Living by Grace

Two beliefs run on one mistake: that sharing a prayer request gets God's attention and a quicker answer, and that making a need known is weak faith or manipulation. Both borrow Israel's kingdom machinery of importunity, numbers, and pooling. The Body already has access; disclosure is fellowship, not a lever, and the sin lies only in the manner.

The Bible speaks about marriage to mankind before the law, to Israel under the law and the kingdom, and to the Body of Christ under grace. Read as one rule to one people, it binds commandments God never gave us. Rightly divided, the Lord's strict word to Israel and Paul's word of grace each fall into place — and grace gives far more than the law.

Philippians 2:14-15 rightly divided. The command to do all things without murmurings touches the walk, not the standing. You are a son of God and a light already, by grace. Murmuring cannot dim the light; it only gives the world a complaint and muffles the word of life you hold forth.

Why would God create man, knowing he would fall — and would it not have been kinder never to create at all? Answered on the only ground where it can be answered, the revelation given to Paul: God made the world to display the exceeding riches of His grace, and grace must have something to redeem.

Can a saved person go on in the works of the flesh and still be saved? The question is really two: is he still saved, and what does it cost him? Paul's own warnings, the carnal Corinthians, and the answer to the Lordship lifestyle argument give a clear, rightly divided reply — security intact, walk and reward addressed honestly.

Paul calls his own writings the commandments of the Lord, yet says we are not under law but under grace. Both stand. A law conditions standing on performance and curses failure; Paul's commandments are given to sons already accepted, touch the walk but never the standing, come with the Spirit's power, and are fulfilled in liberty and love.

Recognizing indoctrination is the first work; recovering from it is the road. Written for two who walk it — the one who was indoctrinated and the one who also taught from that position — it rebuilds on the rightly divided word: the security that frees you to examine, making Paul the measure, the renewing of the mind, and where you will be fed.

Does the Bible command total abstinence from alcohol? The favorite prooftexts — the grape juice at Cana, the kings of Proverbs 31, the woe of Habakkuk 2 — are examined in context, alongside God's own command of a strong drink offering, and the liberty the Body of Christ has under grace, rightly divided.