Accused of heresy!

I’m now convinced more than ever that Grace comes by revelation.

No matter how many certificates you’ve got, or how many books you read, if God doesn’t reveal His truth to you, you miss it.

God has set me free, yet recently a pastor tried to put the chains back on and accused me of heresy! – because I said I was as righteous as Christ and no sin of mine could change that.

How can we be –

a) fully righteous in Christ through God’s gift

and

b) not as righteous as Christ, but ‘working towards being as righteous as Christ by striving and ‘good works’ ?

Um, what does ‘Not of yourselves, it is the gift of God’ mean?

Thank God there are many Grace preachers and teachers who do grasp the amazing wonder of Grace throughout the world.

I wish there was a Grace church in Phnom Penh.

I am fully righteous in Christ. He has dressed me in a robe of His righteousness. No man or men’s words can rob me of my robe.

I told the pastor I was living a ‘righteous’ life – free from sin – and he insisted I wasn’t !

When I quoted 1 John 3:9: ‘No one who is born of God continues to sin…they are not able to sin because they have been born of God’ – he had no answer.

He invited me to hear him preach on our double righteousness – we are righteous but we are not.

Really? I’m going to go to a church which wants to steal from me the precious and amazing new freedom I’ve found in Christ? The revelation God has given me about his amazing and wonderful grace – that I am free forever – that he will never ever count my sins against me ever again? That nothing I can do can subtract from the righteousness I have in Him?! That no amount of striving or good work can add to the glorious garments of salvation he has dressed me in, the beauty and majesty He has draped me in? A robe of His righteousness, as Isaiah says. 

How do these teachers with their PHD’s and masters in theology think we can add to the righteousness we have in Christ, or indeed take anything away from it?

How can our good works add anything to Christ’s blood ? As if any small successes we achieve in our efforts towards living a righteous life have anything to add to the purity we have in Christ.

I think the Clarkes bible commentary have it right when they say:

We persevere in the purity we already have in Him.

I also like what Jim McNeely says:

“I’m not surfing porn or committing adultery but I am yet a sinner in need of the covering of His precious blood. And if, God forbid, I do any of these horrible things in the future, I am assured that I have a basis for forgiveness and cleansing and repentance, because it is Christ who saves me by His blood, and not my deeds by my own flesh which saves me. It is the blood of Christ plus NOTHING which secures my eternity. From the bottom of my heart I do not want to do any of these sins, but I don’t trust myself. I trust Christ. In saying I trust Christ it isn’t an underhanded way of saying I trust Christ to control me like a mindless puppet to never sin. It means He has given me freedom and in that freedom I long to avoid sin but He has forever accepted me and forgiven me no matter what happens.”

Amen!

Freedom!

The blood of Christ plus nothing.