Only The Perfect Go To Heaven

March 25th, 2015 § 1

God is love and He is perfect. Contrary to what some people say, He is not repulsed by our imperfections. He does not despise us because of our sins. He is attracted to our imperfections and weaknesses because His love desires to meet our needs and provide for all our lack. His heart toward man is to open his blind eyes, heal his broken heart, set him free from all bondages and be a loving Father to him.

Having said all that, it is also true that God who is perfect cannot join Himself to us in our imperfection. His love for us has provided a way for us to be made perfect by faith in Jesus, His only Son. Jesus became our sin (our imperfection) for us and died in judgment for us on the cross that we might be given His righteousness (His perfection) as a gift.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that we can be joined to God because He is love and He loves us. We are not forgiven because God is love. We are forgiven because it cost Him the life of His Son. We are forgiven because of the bloody and violent death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, who took our judgment for us on the cross.

It was God’s love for mankind that sent the Son and it was the Son’s love for mankind that caused Him to not consider equality with God the Father a thing to be held onto but willingly humbled Himself and became a man to die for man on a cross. But had the Son called for those twelve legions of angels (72,000 angels) in the garden to protect Him and take Him from the earth on that fateful night (which Jesus said He could do in Matt 26:53) and had He not willingly taken the cup of God’s wrath for our sin, God would still be love but we would perish and be lost forever in our imperfections and sins.

Never think that God will forgive our sin just because He loves us. If we do not receive the perfection of God that He offers to all people as a gift through faith in Jesus then we will die in our imperfection, separated from God forever in our sins. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.

Jesus looked down over Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives and wept saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often I would have gathered you like a mother hen gathers her little chicks under her wings to protect them, but you would not let Me. Because you did not receive Me, your enemies will now surround you and you will perish.”

Only the perfect go to heaven. Only the perfect can be joined to God and live forever. Only the perfect can enjoy fellowship with the God of all comfort and grace. And the Good News is that He has given us His own perfection as a gift that we might be perfect and always be where He is. Faith in Jesus alone gives us this unspeakable gift of perfection. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except by Me.”

Upcoming Grace Conference in Virginia!

March 15th, 2015 § 0

You are invited to attend a GRACE CONFERENCE being hosted by Life Journey Church near Charlottesville, Virginia at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains where James Barron will be speaking April 11th and 12th. Check out the church’s web site for more details at Life Journey Church’s Website.

Sessions will include teaching about:

– The Door to Another World in Jesus
– What Is Everlasting Righteousness?
– What it Means to Be Spiritually Circumcised
– The Power of the Covenant Meal
– What the Oath of God Really Means
– The Secret Dynamic of God that Transforms a Person
– The Key to Seeing the Unseen
– The Christ-Centered Life (Spirit) vs. The Cross-Centered Life (Flesh)
– True Grace vs. False Grace
– What Will Happen When Jesus Returns to Earth?

Also there will be a session where James will be taking any questions about the new covenant! Check back later for more details as they develop!

A Hideous Love

March 3rd, 2015 § 3

It is a hideous love, and really not love at all, that loves evil. It is true that God loves all men but it is also true that God hates all evil. This is what must be understood clearly in order to know who God really is. Jesus hates evil.

It is not enough to teach the saints to put off the deeds of the old man and to put on the deeds of the new man, to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh. Few “grace teachers” even do that much. But we who teach the awesome grace of God must also reveal who the Father really is as Jesus revealed Him relative to God’s view of sin.

Jesus resisted and opposed evil in every form while on earth, sometimes with anger (remember the money changers in the temple). Even then He was doing His Father’s business and showing us the Father. Some have mistaken grace to mean that God no longer has an opinion about sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. This false notion about God has opened the door to the false teachings of “Christian Universalism” and “Inclusionism” and “Gay Theology.”

To know God through Jesus is to hate evil. This is one of the things that is missing in the present teaching on the grace of God from some teachers. Jesus did not leave this important truth about the Father out of His teachings and neither should we.

I’ve been pondering on why so many believers who have come to see the grace of God in Jesus have also been persuaded to embrace a false grace that teaches that all are saved now (Inclusionism) or will, at some point in the future, all be saved (Christian Universalism) or that same-gender sexual relations is not evil (Gay Theology).

I think the error stems from an incomplete view of who God really is. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians talks about Jesus coming back with flaming fire and great power to bring eternal judgment upon all those who did not obey His Gospel! We obey His Gospel by simply believing on Jesus for the gift of righteousness for there is no one good, no not one, but for those who have rejected Him there will be no mercy, Hebrews says. No mercy. This God is foreign to many “grace believers” and yet this is the true God revealed to us by Jesus and His apostles.

God does not forgive our sins because He is love. God forgives our sins because of the death of Jesus who took our judgment for all our sins. God’s love sent Him but without the Son’s willingness to drink the cup of God’s wrath for us we could not be forgiven!

Hebrews says “how shall we escape punishment if we neglect so great a salvation?” Paul says “behold the goodness and severity of God! Goodness toward you who have believed and severity toward those who have not believed.” Jesus said that if a man does not believe in Him then that man would die in his sins and face the judgment for all his sins.

If we clearly taught these views of God that the apostles taught, then it would be more difficult for the enemy to persuade believers to adopt these teachings about a false grace. Some believers and non-believers are rejecting the scripture all together so they can imagine a God that is more to their liking with no hindrance from the prophetic word. Some have foolishly adopted the views of contemporary writers who claim, after doing their own “research,” that the scriptures are not a reliable source of truth. As the scripture says, they are doing what is right in their own eyes. Many of those who adopt a view different from the scriptures do so in order that they may live their own selfish, fleshly life without hindrance, all the while preaching their misguided and hideous view of the love of God.

We must also remember that the true God is a God of covenants. The covenant that Jesus cut for mankind, the final everlasting covenant, can only be entered into by man through faith in Jesus. A covenant only applies to the parties to the covenant. In this new covenant, God says He will remember our sins no more. The question is who are those whose sin God no longer remembers and how do they come to be in that covenant?

Being in the final “blood covenant” is the only way sin is not remembered. If a person is not in God’s covenant then they have no hope. Only through faith in Jesus can one enter into the only covenant God recognizes for a relationship with Him. Jesus took the cup and said this cup is the New Covenant! To “drink His blood and eat His flesh” is the only way to be in His New Covenant and to possess life eternal.

For those outside the everlasting covenant that Jesus cut for us the scripture says in Hebrews that there remains no other sacrifice for sin but only a fearful certainty of judgment that will devour those who have rejected the Lamb of God and trodden under foot the blood of the Son of God and refused His amazing grace. It is a hideous love that misrepresents the true love of God and Father of Jesus our Lord by denying that a certain eternal judgment is coming upon all who have rejected His Son, the Lamb of God. It is a hideous love that fails to warn all men to repent (change their mind) and believe on Jesus for the forgiveness of sin, for there remains no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. This is the true love of the Father as revealed to mankind by the Son of His love.

James Barron