Being Right With God Must Precede Doing Right For God.

“Forgiveness for our sins through faith in Christ must precede and then empower our battle against sin in our lives. Or to put it another way, God’s declaration that we are forgiven and righteous in Christ must precede and enable our transformation into loving, sacrificial, Christ-exalting people. The divine declaration must precede the human transformation. Or to put it one more way: Justification must precede and uphold sanctification. Being right with God must precede doing right for God.“




















“The Difference This Makes 
It’s the difference between fighting fearfully to get justified and fighting confidently because we are justified.
It’s the difference between your heavenly court-trial being behind you with an irrevocable verdict of not guilty, and your trial being in front of you with the verdict up in the air depending on your performance.
It’s the difference between the freedom of confidence and the bondage of fear.
It’s the difference between giving Christ the double glory of both being our righteousness as well as working righteousness in us, and giving him only the single glory of helping us become our own righteousness.”
Set Free by the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus
October 07, 2001 by John Piper
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4
Topic: Sanctification & Growth

Gospel is a Call to Discipleship – Call to Faith and Obedience

 
“The message Jesus proclaimed was a call to discipleship – not to faith alone but to faith and obedience. Jesus gave a solemn warning: “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mathews 7:21). Obedience is the evidence of the reality of our repentance and faith. Our obedience does not achieve salvation, but it is the evidence of it.
Present-day preaching finds little place for repentance, yet without repentance there can be no regeneration. Many have been encouraged to believe that because they have come forward to an appeal or signed a decision card, or prayed to receive Christ, they are saved-whether or not there is any subsequent change in their lives.

It needs to be reiterated that “saving faith is more than just understanding the facts (of the gospel) and mentally acquiescing. It is inseparable from repentance, submission, and a supernatural eagerness to obey. The biblical concept of saving faith includes all these elements.”
It is sad but true that whenever the way of the cross and its implications are preached, superficial believers, whose conversion experience have been shallow , fall away. “
J. Oswald Sanders “Spiritual Discipleship – Principles of following Christ for every believer” page 21-22
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