OUTLINE:
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
“God’s grace is the most incredible and insurmountable truth ever to be revealed to the human heart, which is why God has given us His Holy Spirit to superintend the process of more fully revealing the majesty of the work done on our behalf by our Savior.”
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
“He teaches us to first cling to, and then enables us to adore with the faith He so graciously supplies, the mercy of God. This mercy has its cause and effect in the work of Jesus on the cross.”
Grace leaves us speechless.
(ref: Psa 8)
The Gift of Faith – blog
We need to accept what we are given. For starters, we have the immutability and veracity of the Word of God establishing that God alone has the keys to salvation.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
“This hill though high I covent ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way of life lies here.”
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
”Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.”
There’s no other way to approach God except in humility.
Who Gets To Define Love?
1Jn 4:8The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Love is good. When the Word of God defines love, it is defining God, Himself.
God’s Grace
God’s grace is not man’s. Man defines “graciousness” along the same vein as tolerance and political correctness (e.g., it’s wrong to be offensive or to make someone stumble, even if it’s over the truth). God defines grace as providing a way to salvation, regardless if it is disagreeable to human sensibilities.
The Simple Definition For Sin
Sin is any lack of conformity to God’s will, whether expressed actively or passively.
“men of depraved mind”
They are those who “oppose the truth”. Of course, in context, we are considering this as a habit, not when a believer fails and sins. The context here is to establish that sin opposes truth, by nature.
The Deceitfulness of Sin
Without saving faith, the Gospel “seed” ultimately has no root system and therefore withers away (even though the flesh was convinced it could produce good fruit in the absence of godly faith).
The Deceitfulness of Sin
Without saving faith, the Gospel “seed” gets choked out by pressure, ultimately yielding no crop (no godly fruit), even though the flesh counterfeited faith at the outset.
2Co 7:1
Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Sin Lies To Us
It is a liar. It mixes truth with lies for the purpose of deceiving us into thinking/ doing things antagonistic to the will of God. We mustn’t think of sin as merely a result (Jas 1:15), but also a magnetic force, an influencer, a deceiver (Gen 4:7; Ps 51:4-5; Ro 7:7-8).