SHE CAN'T HELP IT

As I was rummaging my way through the miracle that is the Internet, lo and behold, I ran across a title of and article that intrigued me, so I clicked the link to find an article a newspaper about the love of God. 

I won't give the full essay here; I'll only hit the important parts which I  put in boldface type, as follows:

"Since Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, we were all born separated from God our Creator because of sin. But God didn’t abandon us. Look at John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that who so ever believed on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  

[So far, so good. But hang on.]

"We are justified freely. Declared not guilty. When God forgives our sins, all charges are removed from His record. Our record is wiped clean as though our sins never happened. Christ is our sacrifice of atonement. God declares Christ’s death as an appropriate, designated sacrifice for our sins. He stands in our place, paid the penalty of death, and completely satisfies God’s demands for forgiving our sins. His sacrifice on the cross brings to those who accept Him; pardon, deliverance and freedom. Paul shows that God forgave all human sin at the cross of Jesus. We are purged and made clean with the precious blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross at Calvary.

"We can get the work of Christ applied to our own lives. We are saved by grace through faith, not from our works. It is God’s gift. We are saved through faith in Christ Jesus alone."

[An excellent statement, but hang on.}

As I read the entire article, I was impressed but then it happened: the writer took a wrong turn from grace and faith alone in Christ alone as you can see in her next sentence.  She wrote, "God loved the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him and follows His teachings will not perish but have eternal life"

Wait! What! The author just said that salvation is a gift apart from works, that it's through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Then, quoting John 3:16 again, she inserted four words that John never wrote and those four words contradict everything in the article.

"Follow His teaching" are the very works she's been arguing against and very clearly so in her essay. 

What she did is so very, very typical, all the while not seeing her inconsistency. We find it all over the place in gospel presentations: believe and commit, turn from sin, fell sorry for your sins, make Christ the Lord of your life, and on and on it goes. They can't help it; they add works non-stop while saying that salvation is apart from works.

There was a box at the conclusion of the article for a reader to put their name, email address, and comments to send to the author. No one had done so, so I decided to take the newspaper up on the opportunity and I did so, pointing out the inconsistency in her article as well as the four words she added to John's masterpiece of a sentence.

We'll see what we shall see.