I'm a friend to some, a husband to the best wife ever and daddy to the greatest daughter in the world. I'm not endowed with any special revelations or new and exciting ways to think about God. The old story about Him is still the best story there is!
I’ve been through traditional religion with all of the rituals and ceremonies, designed to give us an answer for our sins. It told me contradicting stories of Jesus dying for my sins, yet at the same time, asked me to confess and pay for the same sins through action. From the futility of a dead religion, I went to agnosticism and then atheism as religion offered no reason to believe that there was a God. It was a system that said one thing, yet believed another thing.
Then I met Jesus through the message of God’s Grace. It was the message that declared that my sin and death were destroyed by Jesus on the Cross two thousand years ago. I could not add to it. I could not take away from it. I no longer had to bear the guilt, condemnation or weight of sin as I did as a kid.
I went on to help build a church based on that message, only to realize some years later that what I was helping to build, was nothing more than a miniature version of the dead religion that I grew up in. I found myself asking people who were already free in Christ, to confess their sins and repent, so that they could be "free" again and again, over and over. I was asking of them exactly what dead religion asked of me; and I also began doing it to myself. I watched many people who came to know Jesus and find freedom, place themselves back into the bondage of religion, because of what we were being taught.
I then studied God's Word for myself and through seminary courses and lectures, no longer bound within the confines of the church of which I was a part. My eyes were (re) opened to the truth; there is only one Gospel: The finished work of Jesus. In Him we are complete, nothing added, nothing removed.
Friend, Jesus has not changed. His sacrifice has not changed. His Grace has not dwindled. His words, “It is finished” echo just as loudly today as they did on that day. Our freedom is found in Him alone, and nothing else. This is the freedom in which we were made to live.
I’ve been through traditional religion with all of the rituals and ceremonies, designed to give us an answer for our sins. It told me contradicting stories of Jesus dying for my sins, yet at the same time, asked me to confess and pay for the same sins through action. From the futility of a dead religion, I went to agnosticism and then atheism as religion offered no reason to believe that there was a God. It was a system that said one thing, yet believed another thing.
Then I met Jesus through the message of God’s Grace. It was the message that declared that my sin and death were destroyed by Jesus on the Cross two thousand years ago. I could not add to it. I could not take away from it. I no longer had to bear the guilt, condemnation or weight of sin as I did as a kid.
I went on to help build a church based on that message, only to realize some years later that what I was helping to build, was nothing more than a miniature version of the dead religion that I grew up in. I found myself asking people who were already free in Christ, to confess their sins and repent, so that they could be "free" again and again, over and over. I was asking of them exactly what dead religion asked of me; and I also began doing it to myself. I watched many people who came to know Jesus and find freedom, place themselves back into the bondage of religion, because of what we were being taught.
I then studied God's Word for myself and through seminary courses and lectures, no longer bound within the confines of the church of which I was a part. My eyes were (re) opened to the truth; there is only one Gospel: The finished work of Jesus. In Him we are complete, nothing added, nothing removed.
Friend, Jesus has not changed. His sacrifice has not changed. His Grace has not dwindled. His words, “It is finished” echo just as loudly today as they did on that day. Our freedom is found in Him alone, and nothing else. This is the freedom in which we were made to live.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
~ Galatians 5:1