One apostle, Peter, writes of another apostle, Paul: "As also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction."
Going by the date of the writing of II Peter, We can be certain that Peter had read all of Paul's epistles. (Surely the apostles were in touch with each other as they carried out the Great Commission.) The letters of Paul contain truths that we've been studying for 2,000 years, as all of the epistles, Peter's included.
A SKYPE QUESTION
A group of us were involved in a Skype session. ("What will they think of next?" said the pioneer woman in 'Shane' as she examined a can of fruit in the general store.) One of the participants told a story and posed a question for us.
TURN YOUR RADIO ON
He said he was listening to the radio and on the station was a preacher who was speaking about God's absolutely free gift of salvation, "Yes, it was totally free," the man said. When he came to the conclusion of the program, and what's called, "The Invitation," he told the listeners that salvation comes when a person trusts Christ as Savior, feels sorry for his sins, confesses those sins, abandons those sins, and dedicates his life to Christ. So much for "absolutely free." That's not free; that comes with a price tag.
Then our Skyping friend posed the question: "How can someone say on the one hand that salvation is free and then on the other hand tell all the things a person must pay to get it, and not see that he's contradicting himself?" That is a poser, isn't it, or, as they used to say, "That's the $64,000 question."
YOU'VE HEARD IT
If you've ever listened to sermonizing on the radio, TV, or in person, you know the radio pastor's name: it's "Pastor Larry Legion." He's all over the place with his false gospel, chewing up vocabulary and spitting out false teaching. Yet, people by the thousands sit in their appointed pews listening to the Larry Legions and never bat an eye upon hearing such a passing parade of illogical verbiage. They go farther: they reach for their checkbooks and finance his nonsense. They keep him going. They are a partner in it. And that's serious.
Those Skyping that day offered several answers to the good question: the satanic blindness of II Corinthians 4:4 was one answer; our culture was another. By answering, "Our culture," it was meant that Pastor Legion's invitation has been the norm for generations and, "If my parents and grandparents adhered to that old religious jargon, it's good enough for me." By "Our culture" is meant that such an presentation is ingrained in our ecclesiastical psyches, that's what we've heard since our days in the cradle roll, world without end, amen, so the nonsense just rolls right by us as it flows trippingly, off Pastor Legion's tongue. It's as illogical as the man who said, "It's bad luck to be superstitious."
BUT IT WAS EVER THUS
The baseline of what's happening is that both pulpits and pews don't know the definition of grace. Grace is hard to understand because of the blindness and the culture.
Grace is unmerited favor; grace recognizes no merit and no demerit. What's happening is that we're raised with the idea, "If you want it, work for it; earn it." "If you don't work, you don't eat," and as a restaurant named itself "Tanstafle," (There's No Such Thing as A Free Lunch), that's the way people think of going to heaven.
Paul ran into the same thing, people misunderstanding grace, so what did he do? He knew he had to expound on it and not just leave the word lying out there undefined and by itself. So he wrote, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Notice how he clarifies grace, it's "not of yourselves," it's "not of works," it eliminates bragging on yourself. (Eph. 2:8-9) He has to explain it because grace is a hard concept to grasp.
In Titus 3:5, he explains: "He saved us, [here comes the explanation] not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,"
In his classic work, Romans, Paul explains that salvation is "apart from the Law," "apart from works" three times and cites twoillustrations to prove it--Abraham and David.
Grace is something"hard to understand." That's why Paul asked for the prayers of the believers in Colosse, so that "I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak." What he wanted to say clearly was what he wrote in I Cor. 15 about the gospel of grace: salvation is free to anyone who believes that Jesus, the God/Man, died for his sins and rose from the dead, trusting Him and Him alone for forgiveness of sin and eternal life. That's the grace way of salvation, the only way is the way without cost to the sinner.
Grace is the final message of the Bible, so as to nail it down one last time: "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost."
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