Rightly Dividing - Part 1

Jude 1:1-4 “To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Reading a Blog post from fellow ministry writer and friend Pastor Gregg Metcalf on the subject of Religion @ http://www.gospeldrivendisciples.blogspot.com/, it came to mind how biblical terms have been hijacked by the world system that is contrary to God’s sovereign rule and order, to twist and bend the meaning of words (like religion, spirituality, and Christian) to distort and deceive; to state that what is wrong in the eyes of the Lord is right, and vice versa, in an attempt to psychologically escape the consequence of unbelief. Not only does such practices affect the things that we do, but also, the way that we think, our relationship with our Lord God, and harms others. Pastor Gregg is right in saying that we need to seek, learn, & know the holy scriptures that we may rightly divide the word of truth and live out these biblical terms daily, as intended by the Lord; not being deceived, but standing firm in the true faith of God’s truth. The term Religion, for example, in the public square has taken on a humanistic definition today that attempts to find common ground between all World Religions, where the Word of God tells "Followers of Christ" to be holy, meaning "set apart" from sin & unbelief . The unregenerate soul, whose Spirit is dead in sin, is spiritually blind and does not understand the gospel. Christians are “In the world, but not of the world”, as a disciple of Christ, A child of God, a citizen of Heaven, Ambassadors from the Kingdom of God to minister in this lost and dying world. To be a light on the hill for all to see in the darkness of unbelief and ignorance of the truth, pointing the way to the only Savior of the world, Jesus Christ in love and compassion. Christianity is the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus - Romans 3:21-24. The entire world, all of mankind, has sinned and continues to sin against the “just & righteous” Creator God of the Universe. But God’s love found a way to settle the debt, forgive the sin and redeem us.

John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

In Christ, Brian