So there you are, interested in eternity at last, rather than being totally consumed with success and everything working out right in this world. But eternity looms before you like an impenetrable castle on the hill. How does a frail, physical human get through walls that thick, ramparts that high, and gates that [...]
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The key to our eternity is gaining access to God’s grace, because it’s only by his grace that our eternity is guaranteed (Romans 4:16). How does one get access to God’s grace, then? How do we break the lock?
Religion says we break it by our obedience to a complicated set of [...]
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There’s that moment of hesitation and then triumph when a safecracker gets the combination right and the safe door swings open to reveal the contents. There’s so much disappointment when it comes to cracking God’s safe, however. People try all kinds of combinations, think they’ve got it, pull on the handle but the [...]
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God stands on the other side of a great abyss, a huge chasm between himself and us. He stands there holding an incredible gift for us, the best we could ever wish for. He then has to watch us trying to leap across the chasm to get it. It’s a pathetic sight, as [...]
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The staggering thing about being rewarded according to our works, is that we’re rewarded for believing Jesus did all our works for us! It’s in Romans 4:24-25. God raised Jesus for our justification, and when we believe that, that’s when the righteousness we need for our eternal reward is credited to us.
All [...]
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It still stands that we are rewarded according to our works but, Romans 4:13, “It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”
God promised Abraham he would inherit the world. That [...]
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God deals a crushing blow to the pride and hypocrisy that plagues all religions in Romans 3:21 - ”But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.”
That’s great news because it does away with all the rules, rituals and religious [...]
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The gospel was never about God rewarding us according to our works, or God giving us eternal life based on our efforts and obedience, because we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). It’s still true, though, that eternal life depends on good works (Romans 2:6-7). No good [...]
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In Romans 2:7 God gives us eternal life for our “persistence in doing good.” Do good, obey God, live a good life and do things right, and eternal life is ours. Or is it? Because Paul then tells us in Romans 3:12 that ”there is no one who does good,” and in verse 23 that we all [...]
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Rewarded according to our works is what drives religion, the idea being that our own human effort gains us a reward in the afterlife. And the more effort expended, the bigger the reward we’ve got coming to us. Or the more one denies oneself now, the more pleasure awaits us later. Or the [...]
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