Written by Pastor Mark Driskill
December 16, 2011

Read Ephesians 5:5

“…has no inheritance in the kingdom…”

Here we see a stark reminder that salvation by grace does not diminish the believers responsibility to obey God’s commands. There seems to be a mood in the air against “religion” in favor of spirituality. At first it was a good thing. We began to seek something deeper in Christ than the religious traditions and doctrines of men. We began to see that having a faith relationship with Christ is more necessary than fulfilling the religious traditions of people.

Unfortunately this trend has gone far beyond its intention. In our desire to choose grace and faith over religious dogma we have overshot the backboard and begun to reject any and all rules and commands, in favor of some universalistic, standardless spiritual goop. We are seeing a gospel emerge which calls us to a master who looks more like Barney the dinosaur than the messiah from Nazareth. He just wants to affirm us and love on us and tell us we are all winners. Everything we do is just “super dee dooper” with our remixed messiah.  We can cohabitate, use drugs, worship money and pleasure all we want because we think we are living free from legalism.

The fact is we are enslaved to our passions instead and living a delusion that our salvation is real even though nothing has changed. But here in Paul’s letter we are reminded that even though we are saved by Grace, and not of ourselves there remains an expectation that we obey God’s commands. Jesus tells us that we prove our love for him by obeying his commands (John 15:9-14). He also warns that you can spend your whole life calling Jesus Lord and still miss heaven because you ignore his teachings (Matthew 7:21-17).

Paul is the “Apostle of Grace,” but even he warns us that those who remain in sin have no inheritance in the kingdom. You see the gospel calls us to more than a belief system and even to a relationship, it calls us to surrender and to a changed lifestyle. We are called to be new creatures in Christ who no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:15-17).  One preacher said years ago, “Salvation carries with it the expectation of transformation.”  The true recipient of God’s grace is the one who is living by faith and putting to death the old life of sin.  Does that describe your Christianity?

Pastor Mark Driskill
Web Minister of Begotten By the Word web ministry
See our website at http://ourchurch.com/member/b/bbtw
and
www.facebook.com (to group “begotten by the word”)
Begotten By the Word is a ministry of Helping Hands Christian resources-Evangelism Outreach
www.hhcr05.org
(Feel free to copy in any way that will bring glory to God and further his kingdom.)