Don’t Blindly Accept What Is Taught

Several years ago there were very few people teaching the gospel of grace.

Today, there are many teaching the gospel of grace, especially through social media.

I have noticed we agree on many areas of scripture, such as the centrality of the finished work of Jesus.

We believe:

- the new testament is about the blood of Jesus and not books of the Bible

- in the eternal forgiveness of sins

- in eternal righteousness

- in eternal fellowship

- in eternal life

- in the indwelling presence of Jesus

- in knowing God as Abba, Father

We also disagree on many areas as well, as reflected in our different teachings and writings.

We disagree on the meaning of the kingdom of God.

We disagree on end time events.

We disagree of the use of the word faith - is it Jesus' faith that saves us, or it is our faith in his faithfulness to go to the cross for us?

There are other areas we disagree on as well.

Why do I write about this?

In our pre-grace years, some of us blindly accepted what others taught without verifying for ourselves the validity of what they were teaching.

I did this for years before I started checking out what different Bible teachers taught.

It would be easy for us to drift back into this type of blind acceptance of what is being taught simply because a grace teacher that we respect teaches it.

My encouragement is for us to not accept what any grace teacher teaches simply because he or she teaches it, especially since there is widespread disagreement among us in different areas.

Check out for yourself what all of us teach.

Here are some helpful tips:

- Find an online Bible website that allows you to read the verse in the original Greek.

- Track down the meaning of the words and how they are used in other parts of the Bible (sometimes the word used in a translation is not even in the original Greek manuscript).

I use Bible Hub.

- Keep in mind the Message Bible is not a translation but a paraphrase.

Though some may like how it reads, it is a very poor paraphrase of the original Greek.

At the end of the day, let's love each other as Jesus has loved us, even though we may have different interpretations of the scriptures.