The Rest of the Old Old Story

I put David Servant’s name in the title because I’d like this post to be found under his name to provide him a little free advertising. I do that because what he provides is good, very good.

I’m not going to tell you what he does because I could never describe anything as well as he can. Incredible writer.

I’m sending you to his mutual fund page because I think it’s so well said. Don’t stop there. Feel free to be a part of what he’s doing. God will reward you.

 He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him his good deed (Prov. 19:17).

David’s daily eteaching–which is way too hard to find if one of you from Heaven’s Family is reading this–is an excellent resource. Today it provided a thought for my blog. I want to disagree with him … just a little bit.

Grace

David’s eteaching says:

Only those who do the will of the Father will enter heaven (Matt. 7:21). Where’s the grace in that, some ask? … God’s grace is not a license to sin, but a temporary opportunity to repent and receive forgiveness.

Actually, grace is the power of God to overcome sin (Rom. 6:14).

The emphasis Protestants put on grace as forgiveness for sins is just crazy. Mercy is the term for forgiveness of sins. Grace has little, if anything, to do with the remission of sins. Grace has to do with overcoming sin!

Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under Law but under grace. (Rom 6:14)

Everything else on grace in the New Testament is the same way. Grace will help you in your time of need (Heb. 6:14). Grace is the power and force behind spiritual gifts (1 Pet. 4:11). In fact, in most cases it is the Greek word charisma that is translated as spiritual gift,  which is a derivation of charis, the Greek word for grace.

In a sense, grace is the spiritual gift of holiness and righteousness.

Grace vs. Works

So why is grace contrasted with works in Rom. 11:6?

If by grace, it is no longer by works. Otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, then it is no longer of grace. Otherwise work is no longer work.

Here Paul is not contrasting working with sinning. He is not contrasting the works of the Law with living lawlessly. I hope it’s readily apparent in every one of Paul’s letters that he has no tolerance whatsoever for the works of the flesh, whether in himself or anyone else. He says in 1 Cor. 9:27 that if he didn’t discipline his body and bring it into subjection, then he’d be disqualified. (A word that he contrasts with being in the faith in 2 Cor. 13:5. It’s bad to be disqualified.)

Even in Romans, Paul is very, very clear that neither grace nor mercy is sufficient if you choose to live in the flesh:

So then, brothers, we are debtors–not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh you will die. But if you put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit, then you will live. (8:12-13)

So again, we have to ask, why is Paul contrasting grace with works?

Because there are two ways to avoid living by the flesh. One  works; one doesn’t.

Work

One way is to work in accordance with God’s will as at is written down.

Paul describes the ineffectiveness of this method in Romans 7. Work hard and fail is what it basically says. You cannot overcome the deeds of the flesh by human will.

The carnal mind is the enemy of God. It is not subject to the Law of God, nor indeed can it be. So then, those that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom. 8:7-8)

Grace

The other way is grace.

In this way, you believe in Jesus Christ–for that is the route to grace (Rom. 5:2)–and you receive grace. As Paul puts it, “The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).

Neat, huh? Here’s another way Paul put it in Romans. I love this verse. This is the ultimate salvation promise verse. It is the answer to Romans 7, and since it’s written in Rom. 8:3-4, it’s clear that Paul meant it to be the answer to Romans 7.

For what the Law could not do, since it is weak through the flesh, God did.

Let’s pause and dwell on that  for a moment, shall we, before we go on with this passage? The Law could not deliver us from our flesh. We cannot simply study the commands of God, whether old or new covenant commands, and go out and do them. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Okay, let’s go on:

By sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

That, my friend, is grace.

Ephesians 2:8-10

One of our favorite and most misinterpreted salvation passages begins in Ephesians 2:8:

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,  which God has prepared beforehand for us to do.

Wow, another great, great passage.

Notice first that it is “by grace” that we are saved. It is “through faith.” That is because faith gives us access to the grace by which we are saved (Rom. 5:2). You can’t be saved without grace. That’s what’s going to deliver you from Romans 7 so that “by the Spirit” you can “put to death the deeds of the body.”

Mercy will take care of those times when you fall, but grace will be what prevents you from falling!

There’s a great passage in First John that mentions both grace and mercy:

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1:9)

The first is mercy. God’s forgiveness is known to us in English as “mercy.” The second is grace. Grace is not mercy. Grace is deliverance from the power of sin.

Here’s another way Paul describes grace:

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. (Titus 2:11-12)

You really can’t miss it. Grace is what saves us, and it does that by delivering us from the power of the flesh that causes us to sin.

Again, I’m not talking about sinless perfection here. John tells us that if we sin we have an advocate with the Father. Christians sin. But there is an “obvious” difference between the children of God, who have grace, and the children of the devil, who don’t.

At least, that’s what John says:

Little children, let no one deceive you. He that practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He that is committing sin is of the devil. … In this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he that does not love his brother. (3:7,8,10)

You probably won’t need a concordance and lexicon to figure out what that passage is saying. Could anything be more clear? It’s stunningly clear, wouldn’t you say?

Grace vs. Works

So that’s grace and works. You’ll never be able to work your way into heaven, and God wants it that way because he doesn’t want you to boast (Eph. 2:9). However, you still have to have works to get to heaven!

There’s so many verses that say that, it seems silly to list them, but here’s some anyway:

• Romans 2:5-8
• 1 Cor. 6:9-11
• 2 Cor. 5:10-11
• Galatians 5:19-21; 6:7-10
• Ephesians 5:3-7
• Philippians 3:17-19;
• Colossians 1:22-23; 3:5-6

Those are Paul’s. You can imagine how many verses we could find in Hebrews, and then there’s the old standard, James 2:24. But how about this one from Peter?

If you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, then conduct yourself throughout the time of your sojourning here in fear. (1 Pet. 1:17)

The question is not whether you can have works. The Bible is very clear over and over and over again, in every book of the New Testament, that you must have works. The question is, how will you get good works?

The answer is: grace.

You can’t work for good works. You will fail (Rom. 7). You need grace. With grace, sin will not have dominion over you.

What is the end of grace?

For by grace are you saved through faith … For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. (Eph. 2:10)

For the grace of God has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us so that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. (Tit. 2:11-14)

And how do we get grace?

… our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. (Rom. 5:1b-2)

Awesome, isn’t it?

This blog started as a comment on one of my other posts, but it kept growing. This post is self-explanatory without seeing the comment I’m responding to, but if you’d like to, it’s on my September 20 post.

The Great Commission

The statement that the great commission was for more than the apostles is made often, in the same way that you just made it … without justification or reference.

It’s simply the doctrine of the Evangelicals. There’s nothing Scriptural about it, though.

As I said, there is nothing in the epistles exhorting the church to evangelism. Nothing at all. The absence is very noticeable when one compares it to modern doctrines.

You add, “the book of Acts evidences what manner of preaching the apostles and the scattered church primarily actively engaged in.” However, there’s nothing in any of those Scriptures about anyone except the apostles preaching. When Acts speaks of the church, it says the church shared their possessions and spent time together and the apostles gave witness to the resurrection.

How Shall They Preach Except …

Stephen and Philip preached, too. Timothy did as well, and Timothy is exhorted to do the work of an evangelist. Remember, to the church, Paul said, “How shall they preach except they be sent?” Some are sent.

We have to stop sending those that God has not sent. Even Paul went nowhere preaching for over a decade before God sent him.

The Word in the Believer

Yes, the scattered believers went everywhere preaching the Word. A believer that has the Word in him cannot help but speak it. The Word is the Word. It is not the Silence. However, the fact is, today we exhort Christians to evangelize, evangelize, evangelize. The Scriptures don’t. It’s really as simple as that.

If Christians were doing what the Scriptures do command, then they’d have something to speak. They would be obedient to the Word, and the Word would grow inside of them. They’d speak automatically. In fact, quite often people would ask them the reason for the hope that is in them, which happens to us quite often.

Fruit

It is the results of the message RCV preaches that I love. I evangelized all the time in the 80′s. There was little fruit, and what fruit there was did not remain except with rare exceptions.

Preachers hold great revivals nowadays. Thousands “come to Christ.” Six months later, church attendance is not one iota different. Thousands of backsliders, not Christians, were created, inoculated against the Gospel.

Or, there’s people who proclaim a less “user friendly” Gospel, as your friend Chesterton put it. Those basically get no results, at least not in the US. That’s because there’s no demonstration of the life of Christ.

Henry Blackaby wrote a book called Experiencing God. He had people going to a college to witness. He basically told them to stop preaching and start following God around. Within a week, an unbeliever had invited one of their members to a Bible study to teach her unbelieving friends the Gospel.

The Navigators call that method “Friendship Evangelism,” and it is remarkably effective because it is close to the method recommended by the Scriptures. It involves believers being together and being in the world but not of it. It was so effective that one believer said, “I don’t like to invite people to our Bible studies because they always get saved there. I don’t get a chance to lead anyone to the Lord.”

The fact is, the reason people were being saved at their Bible studies is because those people were being led to the Lord. The Lord is present wherever two or more are gathered in his name.

The Effectiveness of the Church

When Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus, Jesus himself appeared to Paul. Jesus did not preach to Paul, though. Jesus sent him to the church in Damascus.

As anyone who reads my blogs knows, I have been reading the writings of the 2nd century church for a couple decades now, getting light from them on the writings of the 1st century church (the New Testament).

It’s interesting to note that there are no famous evangelists of the 2nd century. However, the 2nd century church was so effective that by the end of the 2nd century, around A.D. 200, Tertullian could write the emperor (who likely never saw Tertullian’s letter) and tell him that if he banished all the Christians for refusing to participate in war, he would be left with no one to rule over.

That’s an exaggeration, of course, but it does tell you the extent to which Christians had spread by the end of the 2nd century.

How did that happen?

When Justin, who also wrote a letter to the emperor, but fifty years earlier, describes those who have been converted, he mentions just three ways. They …

1. Saw the consistency of their [Christian] neighbors lives
2. They saw the honesty with which Christians transacted business
3. They saw the extraordinary forbearance of Christian travelers when they were defrauded

The testimony of the Church is powerful, just as Jesus said it would be. Our unity and love will convince the world (Jn. 13:34-35; Jn. 17:20-23). Together we create, not a little light, but a light so bright that it cannot be hidden (Matt. 5:13-16).

Thus, Isaiah cries, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”

That’s from Isaiah 60:1. Read what the results of our arising and shining are. Talk about effective evangelism!

Preaching

Preaching is excellent. Preaching is a wonderful thing. As I said above, when a believer is attached to the vine, which means being in the church, which is the many-membered body of Christ, then he will be full of the Word. Wherever he goes the Word will come out of him, whether by speaking or by extraordinary forbearance when defrauded. People will actually ask him for the reason for the hope that is in him.

If you read through Romans 3 and 4 and James 2, you will see that Paul had a much different emphasis than James when it comes to faith and works. This isn’t because James and Paul had a different message. This is because the Christians in Rome needed faith emphasized in order to deliver them from the bondage of the Law. The Christians to which James wrote needed to be delivered from their belief in a false faith detached from works.

There is a time for everything. It would have been inappropriate to send James’ letter to the Christians (there was likely no church yet) in Rome. It would have been inappropriate to send Paul’s letter to those with a false faith that James wrote to.

So, it is wrong to emphasize preaching to evangelicals today. It is time to emphasize the church to the Protestants, who have forgotten it, its authority (1 Tim. 3:15), and its promises of truth (1 Jn. 2:27).

If this blog, and the comments in it, were being written to Mennonites or Amish, then probably an emphasis on evangelism would be a good thing. The fact is, though, that Protestants have created, by their emphasis on evangelism, a false doctrine that gets in the way of Christian growth, divides the saints, causes many to fall away, and prevents far more people from coming to Christ than it brings to Christ.

I debated whether Roman Catholicism was really a topic that fits this blog. I thought some about the name of the blog. It is “The Rest of the Old, Old Story.”

This post definitely fits the blog title because I’m going to spend most of the time giving you the rest of the story left out by the Roman Catholics.

Quote Mining

Today, I was accused of quote mining for my teaching on apostolic succession.  The person accusing me of quote mining was Roman Catholic, of course, since it is a Roman Catholic doctrine I’m refuting on that page.

First, what is quote mining?

Quote mining is pulling quotes out of context to make an author say what he never said. One common example used is that the Bible says that Judas went out and hung himself. It also says, “Go thou and do likewise” and “What you do, do quickly.”

Put together, those verses say that you should hang yourself and do it quickly. Obviously, the Bible teaches no such thing.

Another example of quote mining could be obtained from my last paragraph. Someone could say, “Shammah said, ‘Those verses say that you should hang yourself and do it quickly.’” Obviously, I’ve said no such thing even though that’s an exact quote.

Roman Catholic Quote Mining

It’s funny that a Roman Catholic should accuse me of quote mining because they’re masters at it. The person who accused me of quote mining sent me to a page that he says has passages from the church fathers in context.

Really?

Let’s see. Let’s begin with this quote:

Thereupon Victor, who presided over the church at Rome, immediately attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia, with the churches that agreed with them, as heterodox; and he wrote letters and declared all the brethren there wholly excommunicate.

They quote a little before that sentence in order to explain the topic over which Victor excommunicated all the churches of Asia. The issue was on what day to celebrate Passover. Victor and the church at Rome thought it ought always to be on a Sunday, and the churches in the east were celebrating it on the actual day of Passover.

Victor excommunicated them for it.

Well, there you have it. Look at Victor’s power. He was able to excommunicate all the eastern churches. This was A.D. 195, they say, though it was actually closer to A.D. 170. So there must have been a pope as early as 170, thus refuting Protestant charges that there was no pope in the early church.

But what’s the rest of the old, old story?

But this did not please all the bishops. And they besought him to consider the things of peace, and of neighborly unity and love. Words of theirs are extant, sharply rebuking Victor. Among them was Irenæus, who, sending letters in the name of the brethren in Gaul over whom he presided, maintained that the mystery of the resurrection of the Lord should be observed only on the Lord’s day. He fittingly admonishes Victor that he should not cut off whole churches of God which observed the tradition of an ancient custom.

The Catholic web site didn’t actually give the reference for the passage they cited. I had to go find it. Fortunately, it wasn’t too difficult because I already knew about this passage. It’s in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, book V, ch. 24.

Talk about quote mining! They didn’t mention that the reason Victor wanted to excommunicate them is because he wrote a letter in the name of the church of Rome telling the eastern churches to observe Passover the western way. Polycrates, the bishop of Ephesus–a church that carried the exact same authority as Rome because both were founded by apostles–was upset about this. Rather than just give vent to his anger, he conferred with other bishops in Asia (which would be modern Turkey, not Russia or China or India) and was told it was fine to write Victor back telling him no.

The letter says they had always celebrated Passover on Nisan 14, and they would continue to do so. They were not going to forsake the tradition passed down to them from apostles.

Then, when Victor, who also had to be helped by Irenaeus in order not to slip into some gnostic heresy, couldn’t handle the response and flew off the handle, “bishops” sharply rebuke Victor, and Irenaeus, perhaps the most respected bishop of his day, “fittingly” admonished him.

So you decide for yourself. Did the Roman Catholics give you the whole story? On the matter of the papacy, they never do because there is no evidence whatsoever for a pope in the early church unless you quote mine.

More Quote Mining

Most of the quotes that aren’t ambiguous on the page I linked above are quote mines. Here’s another example:

And he says to him again after the resurrection, ‘Feed my sheep.’ It is on him that he builds the Church, and to him that he entrusts the sheep to feed. And although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single Chair, thus establishing by his own authority the source and hallmark of the (Church’s) oneness. No doubt the others were all that Peter was, but a primacy is given to Peter, and it is (thus) made clear that there is but one flock which is to be fed by all the apostles in common accord. If a man does not hold fast to this oneness of Peter, does he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he still confidence that he is in the Church? This unity firmly should we hold and maintain, especially we bishops, presiding in the Church, in order that we may approve the episcopate itself to be the one and undivided.

They do at least reference this one. It’s from The Unity of the Church, a tract written by the great bishop Cyprian. He was bishop of Carthage in north Africa from 249 to 257.

Cyprian does talk a lot about Peter’s primacy. He’s the first early Christian writer to talk about Peter having the keys of the kingdom and passing them on.

However, do you notice anything missing from that paragraph above? How about a mention of Rome?

Those who read Cyprian know that the key phrase in the passage above is “in order that we may approve the episcopate itself to be the one and undivided.”

That’s translated pretty poorly there. The Ante-Nicene Fathers set has it as “that we may also prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided.”

What does he mean by the episcopate being one and undivided?

Well, the episcopate means all the bishops. Shortly after, he adds, “The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.”

In other words, all the bishops together are one leadership of the Church. They, together, received the keys of the kingdom from Peter. Not the bishop of Rome. Sorry.

Is that really what Cyprian meant? Well, as it turns out, Cyprian actually talked about whether the bishop of Rome had primacy. In fact, he called a council of 87 bishops in 258 to discuss the claims of Stephen, bishop of Rome, who is the first bishop of Rome that we know of to claim he has authority over other bishops.

According to the records of the council, Cyprian opened up the council with a speech in which he said:

For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power,
has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.

Hmm. I wonder why that Catholic web site didn’t quote this?

So now you know … the rest of the old, old story.

A fellow named Daniel Hamilton left me a link on one of his comments. It has videos of the preaching of one B.H. Clendennen.

Excellent preaching. Completely based in the traditions of men.

Listen, my friends, Jesus did not raise up a church that is a building. He did not raise up a church that is a series of meetings, no matter how good the preacher is at those meetings.

He hates your pews!!!

And your revival preaching isn’t much better.

The Church

In the church, leaders can have confidence that every one of the people of God is going to be growing until they enter the grave (Php. 1:6). The grace of God will be coming to them, and they will be blossoming like a branch on a healthy vine.

That is not the product of individual relationships with Christ. A hand is never joined directly to the head.

John 15 is not talking about individual relationships with Christ. It is not talking about revival. It is talking about the Church because today, unlike 2,000 years ago, Christ is a many-membered body (1 Cor. 12:12), not an individual man walking the earth.

In the church, John 15 happens. Branches just grow on their own due to being attached to the vine.

In revival-preaching religions John 15 doesn’t happen. Whether a preacher is preaching regularly or not, lots of members of that organization–I don’t care to call it a church–are not growing. If there is no preacher preaching revival, then almost all of the members will fall away.

Not so in the church. The church is a family of individuals joined to one another by their birth into a heavenly life, mediated by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God unites them as though they were one body, and they live one life together.

They care for one another. There are no “visiting” members. Their members have given up their own lives to be a part of this one new life which is the church of God.

In that place, where no one calls anything their own, but they have all things in common (Acts 4:32; but by this I do not mean enforced communism, but a lack of care about possessions and a great care about one another)–in that place, there is “great grace” (Acts 4:33).

In that place, life flows to the branches whether there is revival preaching or not. Let there be a B.H. Clendennen, a Leonard Ravenhill, an Evan Roberts … or let there not be. Because life flows from Christ into the body, the blood circulates through it, and the members are so joined that if you pinch one another will cry ouch–because of this, each member grows.

Oh, yes, there are exceptions, but look how Christ described those exceptions:

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. (Jn. 15:2)

Why is such a branch taken away? Because it is that branch’s fault that it is not bearing fruit. Grace and life always flow to every member of the church–where there is a church as I’ve described it. If a branch is not bearing fruit, it is because that branch is resisting the grace of God.

I do not speak here from Bible interpretation but from real experience. In the church there is a power that is unknown to the preachers of revival. It is unknown to the attenders of Christian clubs. It is unknown to denominational Christians clinging to brilliantly-devised doctrines.

What I’ve described here I’ve seen happen, repeatedly, and now it is my ongoing experience at Rose Creek Village.

So, listen to Mr. Clendennen’s preaching. It’s inspiring. Be inspired.

If, however, you wish to continue in the faith, join yourself to the body of Christ. Repent of your denomination and your pew-sitting. Find a brother and act like he’s a brother. Find a sister and act like she’s a sister. Promise one another that you are bound for life, that you will never make a decision alone again, but that you will together seek the wisdom that is present where two or more are gathered in his name.

Obtain the learning that is promised only to the local church, the pillar and support of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), the anointing given to a plural you (1 Jn. 2:19,27). This alone will provide for the saints a revival, a life, that will cause them–across the board–to continue to the end.

Except the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus make a man sick of his opinions, he may hold them to doomsday for me; for no opinion, I repeat is Christianity, and no preaching of any plan of salvation is the preaching of the glorious gospel of the living God.

– George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, and III, p. 391

To remind people that Jesus Christ is real and that he himself can save has been a priority of my speaking about Christ for many years.

Recently my father in the faith, Noah Taylor, used the phrase, “Salvation is not a plan, it’s a man,” in a men’s meeting. The words captivated me.

I decided I wanted to write a booklet on those words, when, lo and behold!, I found out that George MacDonald already had! Over a century ago!

I don’t want to share the whole thing with you; just a few excerpts. These are from The Truth in Jesus:

When you say that to be saved a man must hold this or that, then you are forsaking the living God and his will and putting trust in some notion about him or his will. To make my meaning clearer: Some of you say that we must trust in the finished work of Christ. Or you say that our faith must be in the merits of Christ–in the atonement he has made–in the blood he has shed.

All these statements are a simple repudiation of the living Lord in whom we are told to believe. … No manner or amount of belief about him is the faith of the New Testament. (emphasis in original)

It goes without saying that I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Look around. Christians know that “trusting in the finished work of Christ” and “trusting in the merits of Christ” doesn’t work. We’re always looking for a better way to say it. We tell people they have to “really” believe. We tell them they have to “actually trust, not just give intellectual assent.” We give them illustrations about sitting in a chair or getting in the tightrope walkers wheelbarrow.

It does no good. Jesus doesn’t have a wheelbarrow, and no one can see the chair. “Really” believing doesn’t produce any better results than mere intellectual assent, and as soon as we remove works we remove the ability to tell the difference.

The Problem’s the Gospel You Preach

Some of you will be offended by being told the problem is in the Gospel you preach. Others of you will be thrilled. You’re tired of leading people to the Lord, then watching them show no interest in God or church. If anything, they’re frightened to see you again.

The problem’s the Gospel you preach.

Jesus shed his blood for our atonement and for the forgiveness of  our sins. That’s the true doctrine of the atonement.

It is not the Gospel.

The Gospel is to believe in Christ, not in the doctrine of the atonement.

If you read the letters to the churches you will find the doctrine of the atonement discussed regularly. It provokes us to obedience, awe, and praise to know that the precious blood of the Lamb of God was shed for our salvation.

If you read the book of Acts, you will find that the doctrine of the atonement is NEVER discussed with sinners. It is NEVER preached to the lost.

Because it’s not the Gospel.

The Gospel

I’m going to let George MacDonald finish this blog entry out. Again, all of this is from The Truth in Jesus.

It is the one terrible heresy of the church that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ.

Do you ask, “What is faith in him?”
I answer, the leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of his and him. It is the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as he tells you. (emphasis in original)

While the mind is occupied in enquiring, “Do I believe or feel this thing right?” the true question is forgotton: “Have I left all to follow him?”
To the man who gives himself to the living Lord, every belief will necessarily come aright. The Lord himself will see that his disciple believe aright concerning him.

Sorry, I lied. I’ll let the writer of Hebrews have the final word:

 [Jesus] became the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him. (5:9, emphasis mine)