“But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest,
when I have preached to others, I myself should become
disqualified.”
1Corinthians 9:27

While our salvation is based upon God’s unmerited favor extended to us by the vicarious suffering of Jesus on our behalf it is true that scripture calls upon us to work out our salvation ” with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12) Also, Paul calls upon us to discipline our lives for the purpose of godliness (1 Timothy 4:7-8) and he tells us that he buffets his body lest having been a preacher he becomes, at the end of the day, a castaway. All this tells us that we have to appropriate God’s grace, live faithfully and persevere. Ours, as the writer of the book of Hebrews tells us, is a spiritual race that has to be ” run with endurance.” (Hebrews 12:1)Jesus echoed the same thought when He stated that only those that “endure to the end will be saved.”(Matthew 24:13)

So, this is all in stark contrast to the so called “grace message” that entirely removes commitment of the type mentioned above from the people of God. I have heard subscribers to this teaching tell me that they were liberated by the knowledge that they didn’t have to routinely seek God by prayer and the study of His Word in order to have a relationship with Him. This they claim is legalism and performance based Christianity. Of course they are wrong and indeed deceived as God, in His love, places a desire and thirst in our hearts for fellowship with Him. (Matthew 5:6) It is this thirsting after God that does drive us to pray continually, or as Paul put it, unceasingly. (1 Thessalonians 5:17) It also gives us a hunger for His word that never goes away. Christians then that find these “disciplines”  a burden or chore are making a confession about the bankrupt nature of their Christian experience.

What we need today is strong Christians who love God, know God and pursue Him with every fibre of their beings. We are to love God with all our spirits, souls, bodies and strength. The more we get of God so the more we desire Him. Real spiritual health is being satisfied spiritually but at the same time, always dissatisfied! We can never exhaust God and even eternity will not enable us to fully know Him. Be assured of this; the days in which we live are dangerous and increasingly dark. Christians are now the most persecuted people on earth and hundreds of thousands of them are willingly dying for their faith. These are not fuzzy Christians preaching a weak anemic faith; no they endure, persevere, pray day and night and live in the Word of God. (2 Timothy 3:16)

This is the day for Christians to “man up” and prove that they are the elect of God in Christ. Paul said this when he called upon the Christians at Corinth to “test themselves” to prove that they really were saved! (2 Corinthians 13:5-6)  Easy Christianity is borderline stuff that just might be counterfeit!

Malcolm Hedding.

©Malcolm Hedding Ministries