Your first encounter with a doctrine goes a
long way in determining your impression of it. I used to have the impression
that the “word of faith’ doctrine was all about arrogance and loudness, and
“holiness” means being sullen and cold-hearted. This was because my first
encounters with these doctrines were not from the scriptures, but from their
supposed votaries.
It also matters the form of a doctrine that you
heard at first. If your first contact with it was from a deviant heretic, you
may end up being deceived – or conversely, conclude everyone following that
doctrine is deceived.
Even when you did hear the truth, you need to
ascertain whether what you heard was also the whole truth and nothing
but the truth.
These are some of the factors we need to
consider if we’re to make good progress in studying “Grace”. In my little
experience speaking on the theme of Grace, one question seems guaranteed to
come up: sexual immorality. As sure as B follows A, once it’s question time,
you’re sure to start hearing, “What if…”,
“What about …”, “So you mean …”, “Are you saying that…”, and you can fill
the ellipses with “porn”, “fornication”, “infidelity”, etc. In one event I
attended, I almost exclaimed, “Wow, you guys must have had a terrible first
contact with Grace!”
And unfortunately, many of us still carry these
and other wrong notions about Grace; and we’re on both sides of the aisle. I
also had my wrong understandings, one of which was looking at Grace as a doctrine, similar to “Holiness”,
“Prosperity”, “Word of Faith”, etc.
Beloved, if we’re to not shortchange ourselves
from the riches and blessings found in the Word of God, we must make sure our
conclusions and theologies derived from it are not clouded or influenced by our
culture, personal experience, or outright wrong information.
AMEN.
More Blessings await
you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN
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