Acts 13:12 “When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord”.
The proconsul believed for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. The Gospel is amazing stuff. The Gospel of grace is foreign to our thinking. Only the Gospel of free, electing, grace gives all the glory to God. There are those who distort the Gospel of grace into an excuse to live licentiously. But the far, far greater distortion of the Gospel is that people add to the free grace of God. They think they are saved because of some contribution they make. Whether it is pre-existing faith in their hearts, a belief that good works contributes to work that God does, or that God has done all He can do and now the rest is up to us, they all amount to saying the same thing – that we are not saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The human heart is an idol factory and the biggest idol is “look at me” and this is what the enemy of our souls wants us to believe. Real grace, really embraced will always, without fail, produce holiness of living. It is time for otherwise sound believers to stop implying that we keep ourselves from falling away through our obedience unaided by grace. We keep ourselves through obedience because of the continuing grace of God at work in our hearts and that grace inevitably bears holiness. . We keep ourselves because He who called us is faithful and He will do it (I Thessalonians 5:23-24). And we keep ourselves because He who began the work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:3-6) And that work began a very long time ago (Ephesians 1:3-5).
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