Salvation--The
Inviolate Package of Conditions
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Thus,
they teach grace as pardon for continued sinning until glorification, without
grace also as power for obedience of the mortal, sinful-flesh body before
glorification. In short, they teach pardon for sin without sanctification
this side of glorification. It is the "grace as power for
obedience" part of grace that Reformation Adventists added as a
completed package of the grace factor. Did they add to the gospel? Absolutely
not, for the Bible teaches two different definitions of grace: grace as
pardon for sins past (Justification) and grace as power for obedience,
(Sanctification) Rom. 1:5, and Ephesians 2:8-10, with emphasis on verse 10,
because this is the factor left out by those who hold to the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans:
No man
can boast because the good works are done by Christ. He works them in and
through us by His indwelling Spirit, versus our own works of the flesh, which
we are to die to after the new birth experience, when we are dead to the
flesh and alive to the Spirit. This is supported by Scripture later in this
manuscript. For
centuries, Reformation Christians understood grace by one definition--the
unmerited, pardon favor of Jesus Christ. That is all very true. However,
there are other aspects of grace that we should explore: "God
would have us quicken our powers by appropriating his grace and communicating
it. Just in accordance with the GRACE IMPARTED will be the GRACE GIVEN US TO
USE. We must work while the day lasts. Pure doctrines have been lost; and as
the result, error has taken the field where truth alone should be. God's requirements
are lost sight of. All that can possibly be done should be done to dispel the
moral darkness." E.G. White, Review
and Herald, 07-26-98. We see
clearly from the above statement that Grace is imparted and Grace is Given us
to use. God would have us QUICKEN OUR POWERS by appropriating His Grace and
communicating it. If we can quicken our powers by appropriating His Grace, I
believe that this refers to grace as power for obedience, Rom. 1:5. Some
cannot see or discern this device; this gift God has proffered, but that does
not discount or do despite to the gift. "Our
precious Saviour is ours today. In him our hopes of eternal life are
centered. He is the One who presents our petitions to the Father, and
communicates to us the blessing for which we asked. He is the medium of
prayer through which man speaks to God, and the medium through which God
imparts blessing to humanity. He is the Intercessor and the Bestower. Here is the love of God made manifest, 'not
that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.' God has given assurance upon assurance, heaped
gift upon gift, multiplied grace upon grace, and imparted his divine
treasures to humanity, in order that we may believe the love that God hath
for us. Beholding this love, John exclaims, 'Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when
He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."
E.G. White, The Signs of the Times,
06-18-96. Salvation by Grace
is a free gift. It involves the following aspects of Grace:
1. Grace as
power for Hearing God's voice 2.
Grace as power for pardon for sins past 3.
Grace as power for Love tried in the fire of Obedience 4.
Grace as power for Faith or belief tried in the fire of
Obedience 5.
Grace as power for Repentance tried in the fire of Obedience 6.
Grace as power through Opening of the hearts door in surrender
7.
Grace as power for Obedience tested by the fire of trial as
proof of love 8.
Grace as power for overcoming as proof of all the above 9.
Grace as power for spiritual discernment (Eyesalve) 10. Grace as
power for receiving reproof and chastisement, tried in the fire of obedience
(Heb. 12: 5-12; 12:25-29). 11. Grace as
power for Works as proof of fruitage or an abiding relationship with Christ.
If He is in us, His fruit will be worked out by Him in our lives. The fruit,
the works, are His, lest any man should boast, but nevertheless they are
present. Any one
of these ingredients of the gifts of grace without the others is dead, so
total reliance on grace as pardon, to the neglect or rejection of grace as
power for obedience, though both be gifts, is worthless. All these
ingredients fail if any one ingredient is refused. To refuse any one
ingredient is to refuse the gospel. Therefore, Salvation is an inviolate
package of all these conditional ingredients and factors of Grace that are
proffered as a free gift.. They are conditional in
that every aspect of Grace must be embraced or accepted, or chosen, or
yielded to, or surrendered to, in order to comprise a completed robe of
Christ's righteousness as given as a free gift to us by Christ Jesus. What
are some saying to God? "God, I will accept the pardon for sinning part,
the justification for sins past and future, but you can keep the power for
obedience part of grace, because I do not believe your power as received
through your Atonement is sufficient to enable anyone to overcome sin in a
mortal body! Thanks, but no thanks God! All of
the above aspects of grace pardon and power, are the
benefits of the legal act of the Atonement, which Christ administers to all
who will accept the entire package. Any who will not accept the entire
package, will experience the legal act of fiery judgment, so the entire package
is very legalistic oriented in an appropriate, God
sanctioned manner. The
Atonement of Jesus Christ, that provided for these
benefits was a very legalistic act, to satisfy very legalistic requirements
of the law. The legalist is Jesus, who spilled His blood as the testator
of the legal covenant made with the Jews. If this covenant applied to the
Jews only, then the Atonement for violations of this law, and the accompany
benefits, must accrue only to them also! The
legalism is associated also with the power for obedience element, or
sanctification. But that is the wish of Jesus. He is the legalist, offering
these legalistic, conditional benefits as a free gift. Reject any factor of
the free grace gift, and you incur the legalistic wrath of God at the end of
all things. You are then judged as eternally unfit to enter the Kingdom of
God, which is a very legal judgment from the throne of heaven. Again,
God is the legalist, not those who wish to do His legalistic will. So when
the "half-gospel" folk call the "full gospel" folk
legalists, they are right, but their indictment is against God, because He
made his conditional requirements very legalistic. They are free, but with
legalistic implications if accepted, and/or not accepted. Those who will not
accept the entire package are rebels who will incur the negative aspect of
the legal conditions, which is eternal death. Satan is the arch
anti-legalist, by asserting that disobedience to God would not involve any
legalism or death. He said you shall not surely die, but become as gods. But
we know that the results of his theology, of necessity,
involves the legalistic sentence of eternal death. All who
say that grace as power for obedience for the purpose of overcoming sin is
impossible, or unnecessary, are rejecting half of the grace equation or half
of the gospel provision, and are left to teach a half gospel, which is
"another gospel" that should be accursed. Faith in
grace as pardon for sins past, without faith in grace as power to overcome
sin after the new birth experience is to reject half of the available power
of the gospel, and thus constitutes another gospel, that turns ones reliance
on grace as pardon only, into lasciviousness. Grace
equals pardon for sins past and power to overcome sin after the new birth. To
believe and teach that it is impossible for Christ 's
grace power for obedience to produce overcoming or commandment-keeping in and
through one's life, even though it is God's enabling grace power that is
doing the commandment-keeping or overcoming in the life, is to reject one
half of the grace equation made available and efficacious by the life and
death Atonement of Jesus Christ. This is proven by the following verses in
Scripture:
The Surrender or
"Yield" Factor
Some say
sin will reign in our MORTAL BODY until we are glorified. They thus
contradict Romans 6, above. The
Laodicean Message is a good example of these ingredients or conditions. Look
for all of these items as they are inherently stated in that message:
If we buy
something, we agree with it, and we are counseled to buy or agree with
everything in the Laodicean Message. It would be true folly for anyone to
deny that these set of commands are nothing more nor
less than conditions for salvation. They are free, but they must be accepted
into the life. Are they legalistic? Yes indeed! But who is the legalist? Who
is it that requires these conditional legalisms? It is God Himself. Legalism Explored
Every
item in the above Laodicean Message Salvific Package
is a commandment of God. If it is impossible to obey any one of the above
listed commandments, it is impossible to obey any of them. Conversely, if it
is possible to obey any one of them, and it is by the power of God's grace,
it is possible to obey all of them, by the grace power of God given for
obedience, Rom. 1:5. The grace power to do it all comes from God, so it is no
credit to us. Even the willingness to hear is a gift of God, but some crowd
out and refuse even that requisite gift. Along with
the free gift, is proffered the power to live the gift. None of it is
salvation by works of our own, because we could not take the first step
without accepting each step as a gift of God. The Legalism of Only
Believe or The Reliance on Grace as Pardon Only
Even the
reliance on grace as pardon only is a work based on the legality of an
Atonement of Blood Sacrifice made by Jesus Christ. It rests on only a partial
or half benefit of the grace provided by that Atoning Legal Sacrifice, while
it rejects the other half of the benefit of that Atonement--Grace as power
for obedience, Rom. 1:5. Thus despite is done to the Atoning Work and
Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. One accepts half of the Robe or Wedding Garment,
if you will. Half of a Robe, when a complete Robe is proffered. Buying any
one of the grace components of the Laodicean Message, to the expenditure of
any other and all of them, is a partial gospel, a partially fulfilled
legalism that will avail nothing but death. Anything
to do with a direct command of God is legalistic and according to the
Sanctuary Service. Every aspect of Grace is necessarily legalistic, because
everything connected with Grace is provided by the legalistic Act of Jesus
Atoning, or paying the legalistic [legal] price for our sins, which is death.
Just as grace proffered as pardon for sins past is a very legalistic,
forensic act, so grace proffered as power for obedience after the new birth,
is also a very legalistic act. Both are based on the legalistic act of the
Atonement to satisfy the legalistic requirement of the law for us. Every
instruction of the Laodicean Message is a command, and every command is a
legalism, with legalistic judgement if the command is not followed or obeyed. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved is a commandment. It is legalistic
because it is a commandment! It is impossible for anyone to obey any command
of God, without His grace power for obedience to His every command, Rom. 1:5.
Those who say that belief or reliance on grace alone is possible, but that
commandment-keeping and perfection is impossible, are the false legalists,
because they propose that one can obey the injunction to believe and receive
grace, and even refuse part of the grace package, without violating any legal
matter, even the legal judgment of eternal death. They thus violate every
principle and condition of the Laodicean Message. Therefore, they are very
foolish-virgins who will not be saved if they persist in such a
self-defeating, contradicting theological belief system which is nothing more
than Satan's lie being lived out in their life experience. Believing
that one can obey the command to YIELD TO GRACE AS PARDON, but not to GRACE
POWER in regard to the command not to YIELD to the lusts of the mortal body
[Rom. 6:12] by grace power for obedience, rejects a most important half of
the gospel of grace. Any lack of subscribing to all the elements of grace
within the Laodicean Message Package for Salvation, results in a partial
acceptance of the gospel of grace. We are
always being shown Ellen White's supposed errors by these antagonists of
hers, so I do not apologize for presenting what I believe to be a beautiful
and reasonable explanation of what constitutes perfection, according to Ellen
G. White:
Only God
knows the heart. Only God knows our individual PROGRESSIVE STAGES OF
DEVELOPMENT in order to determine and judge whether or not one is perfect at
the stage he/she is at during any given time in the process of progressive
sanctification. Therefore, to even pose the question as to who is perfect or
not, is to usurp a judgmental decision only God is equipped to make, since
only he knows the heart of any individual. Belief is
subject to the same process of being only judicable by God. This is why we do
not pull up tares in the church, because they are defined as insincere
believers, and we cannot know the heart to know whether it is sincere or not,
or to ascertain the degree of sincerity. This is the prerogative of God only.
Open sinning is quite another matter. The Folly of
Arguments Against Perfection
Subtle
and devious lies have been advanced to challenge the concept of perfection.
Here is an example of argument involving subtlety and deviousness in an
effort to disprove the possibility of perfection. Here are some examples of
what the cheap gracers say:
Ellen
White provided good answers to each and everyone
of the above questions, but her accusers, who are our accusers, who are the
accusers of the brethren, will not accept her answers, and they will not
accept ours, you can depend upon it! No more than Satan will! I know
various individuals who have done and/or are still involved in various
aspects of the above acts. Some of them have sold all they possessed, to
travel by bus around the country, witnessing. Some of them have forfeited a
lucrative life career, to devote all their time to warning God's people, like
the prophets of the Bible did. Their office may not be the same as others.
Different individuals are fulfilling different aspects of helping humanity.
But what are the accusers of the brethren doing? Nothing but accusing the
brethren and teaching lies. The part
of some of us is to support those who do the good acts Jesus advocated. Ellen
White said that supporting those who did such was just as important as
personally doing those acts. Just as the disciples of Christ were supported.
Just because certain individuals do not know of individuals who are so
engaged, that does not mean it is not happening. We should pray that God will
lead us to find and support those who are so engaged. Just because everyone
is not doing each and every one of the good acts listed, does not mean he/she
is not deeply involved in doing the express will of God. Abraham
was counted as righteous, but did He do all of the above acts? He was accounted
righteous for obedience to two tests primarily: the willingness to obey God
in offering his son as a burnt sacrifice, and a willingness to separate from
his erring relatives. This
accusing of the brethren is exactly what Satan does. He stands as our accuser
day and night, bringing up all the things we are not doing. Those who stand
by and accuse us of not doing these things, would
not support those who are doing them, because they think works avail nothing!
Satan and
his agents do not know our heart, and he does not know our stage of
development, and whether or not God considers us perfect at that particular
stage. Likewise, no man knows this, so these questions are grossly unfair,
moot, and judgmental. Many are sacrificing much to help others, but they are
not going to brag about it! Neither are they responsible for responding to
the accusations of Satan and his agent accusers of the brethren, by detailing
all they are doing to advance the Kingdom of God. Abraham
was a rich man. Did God require that he sell all and give alms? Evidently,
some erroneously believe that we all are given the same test as the rich
young ruler, because the rich young ruler had a problem with possessions, and
was thus tested on that point. That is totally perverted reasoning. We are
tested according to our peculiar problems. Abraham's problem was his love for
his son Isaac, as proved by what he did in an effort to get a son. God tested
his faith in the fire of obedience, by requiring that he offer up his son as
a burnt offering sacrifice! Abraham passed the test of obedience to God's
command, and thus proved his faith by his work of obedience. This is
what the Laodicean message means when it mentions love and faith tried in the
fire. The fire test involves areas in which we are individually weak. Only
God knows what is the priority to work on in our individual
lives at any given stage of development of perfection. In mercy, He
does not lay the entire burden of all our sins on us at once, that we would
be discouraged and overburdened. He works where He sees fit, while others,
especially Satan and his agents, stand by criticizing us day and night before
the throne of God. They thus propose to know better than God Himself, what
should be the order of priority of overcoming in everyone's individual life.
This is utopian judgmentalism and unjust accusing
of the brethren. God
Bless, Ron
Beaulieu |