Gospel

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THE DOUBLE-EDGE SWORD OF SALVATION
PRE-VIEW
If you have invited Christ into your life by confessing your sins with a repented heart not to turn to your sins again, by asking Him to come and dine with you all the days of your life, and your preparedness to serve Him and Him alone, to live like Him and to make disciples for Him as He has commissioned you, what is the next step then towards your salvation? You have been saved forever? This is what this chapter seeks to talk about. I hope with the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, He will guide and direct you to know whether what I am about to tell you is true or not.
The gospel goes a long way, more than just confessing Christ Jesus to come into your life. It also entails the desire to be like Christ by turning away from sin, developing hatred for the things that God hates and love for the thing that God loves. Upon recent studies of the scriptures, I have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit regarding what the bible really means by Salvation, being saved in the contest of being an Earthly-Salvation on one hand, and a Heavenly-Salvation on the other. I thank God for your life and I pray He opens your spiritual understanding of this piece and even add more to it so that you will bless others through this piece. Take a prayer and let us begin…
SUBSTANCE
Some pastors say that sin cannot take our salvation from us until we denounce Christ. I disagree. A pastor preached this at an all-night service and as a new comer, I asked the pastor what he meant by that after the service and he said, it means just accepting Christ by word of mouth and confessing your sins and making sure not to deny Him by mouth. Ask yourself, is he right? So can I ask an armed robber to accept Christ by mouth and go on with his robbery because he will surely be saved provided he doesn’t deny Christ by mouth? This is all about a matter of choice. Denying Christ is evidenced not only by mouth but also in all those who have heard the gospel but are failing to accept Him. You can be a follower today but by certain circumstances beyond your understanding and your lack of knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, decide not to be a Christian and resort to the demands of the devil. That is why we have some Christians converting to Muslims and possibly atheists.
I do not believe in the teachings that when Christ comes into the life of a person, he or she is saved forever from his past, present and future sins. This is a powerful religious lie and not true. This religious lie is very deceptive and I am very much convinced that the devil is using his prophets and preachers to win more souls. And all those who will fall prey to these demonic teachings lack knowledge of the word of God and are perishing. Whenever someone tells you that that is his belief don’t be surprised because, such a person spend less of his time reading the Holy Scriptures or not at all. The bible says Lack of knowledge my people perish. The knowledge here referred to by God according to the Holy Scriptures is the knowledge of the word of God.
Let me tell you frankly, if you are not serious with God, always seeking the by-products of Christ but not Christ, don’t see the need to know more about God and so you don’t even have time to acquire knowledge from the Holy Scriptures, you have to be terribly afraid because you do not belong to God and as a result He doesn’t know you, there is no easy path to His Kingdom. I asked a pastor who was preaching like that to explain to me why he says that, he told me that the blood of Christ is very powerful and therefore capable of cleaning us from all our sins including that of our past because God is all-knowing and so He knows the times and days you will sin so He save us from all those sins to be committed. Now ask yourself whether the pastor was right in saying what he said.
The moment you agree that we are saved from our future sins, then all what the scripture says about we asking for forgiveness from God when we sin does not make sense. Why should I ask for forgiveness for an already forgiven sin? Also judgement day doesn’t make sense. If my sin has already been forgiven, then why am I going to be judged? If this is true, then why is it that Christ in all the four gospels was always teaching the people to be righteous, advising them to turn away from sin so as to enable them attain salvation? Don’t tell me Apostle Paul said this or that. Are you now telling me that the words of Apostle Paul now overshadow what Jesus Christ himself said?
My friend, if Apostle Peter himself, who was there with Christ from the beginning of His ministry, upon whom Christ said He was going to build His Church, who saw the ascension of Christ, witnessed all the teachings of Christ and was also present during the great commission, says in 2 PETER 3:15-16“…Paul also writing with the wisdom God gave him, writes in the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters but his letters containing some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do to other scriptures, to their own destruction” If Apostle Peter himself says that the writings of Apostle Paul are difficult to understand, you place Paul’s teachings above that of Christ because you do not understand the difficult words of Apostle Paul. Let me tell you something, if you really want to understand the writings of Apostle Paul, read it together with 1st and 2nd Peter the four Gospels of Jesus Christ (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), and you will truly understand what Apostle Paul meant by some things he said.
Let us talk of the Earthly-Salvation. I named it such so as to enable the understanding I want to put across. This is the first salvation one receives when Christ truly comes into one’s life. This is what the bible refers to as being saved from sin, the world and the devil. Thus you are saved from the world and you no longer love or belong to it. You are cleansed of your past sins as peter said to the Christians in 2 PETER 1:8-9 “For if you posses these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective in the knowledge of God. But if anyone do not have them, he is shortsighted and blind and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins” If one is saved for the first time, in the ‘earthly-salvation’, he is cleansed from only his past sins. Our present sins are forgiven only when we ask for forgiveness from God and we are urged not to sin as we move into the future, because there is no future if the future hasn’t become a present.
You are given a new nature, old things have passed and sin no longer reigns in you because you died with Christ to sin. This clearly means that you are saved from the works of the devil because Christ lives in you and you are more than a conqueror over the devil. This is made possible in the sense that when you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, all things will work out in your favor. Although temptations and troubles will come your way, you shall succeed in the end. In all these trials you strive hard always to be in Christ till the end of age, when Christ will come for the final judgment, to take His selected few who walked on the narrow way, lived a righteous life, obeyed His commands, and accepted Him as their Lord and Savior.
Let me ask you, are we to do all these whiles we are still living on earth or we do them even when we are already in Heaven? Why do you again think that whenever the bible wants to refer to the word ‘being save’ it puts it in the past tense, thus ‘saved’? All these show that the Earthly salvation is needed on earth not in Heaven. We need to accept Christ Jesus whiles on earth and not in heaven. Our sins are forgiven whiles on earth and not in heaven. We are given power over sin whiles on earth and not in heaven because in heaven, sin doesn’t exist. Being saved is basically about being saved from the world, thus satan, because of Christ who lives in you and gives you strength. That is why you cannot do anything by your own strength. It is rather by the power and might of God in Christ Jesus.
That is why even as Christ lives in you, you must obey His commands so as to maintain that relationship with him by resisting all forms of temptations, praying without ceasing, and living like Him and not like the world, else you shall miss the final joyous entry into His kingdom when Christ comes to judge. In summary, you are saved from a wretched life full of sin in satan into a righteous life full of holiness in Christ. This is what makes you worthy of His kingdom. Listen to what Apostle John said to the Christians pertaining to this earthly salvation in 1 JOHN 3:12-14 “I write to you because your sins are forgiven, because you have known Him who is from the beginning, because you have known the Father, because you have overcome the evil one, and because you are strong and the word of God lives in you” These are the nature a Christian is given the moment Christ enters his life, thus the Earthly-Salvation.
Let us now talk about the Heavenly-Salvation. Apostle Peter said in 1 PETER 4:18 “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner” Remember that the bible says in Romans 3:10 “there is no-one righteous, not even one” and in Romans 3:22 “The righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” So in as much as you have accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord and personal savior and you have seen changes in your life to confirm that He really heard that prayer of yours and has come into your life, there are some steps Jesus wants you to take, else you will be deceived by the devil to believe in what will not make you attain the second salvation, which is the Heavenly-Salvation.
This salvation is the joyous entry into the eternal kingdom. Jude 1:20, where Jude, writing to Christians in verse 1 says“…build up yourselves in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” again it is written in Hebrews 9:27 “just as man is destined to die once and after, to face judgement, so was Christ crucified once to take away our sins, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him” Peter re-echoed this in 1 Peter 1:5 “…who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time”
This salvation is very significant as the first. In the first where one accepts Christ and is given the power and strength over the world, thus the devil, by virtue of the fact that Christ lives in such person, such person is prepared for the second salvation provided that person remains obedient to the Spirit given him, obeying the commands of God day in and out to keep the Spirit in him active at all times else the Spirit is taken away by not believing what the Spirit tells you. You do not follow what He tells you because you don’t believe Him. Listen to Jesus’ teaching on this in the gospel of St. Luke chapter 8, which talks about the parable of the Sower. In this parable, I want you to understand one thing. The seed which Christ said represent the word of God, is the word of Salvation. Listen now to the different categories of people who may think they have believed in Christ so they are saved, but a time will come when they will return to their evil desires because they will fall in the hand of the devil for not obeying God’s commands to be saved.
Now let us look at how one who in a time of his life was saved by Christ by faith but will not be saved in His second coming because he no longer has the faith. Faith is different from Belief. Faith entails believing and commitment so subdue oneself to the control and commands of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Luke 8:5-15 “In this parable, a farmer went out to sow his seed As he was scattering the seed, some fell along path, on rock, thorns and good soil . Path, are those who hear the word and the devil comes and take the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe. Rock is those who receive and believe the word with joy for a while, but in times of testing they fall away. Thorns are those who hears but as they go on their way they are chocked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures and they do not mature in still believing, and Good Soil are those with noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it, and by preserving, produce a crop”
This parable is understood as a preacher who went out to preach the word and as he preached, different minds and hearts heard the word and received it. Some people will be saved for a period, but will lose it when they give the devil the chance to. And the devil is only given the chance when we decide to live with him, thus to live in sin. Don’t ever in your life think that you are a Christian and at the same time live in sin. If that is the kind of person you are, then you are not a Christian. You are self deceived. This is the most powerful message Jesus Christ presented on how one may lose his or her salvation. This word is Jesus Christ. John 1:1-14 “In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God…the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His Glory, the Glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of Grace and Truth”
POST-VIEW
Salvation involves accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord, believing He died for your sins, confessing your sins, being ready to take up your cross and to follow Him, desiring always to be Holy and Righteous by working out the final salvation that is to come with fear and trembling, which is achieved by the commands of Love, Humility, Righteous living, which are all made possible after your first salvation, because Christ now lives in You and you in Him, and so you don’t keep on sinning to create chance for the devil. 1 John 3:4-6 “…sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that He might take away our sins. And in Him is no sin. No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No-one who continues to sin has either seen or known Him” This doesn’t mean you can’t sin but in case you do, you are forgiven when you ask for forgiveness with a repented heart and mind not to commit such sin again. We thank God for another powerful insight into our understanding of what He wants us to know and who He wants us to be…AMEN!



BY
NICHOLAS KWASI APPIAH



GOD BLESS YOU AND MAY HE BE WITH YOU ALWAYS. I LOVE YOU AND DON’T FORGET THE FRIEND WHO LOVES YOU IS THE ONE WHO TELLS YOU THE MOST TRUTH.


CHRIST-LIKE MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
Call or Whatsapp Me: (+233) 0571753535

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