WANTED "VERSE" LIGHT

The other day I had this person who is not a Christian, but a member of a different faith decide he was going to “enlighten” several others and myself on the true meaning of Christianity. So he decided to bore all of us who consider ourselves as born again Christians with his “interpretation” what it meant to be saved as a believer in Jesus.

Unfortunately he could only manage to ramble on in his comments to our postings with the hopelessly inaccurate thoughts. And needless to say he didn’t exactly endear himself to any of us with his need to try and explain salvation when he didn’t have a clue on what it meant himself.

A lack of “wisdom and god’s light” has never kept some people from preaching to others. What is even more frustrating is the way some element of carnal driven motives will end up being view as the light of truth.

I’m speaking in this case of the issue of legalism. Which to me is basically something that appeals to one’s need to control his salvation by establishing a set of rules you can keep. As long as you keep them the result is you have basically feel you have earned your salvation.

The only problem is that number one, God’s set of laws is generally a great deal more vast than the list the legalists love to emphasize. They will go through the scripture and pick out certain rules they say you must follow like keeping the Ten Commandments and then totally ignore the other laws even though the scriptures are clear that not keeping the whole law makes you guilty of breaking it.

Which of course is God’s way of showing us the futility of how we are unable to ever get any approval from the Lord through our own efforts. None of us, no matter how perfect we might assume we are will ever meet that standard.

Some people even get so absurd on this issue they claim to have kept the ten commandments. But Jesus gave them a whole new understanding when he pointed out things like hating in your heart was in reality breaking the commandment about not killing. Essentially we break God’s law just by the desires in our heart because we are sinners.

I see legalism is sort of form of juggling. You get really busy impressing yourself by not doing a given sin, but in the process you “drop” or end up committing a different sin. A person simply exhausts themselves spiritually by this kind of juggling act and in the end even though you should learn you can’t please God by your own strength, some still chase this delusion out of pride.

And as with so many frailties of the soul, when we allow this or any prejudice to color our search for truth we end up interpreting the scriptures inaccurately. Hopefully we can in some way let God’s spirit shine the light of truth into the darkness of our pride and misunderstanding. But at times people just fall in love with that blindfold they wear. I pray we all will be willing to take it off when the Lord tells us too.