Perpetual Self-Inventory

Jesus said, “7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: 8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. 9 And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ” (Matt. 15:7-9). When we slid outside of what the scripture teaches and begin teaching what we think, we become hypocrites. Teaching, practicing “religion”, that is subjective is purely a vain practice which does not honor Christ.

Every denomination that teaches even one thing different than the written gospel is saying, “my will, not thy will”. My way is the better way. They think in their own minds that they are justified by numbers. That is, because their congregation is larger than another they think, “we must be right”, which is also saying God is wrong. But we must remember that Jesus did say wide is the gate that leads to distruction and many will go that way, but narrow and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matt. 7:13-14).

To avoid the wide gate we must practice self examination daily. Paul wrote, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.”  (2 Corinthians 13:5).

We must remember those who enter the wide gate mostly do so because of the false teachers. One such teacher from the 1500’s is John Calvin. Most people in the denominational world of religion don’t even know that they are following Calvin’s teaching and that’s because it is like diabetes, it is a silent killer. He taught 5 tenents: (1) Total Depravity, (2) Unconditional Election, (3) Limited Atonement, (4) Irresistible Grace, and (5) Perseverance of the Saints.

We will focus here on “The Perseverance of the Saints”: The claim is the elect of God are sanctified by the Spirit and as a result of that sanctification, because of their faith in Jesus, they are imputed with righteousness from God through Christ. This is a horrible doctrine because it teaches people that you cannot fall from grace. No matter how wicked you are, no matter how evil you are, you are always going to be saved. Calvin teaches that the righteousness of Christ is imputed on the believer. Impute means to ascribe (righteousness) to someone by virtue of a similar quality in another. Because Jesus is Holy, blameless, and righteous – so is the believer. Because Jesus cannot fall, thus the believer cannot fall.

Calvinism, teach of two imputations: The first imputation is that we all have the sin of Adam transferred to us. Because Adam sinned we are all born in sin. The second, Christ’s blood saved us therefore we are clothed with His righteousness therefore, God cannot see your sin ever.

I hope you’ll listen in as we turn to the scriptre to examine this teaching, whether it is true or false. Then examine ourselves to be sure we are practicing the right faith, the truth according to God. . .