There's two reasons, really, primarily, that it's so
powerful.
One is that it's built on half-truth,
much of it is.
And that's the most powerful deception, is when
there's truth involved.
So they'll take some portion of truth, which
we all understand, oh, that's a true thing.
And they will build on that.
But from that pure foundation, then they add
all this other junk.
And they twist and corrupt what began as
a pure truth.
Now, in this case, for this lie, the
truth is that we are saved by grace.
That is true, absolutely true.
The opposite of that is what Paul was
constantly battling in his day, some 30, 40,
50 years before this, which was the lie
of legalism that the Judaizers brought forth.
So Paul was, you know, that was the
great heresy of his day.
And he fought it with all his heart.
And some of the strong things he says
about grace are to refute that lie on
the other side, see?
So now that Paul is gone, Jerusalem has
been decimated by the Romans.
And life has gone on almost 30 years
after Jerusalem is destroyed.
Judaism, as it was, is gone.
So Judaizers are gone.
So now the enemy brings in this lie
of antinomianism through the Greek culture.
Antinomianism just means without the law.
So now it's on the other side of
the spectrum.
So there's a truth there that we're saved
by grace.
But there's also another half to that.
It isn't just that.
The other part of that is if the
Holy Spirit of God is living within you,
there is something compelling you to live a
holy life, to obey God, and to say
that it's all grace, and to totally focus
on that makes it into a lie.
Because it's not the whole truth.
It's part of the truth, absolutely, but it's
not the whole truth.
A.W. Tozer said, Salvation without obedience is
a self-contradictory impossibility because the essence of
sin is rebellion against divine authority.
You know, you can be in unrepentant sin
in the evangelical church.
You can do that, but you can't do
it in God's kingdom.