"Christians were
1. decretively justified from all eternity:
2. efficaciously so when Christ rose again from the dead;
3. actually so when they believed;
4. sensibly so when the Spirit bestows joyous assurance;
5. manifestly so when they tread the path of obedience;
6. finally so at the Day of Judgment, when God shall sententiously, and in the presence of all created things, pronounce them so." - A.W. Pink, "The Doctrine of Justification"
10 Essentials of Christianity (Click to go into resource)
1. Resurrection
2. Repentance
"For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant,
is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called,
being free, is Christ's servant." - 1 Cor 7:22
"The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the
word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes
and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
- Rom 8:9-10
5. Submission
6. Surrender of the Will
7. Forsaking One's Sin
8. Obeying God
9. Scripture is Perfect
10. Jesus is God!
Only a perfect sacrifice could atone for the sins of many! It is finished!
"God is just. All men are sinners. All, therefore, are guilty and under condemnation. therefore no man can be justified, ie., pronounced not guilty, on the ground of his character or conduct. Sinners cannot satisfy God's justice. But what they could not do, Christ, the Eternal Son of God, clothed in our nature, has done for them. He has brought in everlasting righteousness, which meets all the demands of the law. All those who renounce their own righteousness, and trust to the righteousness of Christ, God justifies and saves. This is the gospel as Paul preached it." - Charles Hodge, 19th century Princeton professor
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done." - Matthew 16:24-27
"[Alot of people] think that Christianity is you doing all the righteous things you hate and avoiding all the wicked things you love in order to go to Heaven. No, that's a lost man with religion. A Christian is a person whose heart has been changed; they have new affections." - Paul Washer
"The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
- Mark 1:15
13 Need-to-Know Truths about the Gospel.
1. Salvation may in no way be earned or obtained by man's effort. Christ saves men without any help, input, or work of men. You must be born again (regenerated) (John 3:3), and that rebirth is outside of man's will. This is what is referred to as "being saved."
2. The Spirit regenerates whomever He chooses (John 3:8).
3. There is only one true Gospel.
4. There is only one way to Heaven: genuine faith (saving faith), love, and surrender to Christ (John 14:6).
5. Righteousness is not optional for saved persons (Matt. 5:20). However, human righteousness is not acceptable (Isa. 64:6). All who believe in Christ are justified by Christ's works, death on the cross, and resurrection (Rom. 5:18).
6. Repentance is loving Christ plus turning towards Him, and repentance is also hating sin plus turning away from it (characteristics of true repentance).
7. Without genuine repentance toward God and faith in Christ, sinners go to hell for eternity (Rom. 2:3-16).
8. All men are naturally sinners (absolute inability).
9. A person cannot be a believer without obeying.
10. Jesus is God (Jesus is God).
11. Jesus lived a perfect life and earned His children (election) , those who believe in Him, entrance into Heaven while they were hopelessly dead in sin.
12. Jesus Christ was killed, and then was resurrected from the dead and ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father (resurrection).
13. Every single soul Christ died for is going to Heaven (actual atonement).
What does it mean to deny yourself?
Basically, this means to forsake and completely turn against everything you desire of this world. Forsake the world. Forsake worldly ideas, living, and thoughts. Forsake giving into yourself. Forsake your own dreams, goals, ambitions, desires and choose to trust Christ and His plan for your life. Put all your faith in Him.
Two things: willfully turn away from sin, and lovingly turn towards Christ -- forever.
1. Repent from sinful living, a sinful heart, and sinful thoughts. Repent from all sin. Repentance means to turn away from sin. To change from once loving sin and freely sinning to hating sin and hating the idea of sinning. You absolutely must confront sin in your heart, mind, speech, actions, and attack it extremely aggressively. This means more than abstaining from sin, but also replacing it with Biblical thinking, concepts, actions, and love.
2. Repentance also means loving Christ and turning towards Him with your whole heart, thoughts and actions. Without true repentance (redirection) towards Christ, as defined here, then salvation has not occurred. Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - John 14:6
What is sin? Bible's definition of sin: click here.
Who is Christ? Bible's definition of Christ: click here.
All Human Beings Have Immortal Souls.
The Bible tells us that after death, we will face judgement for our lives here on earth (Heb. 9:27). We will spend eternity in either Hell or Heaven. Immediately, a question many want answered is, "How do I avoid Hell?" "What are the bare minimum requirements for me to escape eternal Hell, and enter eternal Heaven?" The goal here is to redirect to Christ! Nobody wants to go to Hell, nobody wants left out of Heaven, but that cannot be your motivation. Jesus Christ must first work in our heart and will, and regenerate us to loving Him entirely - that means above all else, with all our heart. This is called being reborn. You must first be born again and then you can have true, saving faith in Jesus Christ. To possess loving, will-changing faith in Christ requires belief in the proper, Biblical Christ, who He truly was, what He said He was -- only the the accurate truth of Christ. This kind of love starts with forsaking everything you ever loved before, and in that same moment, placing all of that love in Christ instead. More than any woman, man, sister, brother, friend, parents, idea, dream, ambition, place...everything. Love Christ with all the heart, all the strength, all the thinking, all the energy that you ever felt or had for anyone else, then give more than that. Give it all to Christ! Start there.
"The Gospel: The Most Terrifying Truth of Scripture..." - Paul Washer
What Does it Mean to Believe?
What does genuine belief in Christ look like?
How does a person know if their belief is true belief or merely hellbound profession?
True belief is the result of a heart change, a change of will, a transformed volition. True belief is love, faith, and obedience in Christ alone. True belief is never-ending. You know you have true belief when you continue to deepen in your faith when trials test you. You have true belief when you never stop loving Christ, and you cannot live as a continuous slave to sin (Rom 6:16-18). True belief in Christ never again is completely sold-out to sin, it never returns to that state of bondage. True belief is not temporary. True belief struggles in love for Christ forevermore, perhaps not perfectly, but endlessly. True belief is sold-out to Christ, and Him alone, permanently.
"We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." - Rom 6:6
"The Issue of Regeneration" - Paul Washer
"How To Recognize True Repentance" - Don Green
Repentance is a gift of God. (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim 2:25)
"Repentance onto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it onto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience." - Westminster Shorter Catechism
"That's repentance. [the Westminster quote above] You can't preach the Gospel without preaching that. There is no Gospel without repentance." - JMac, 1998 "The Characteristics of True Repentance"
"All sin must be given up or else you will never have Christ. All transgression must be renounced or else the gates of heaven must be barred against you. Let us remember then, that for repentance to be sincere, it must be entire repentance. True repentance is the turning of the heart as well as of the life. It is the giving up of the whole soul to God to be His forever and ever. It is the renunciation of the sins of the heart as well as the crimes of the life." - Charles H. Spurgeon
2 Tim 2:25 and Acts 11:18 tell us that repentance is a gift of God. If you can truly repent, it is a supernatural gift from God Himself! Thank God for His mercies!
Idd Company is a Christian media distributor dedicated to finding, producing, and spreading only the most sound doctrine for the purpose of evangelism. We share for free, and are committed to serving and advancing Christ's Kingdom.
The "Idd" stands for "I die daily." It is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:31, and is the motto of Idd Company. As believers, we are being sanctified every minute of every day, and each day Christ increases and we decrease. We affirm the mortification of our flesh and crucifixion of our self-desire, and we surrender daily to our loving Master, Jesus Christ.
Every day we live in danger of this hostile, Christ-hating world persecuting and attacking us for our beliefs. This has historically, repeatedly, and still today, resulted in the martyrdom of many of our brethren. At Idd Company we affirm following the lead of our Lord Christ and our ancestors who willingly put their lives in jeopardy and died for the truth and the sharing of the Gospel. We exhort all Christians to follow this Biblical example set before us that has paved our history in obedience to Scripture even unto death if God so chooses, and we "urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." - Romans 12:1.
Idd Company. Discover a free new social media powerhouse. We blaze the Gospel of Christ unequivocally.
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IMPORTANT! Watch this video!
"God's will is that you be saved, Spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, living righteously in the society, and that you be willing to suffer because you will not compromise the truth...and say thanks for everything."- JMac
What Does "Idd" Represent?
"Jesus said "come and follow me," and “If anyone is going to follow me, he must
deny himself,” - Die that Christ may live in me - "a clear reminder that the initial
call to Christ is an inevitable call to die. Such a call has been clear since the
beginning of Christianity. Four fishermen stood by a sea in the first century when Jesus approached them. “Follow me,” he said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” With that, Jesus beckoned these men to leave behind their professions, possessions, dreams, ambitions, family, friends, safety, and security. He bid them to abandon everything. “If anyone is going to follow me, he must deny himself,” Jesus would say repeatedly. In a world where everything revolves around self-protect yourself, promote yourself, preserve yourself, entertain yourself, comfort yourself, take care of yourself—Jesus said, “Slay yourself.” - David Platt, "Follow Me"
What Does it Mean to Truly Repent?
2000 years ago the Jews were expecting a lion but received a lamb. 2000 years later Christians are expecting a lamb but will receive a lion. When Messiah returns, He is no longer on a throne of mercy, but on a throne of justice and judgment. And ALL sin will be cut down...and this includes lukewarm, half-hearted, worldly, lust loving, un-repentive, blasphemous, religious church goers. Repent and whole-heartedly turn to God.
What Does Christianity Have to Offer?
1. Only Jesus Christ, His Word, His Mind, His Truth.
• In Christ is salvation, forgiveness, victory, sufficiency, everything. Jesus is God.
• "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." - 1 Cor 2:2
• "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Gal 2:20
•"But we have the mind of Christ." - 1 Cor 2:16
Only the Poor in spirit Will Go to Heaven (Matt 5:3).
"When he says this term "poor," I want you to understand that Jesus is talking about spiritual poverty here, he's not talking about material poverty. Jesus is talking about a spiritual dynamic which is in keeping with the summary theme of His preaching which is "repent," which is a spiritual command. What He is saying here is when you evaluate yourself in the light of God's law, in the light of God's character, when you evaluate your life in light of the person of Jesus Christ Himself -- you should understand, you should quickly acknowledge, that you do not deserve to be in His presence on your own merits.
There is nothing in you or in me that would commend ourselves to God. Just as being a creature we're not worthy of the uncreated Creator. And being sinners, we're not worthy of the presence of a Holy God. What He is expressing here is the idea of spiritual bankruptcy. The word "poor" was the same word that was used in a materiel sense to describe Lazarus when he was begging for crumbs at the rich man's table. He had no resources of his own. Here Jesus is saying spiritually what you and I have to realize, what we have to embrace with our minds is that we have no spiritual offering to God that would commend us to Him. All of your efforts, all of your religion, all of your rituals, do not fit you to be before a Holy God. You are spiritually bankrupt, and there is nothing you can do to improve your condition. That is what Jesus is saying here.
What he says is, there's two things here that's actually going on. One is He's making a declaration of the reality of it, whether you admit it or not that's the reality of it, we're all spiritually bankrupt. We could pool our collective spiritual resources here and we would have nothing to offer to God collectively, let alone individually. That's the reality of it. What He's driving at here, is for you to embrace that, to acknowledge that, from the bottom of your heart with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and you acknowledge that I have nothing to offer myself to God. There's nothing about me to commend myself to God.
So this idea of repentance exclude any personal pride, any personal self-reliance, as we approach God. We have nothing to commend ourselves to Him. We are beggars at the table of mercy with no rights to demand, no claims to call in, no chips to cash in if you wanna put it in a rather crass way, we have nothing. Repentance starts with knowing your own spiritual poverty.
But, as we go and see what Jesus says, repentance is far more than that act of intellectual comprehension. There is more to it than just agreeing with that factual statement. It starts there, but it is so much more than that." - Don Green, "How to Recognize True Repentance"
Number 3 in the A.W. Pink quote to the left is our temporal salvation, that is, the moment we are saved on earth -- the moment we truly believe. Notice the qualifying word, "truly." This is because so many people think they believe, but they believe in either their own invented version of Christ which is really not Christ at all, or some other false version of Christ which also is not the true Biblical Christ. We must believe in the correct Christ, the one of the Bible, the one who is God. Number 3 in the quote refers to the moment people most commonly inquire to when they ask, "When were you saved?" What they want to know is when did you first truly believe in the correct Christ. The way we know when that moment occurred is by our sold-out-to-Christ heart condition, and by our changing into a new creature who is no longer sold out to sin.
"3. actually so when they believed;" - Arthur W. Pink
Still Don't Understand Repentance?
