Grace Is Enough: 2014

You should never stop listening to the message of Grace. The bible says "God is love" (1 John 4:8). And Grace came through Jesus Christ. All that Jesus has done for us on the cross at Calvary is key. He has redeem all of our sins, past, current and future! Yes, as long as you believe and have faith.

Are you thinking, 'Is it that simple? There must be something I must do to be saved! It cannot be that simple!'

No no no no no no. Remove all the above wrong beliefs. Trust and have faith in what Jesus had done for us and believe. IT IS THAT SIMPLE! Actually, having faith and trust is not as simple as you thought. It is actually the most difficult part to believe it is that easy and that good. The gospel of Jesus would not be called the Good News if it is not this simple.

"I (Jesus) brought glory to you (God) here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." John 17:4

Jesus's finish work on the cross made us righteous in the eyes of God if we believe, have faith and accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us." Ephesian 1:7-8

Do you what God sees when He sees you? Jesus.

How else do we need to prove that God loves us?

"For God so loved the world, that he have His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

Grace is God's kindness given to us without us earning it (called the unmerited favor). And Jesus is True Grace and He was sent to the world to redeem us from eternal death. John 3:16 must have been the most important verse from the bible. See the above verse "whoever believes in Him ... have eternal life." All it takes is to believe!

"For it is by grace you have been saved...not by works" Ephesians 2:8-9

How much clearer can this verse be? Is it not literary enough to be easily understood? It is not about what you did or going to do, it is about what Jesus had done on the cross. Through His blood and sufferings, we are saved. As a result, we serve God not out of arrogance (because of what we have done) or fear (of the religious law or karma), but we serve out of gratitude - because we feel the love of God through Jesus Christ.

Always always remember, "we love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Dear friends, remember; Love and Grace. Live a happy life in Christ. Do not condemn yourself, do not condemn others. Let us all have the freedom to love, and by living that life, we make the world a better place.

We pray:

Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me and dying for me on the cross. Your previous blood washes me clean of every sin. I declare you my Lord and my Savior. I believe that you rose from the dead and that you are alive today. Because of your finished work, I am now a beloved child of God and heaven is my home. Thank you for giving me eternal life, and filing my heart with your peace and joy. Amen.

*The above are inspired by Pastor Joseph Prince's Ministry. Thank you Pastor Prince for your amazing teachings.

1. Morality - Why Are We Good?

I'm starting the article with this "The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?"

It is hard to imagine how, without religion, one can be good, or would even want to be good? But the doubts go further, and drive some religious people to outburst of hatred against those who don't share their faith.

It's natural and natural selection can easily explain hunger, fear and sexual lust, all of which straightforwardly contribute to our survival or the preservation of our genes. But what about the wrenching compassion we feel when we see an orphaned child weeping, an old widow in despair from loneliness, or an animal whimpering in pain? What gives us the powerful urge to send an anonymous gift of money or clothes to tsunami victims on the other side of the world whom we shall never meet, and who are highly unlikely to return the favor?

First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the repayment of favors given, and the giving of favors in 'anticipation' of payback. Following is third, the benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness.

Let's look at how moral philosophers think (reference from the Harvard biologist Marc Hauser, in his book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong). A hypo-experience in answering it tells us something about our sense of right and wrong.

The moral dilemmas:

Imagines a person, Peter, standing by a set of points and in a position to divert the trolley onto a siding, thereby saving the lives of five people trapped on the main line ahead. Unfortunately there is a man trapped on the siding. But since he is only one, outnumbered by the five people trapped on the main track, most people agree that it is morally permissible, if not obligatory, for Peter to throw the switch and save the five by killing one man on the siding might be Beethoven, or a close friend or family.

What if the trolley can be stopped by dropping a large weight in its path from a bridge overhead? That's easy: obviously we must drop the weight. But what if the only large weight available is a very fat man sitting on the bridge, admiring the sunset? Almost everybody agrees that it is immoral to push the fat man off the bridge, even though, from one point of view, the dilemma might seem parallel to Peter's, where throwing the switch kills one to save five.

What about this dilemma:

Five patients in a hospital are dying, each with a different organ failing. Each would be saved if a donor could be found for their particular faulty organ, but non is available. Then the surgeon notices that there is a healthy man in the waiting-room, all five of whose organs are in good working order and suitable for transplanting. In this case, almost nobody can be found who is prepared to say that the moral act is to kill the one to save the five. What about you?

Marc Hauser and his team adapted their moral experiments to the Kuna, a small Central American tribe with little contact with Westerners and no formal religion. The researchers changed the 'trolley on a line' though experiment to locally suitable equivalents, such as crocodiles swimming towards canoes. With corresponding minor differences, the Kuna show the same moral judgments as the rest of us.

Surely, if we get our morality from religion, they should differ. But it seems that they don't.

Do note that when I say religion here and in the following passages, I meant all forms of religion, be it Christianity, Islamic, Buddhism, etc.

Marc Hauser, working with the moral philosopher Peter Singer, focused on three hypothetical dilemmas and compared the verdicts of non-religious people and religious people. In each case, the subjects were asked to choose whether a hypothetical action is morally 'obligatory', 'permissible' or 'forbidden'. The three dilemmas were:

1. 90% of people said it was permissible to divert the trolley, killing the one to save the five.

2. You see a child drowning in a pond and there is no other help in sight. You can save the child, but your trousers will be ruined in the process. 97% agreed that you should save the child (amazingly, 3% apparently would prefer to save their trousers).

3. The organ transplant dilemma described above. 97% of subjects agreed that it is morally forbidden to seize the healthy person in the waiting-room and kill him for his organs, thereby saving five other people.

The main conclusion of this study was that there is no statistically significant difference between non-religious people and religious believers in making these judgments.

Do we still need to discuss about Moral Laws?

Which we open up these taboo questions:

"Do we need God in order to be good - or evil?"

"Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment?"

What about love? Or should we be good because of love and spread our love to others because our perfect Christ Jesus gave and continue to give us His abundant of love. So much that it is overflowing that we want to spread the more-than-sufficient love He gave us to others who has yet to know Him?

Morality. Is it always wrong to put a terminally ill patient out of her misery at her own request? Is it always wrong to kill an embryo? Is abortion always wrong? Attitudes to homosexuality reveal much about the sort of morality that is inspired by religious faith. An equally instructive example is abortion and the sanctity of human life. Morals do not have to be absolute.

With or without religion, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. Individual non-religious people may do evil things, but they don't do evil things in the name of being non-religious.

Shouldn't our core belief be love?

"Just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive and this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that build up and is creative. There is something about that that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies." Dr Martin Luther King Jr., delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama on November 17, 1957.

2. The Bible And Homosexuality

I urge you to watch the following video. It's all scripture based:

http://www.matthewvines.com/transcript (alternative link: http://youtu.be/ezQjNJUSraY).

In the above video, the speech was delivered by Matthew Vines in March 2012 at a church in his hometown about the Bible and homosexuality.

What I would like to highlight from his speech:

"Gay people, male and female, are just as much children of God and just as much a part of His creation as everyone else. And there’s something terribly unseemly about straight insisting that gay are somehow inferior to them, or broken, or that gay people only exist because of the fall, and that God really intended to make everyone straight like them."

"And how aware are you of the ways in which you may be contributing to suffering and hurt in gay people’s lives? It’s still commonplace for straight Christians to say, “Yes, I believe that homosexuality is a sin, but don’t blame me – I’m just reading the Bible. That’s just what it says.” Well, first of all, no, you are not just reading the Bible. You are taking a few verses out of context and extracting from them an absolute condemnation that was never intended. But you are also striking to the very core of another human being and gutting them of their sense of dignity and of self-worth."

"Being different is no crime. Being gay is not a sin. And for a gay person to desire and pursue love and marriage and family is no more selfish or sinful than when a straight person desires and pursues the very same things. The Song of Songs tells us that King Solomon’s wedding day was “the day his heart rejoiced.” To deny to a small minority of people, not just a wedding day, but a lifetime of love and commitment and family is to inflict on them a devastating level of hurt and anguish. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that Christians are called to perpetuate that kind of pain in other people’s lives rather than work to alleviate it, especially when the problem is so easy to fix. All it takes is acceptance."

"...the truly Christian response to them is acceptance, support, and love."

By Rev. Elder Don Eastman:

http://mccchurch.org/download/theology/homosexuality/NotSinNotSick.pdf

By 19 theologians of differing backgrounds ranging from Baptist to Reformed Judaism and Roman Catholic to Methodist, etc:

http://dignitycanada.org/sin.html

Even if you believe the above are all "false teachings", and you are a believer of the Word as what you read verse by verse literally, then let's look at what is sin?

3. Sins, Grace And Our Perfect Lamb

What is sin? The meaning of sin in Greek ( ἁμαρτία, ας, ἡ, or hamartia) means "missing the mark" as in when throwing a spear at a target.

"When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone." Roman 5:12. When Adam sinned, he 'missed the mark' of God's standard as what God initially created Adam to be. "For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard." Romans 3:23

But thank God for Jesus, taking the Bible literally, isn't it clear enough that Christ Jesus died for us and overcame all sins?

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21
"So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law." Romans 3:28

"And we have received God's Spirit (not the world's spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us." 1 Corinthians 2:12
"I tell you, her sins - and they are many - have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love." Luke 7:47

"Because God's children are human beings - made of flesh and blood - the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. ... Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people." Hebrews 2:14, 17
"God sent him to buy freedom for us, so that he could adopt us as his very own children... I plead with you to live as I do in freedom from these things, for I have become like you Gentiles - free from these laws." Galatians 4:5, 12
I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." Galatians 2:21
"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made youalive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins," Colossians 2:13
"Once for all when He offered up Himself." Hebrews 7:27
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." Ephesians 1:7

Jesus Christ paid the full price for all our sins that we will commit in our lifetime. Christ does not need to be crucified again for our future sins. In fact, all our sins were in the future when He died on the cross. So when we received Jesus into our heart, ALL our sins, past, current and future, were completely forgiven!

God is not looking at your nobility, sacrifices, or good works to justify you. He is only interested in Jesus' humility at the cross. He looks at His Son's perfect sacrifice at Calvary to justify you and make you righteous!

Attempting to be justified by your good works and trying your best to keep the Ten Commandments to become righteous is to negate the cross of Jesus Christ and it's saying "the cross is not enough to justify me, I need to depend on my good works to make myself clean and righteous before God!" - No! That is not right!

"For it is by grace you have been saved... not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

And if by grace, then it is no longer of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work." Romans 11:6

There is no middle road. You are either righteous by God's grace or you are trying to merit righteousness with your own words or actions. You are either depending on Jesus or on yourself. There is no in between!

"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." Mark 2:22 / Matthew 9:17 / Luke 5:37

Why do we have to keep listening to the gospel of grace, over and over again? Because it is so easy to fall from grace and back to the law.

"The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sins increased, grace increased all the more." Roman 5:20

We need to put our focus on Christ, place forth love as our core belief as that is the core of our Lord Christ Jesus' character. When Jesus came to earth, He placed a particular focus on those others overlooked, on those who were outcast, on mistreated and marginalized minorities. And if we are working to emulate the life of Christ, then that’s where our focus needs to be, too.

"The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." 1 Timothy 1:14

Jesus told the religious scholars: "There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven." Mark 3:28

We are a reflection of our faith and belief to the unbelievers, let us display the true character of our Lord and Savior, and not act on our own self-righteousness.

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” Audre Lorde

Grace Is Enough

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

God With Us

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Quick Word on 2 Corinthians 3:18 - We are the Reflection of our Lord & Savior Jesus

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Love, Grace, and His Finished Work

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Morality, Homosexuality, Sins & Grace