For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. or if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Romans 5:7-11
Hello Friends. If you have not read this post from a couple of days ago, I am truly sorry but I inadvertently deleted it today and do not have another copy of it. I am going to share with you some things that I did learn from this passage, but it may change some because I don't have the original one to look at.
And so this means that nowhere in this passage does it say that we have to make ourselves ready to go to heaven once we believe that Christ came to die on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose again to go to his Father and sits with God on His right hand.
I did not have to stop wearing my glasses or be healed of the eye disease, or whatever else they taught we should be doing. I was not committing a sin by wearing them.
If we believe this and accept His gift of eternal life, that in itself, is all we need to do to be with Jesus when we take our last breath on earth.
I had been taught that in other churches throughout my life. And I believed it.
But why was I questioning it now?
It was because I was allowing myself to be in a church whose teachings were off that grid of the bible to a degree.
To be truthful, however, that meant that they did believe in salvation, in Jesus' death on the cross, etc. However, their teachings went much further. They didn't celebrate birthdays or holidays of any kind. They believed in no doctors or taking medicines. That sort of thing. And they tried using the bible for backing those things up. People would ask me if we were Jehovah's Witness and no we weren't. But I couldn't blame them for asking.
Paul tells us to not be tossed about every wind of doctrine in Ephesians 4:14, and it seems that is what the teaching was in this church. You had to do what they did, believe what they did, talk and act like they did, or they call you out on it.
When I hadn't completely sold out to them after a time when they thought I should have, they did just that. And made me feel like I wasn't going to heaven when I died and that was scary.
And yet, in this passage in Romans, it was not what I did or didn't do that seals my way to heaven. It is only by His blood that was spilled on the cross for me long before I would ever arrive here.
In heaven, and standing at his throne, He is not going to ask me why I wore my glasses and didn't stay in that church. That fact is and was irrelevant. It is only my belief and acceptance of him, that will matter.
We need to align ourselves with a bible teaching church that teaches the truth. Now that isn't to say that, even a good bible church can't be wrong at times in some things. Because we are human, people do make mistakes. Even bible theologians don't always agree on everything. And God reveals to us only what he wants us to know and it is not always clear. So we do the best we can.
But it is tragic to use teachings to cause fear in someone that really felt like I was alone in their church because at the time, my home life was so bad and I really wanted God to work within it. No one came to me from the church to speak with me about my "sin" and if they wanted to get real with it, the bible does have things to say about how you go about doing that when someone is sinning and yet they did not.
One thing that did come out of all of this though, was to be in a church where I knew what I believed what was being taught, as much as possible, and not where people didn't let a Christian grow at their own pace and instead judged them for what they weren't doing right in someone else's eyes.
The important thing we must believe in where we get to spend eternity has nothing more to do with the fact that we have to believe and accept Jesus and what he did for us.
Nothing more and nothing less!
🧡🧡🧡
Well, Friends, this is a bit different than what I had originally posted the other day, but it could have all been put together to make a longer post. And so I will conclude here.
And I will not be posting a new one today. Things around my home have been quite busy this week, and so I plan to be back tomorrow with the next one. I pray for your understanding and thank you for your support of this site. God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment