what he must do to be saved, Paul and Silas simply told the Roman soldier to “BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST” (Acts 16:30-31). Nothing more was required or allowed. Yet, Jack Chick has a DIFFERENT answer than the Bible to the question: What Must A Do To Be Saved?
REPENT! SURRENDER YOUR LIFE TO CHRIST???
What? That is NOT what the Bible says in Acts 16:30-31! The Bible says to BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!!! Jack Chick is a dirty liar, who changed and perverted the inspired Word of God. Why did Jack Chick corrupt the Gospel? Who is Mr. Chick to alter God's simple plan of salvation? It is wickedness. In fact, you DON'T have to repent “of your sin,” nor do you have to “surrender your life to Christ” to get to Heaven. Jack Chick is guilty of preaching both of these damnable heresies. No one can receive the new birth on this false premise. The only way of salvation is through faith ALONE in the Good News of Christ crucified, buried and risen the third day (1st Corinthians 15:1-4). Nothing else may be added or subtracted from it.
If to “repent” means to forsake our sinful ways TO BE SAVED, but Jesus already paid for our sins by dying on the cross, then what are we repenting from? Clearly, these false teachers today are woefully ignorant of the Word of God (2nd Peter 3:16-17). The true Gospel always points you to CHRIST, a false gospel always points to YOU. In fact, you don't need to turn away from sin to be saved. Who can forsake their sins? That's right, NO ONE!
Even the best Christian still sins every moment of every day. We are sinning even when we don't pray for others as we ought (1st Samuel 12:23). The only difference between the most honorable godly saint, and the vilest contemptible criminal upon the earth today, is the precious blood of Jesus that washed all our sins away (1st John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; 1st Peter 1:18-19). In other words, the only righteousness that I have as a believer is GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS, which was imputed to me by faith the moment I got saved as a 13 year old boy in 1980. Philippians 3:9, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:”
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