Listening to grace preachers has made me realise that they are leaving their sheep in Adam under a covering they call grace. They talk about God giving us grace that covers all our sin and shame and our past. The congregations sing these same ideas in worshipful ways to further embed the message of grace. Here is the song I heard by a dear brother- Israel Houghton.
Beautiful grace
Oh oh ohh
Grace beautiful [2x]
At the cross love everlasting
Grace powerful grace [2x]
At the cross
All of my past is covered
Covered…covered
Covered by your grace oh oh ohhhh
Covered..covered
Covered by your grace
No matter what I’ve done
No matter where I’ve been
No matter how I fall
You pick me up again
You have removed my shame
You take me as I am
You call me justified
Now I am covered by your grace
This is the Christian message…justified by faith, forgiven all our sins. Grace! Wonderful Grace! This is the message I heard when I first came to Jesus in April 1989…FORGIVEN ALL MY SINS…thanks be to God for Jesus sacrifice.
BUT!!!
God has not forgiven Adam but put Adam to death.
God has not brought that old you that sinned through the cross now with a covering over him…NO!! God NAILED YOU TO THE CROSS WITH CHRIST…you died and were buried with Him…NEVER TO RISE AGAIN!!
God did not remove your shame caused by sin as if it was some thing that you carried around…and now you do not have it any more. No!!
The shame and sin was your nature! It was who you were because of Adam’s line. God put you to death–you that were filled with shame and animosity towards God. He buried you in a tomb….
You are a new creation. That means brand new, never before seen or known–NEW!! You are not restored. God has not restored Adam, but killed him! You are Justified by faith ONLY because Christ Jesus is your new life…your new inner partner.
Before you were drawn to Jesus(no man can come to Him unless the Father draws him) you were by nature a child of wrath. You were an enemy of God …an enemy of love…an enemy of light and truth. God did not simply forgive as if He just covers all that we did….No…God went further than that. He needed to! Adam can never please God, there had to be a new man created in God’s likeness.
Paul tells us to put on the Lord Jesus as our new nature. He tells us that we are one spirit with Him. He tells us we live by the faith of another…even by Jesus who loved us and traded his self for our self. We are not simply that old man with our shame and sin covered over by some thing called Grace. We are a completely new person created in Christ Jesus for good works. This new person that we are is so far removed from the sins our old man did and from the shame and guilt we once carried.
As far as the east is from the west so has He removed our sins from us.
They are not covered—THEY ARE REMOVED!!!! Even David understood that.
The old covenant could only cover sin. The new covenant removed it!
You are as He is in this world. You are clean…purged of all sin.
Christ Jesus is your new nature–your only nature. God has circumcised your heart so that the old nature has been cut off completely and discarded as the worthless thing that it was. That old man–Adam–can never…NEVER….NEVER PLEASE GOD….EVEN IF YOU FORGIVE him and cover him in nice religious smiles….He is a sham and a pretender.
God had something better in mind. He sent Jesus to be your only life….the very life of Jesus in your heart is the power of God…the forgiveness of God…the grace of God….the justification and sanctification of God… the everything of God!!
Religion…even Pentecostal/Charismatic religion is dressing Adam up in something called grace…imagining that God has forgiven Adam so that Adam can now live his life for God trying with all his might to please Him. This is NOT what God is after at all.
You died…you were crucified with Christ
Seek those things that are above where Christ is
Sitting at the right hand of God.
Where is that? It is in your heart. The throne of the Father is IN YOUR HEART!!! Jesus and you and Father seated in heavenly places is you in union with Father and son inside your very human heart.
Your life is hid with Christ in God
What does hid with Christ in God mean?
You are one spirit…not two…for the two He says have become one!! Go and get two half full glasses of water and pour one into the other. Can you see where the water from the first glass is now that they are one water? No you cannot can you? Jesus has cleansed you by that one sacrifice for sins forever…and he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. You are one spirit with Him…your life is hid with Christ like that water. And it is all happening in Father. Hid with(as one)Jesus in God(Father).
This is just as Jesus said when He said “In that day you will know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you.” Jn 14:20
You are not Adam dressed up and forgiven. YOU ARE CHRIST JESUS AND YOU AS ONE PERSON–JUST AS JESUS IS–SO ARE YOU!!
God never gave you a thing called grace…..and He never will. He gave you His son Jesus to be your only life. He who has the son has life.
