The Religious Mind by Joe La Bianca

I met a religious friend and tried to tell him the gospel. He didn’t understand. There was a sort of spiritual blindness that was keeping him from understanding something that my 5 year old daughter understands.
I don’t say this to be mean. It’s just true. Maybe I am a poor communicator but I got nowhere with this person. He has so much other stuff in his mind that is robbing him by way of distraction. He had different, religious definitions to practically everything I said. It was like I was speaking another language.
If I say a word, and if your definition of that word is different than mine, then you will not understand me. For instance, I say grace and you think it means something other than what I think it means. We can’t understand each other because our foundations are not the same. We must build on the same basement to have a house of reason and oneness. If our foundations are different, everything I say after that will be misapplied and seem confusing and nonsensical. But if we start at the same place, the conversation will be continuous and meaningful.
This man told me that I was raising up the doctrine of grace by faith above other more important doctrines. I told him that there are no other doctrines, that grace through faith is the only doctrine. He didn’t understand me because he doesn’t know what grace is.
He thinks that grace is God forgiving us whenever we sin. This understanding of grace only accounts for those times that we need forgiveness. This is not only limited, it is erroneous. Grace isn’t applicable whenever we need God. Grace doesn’t pop into action in those times when we think we’ve sinned. It does not have part time relevance. This understanding of grace is a religious, non-scriptural understanding. If grace is only for when we sin, how do we exist in other times? Do we live in God without grace? If so, then how? Through works? God forbid! We do not “use” God’s grace for periodic forgiveness.
Grace is Jesus coming to earth. Grace is Jesus living the perfect life for us. Grace is Jesus never sinning and then dying for our sins. Grace is Christ’s resurrection from the grave. Grace is our being accepted by God, not because of our goodness, but because of the goodness of Jesus. Grace is God giving us His Holy Spirit. Grace is our standing in God through Jesus, as forgiven children of our Heavenly Father. In a word, Grace is Jesus being our Savior. I’ll say it again so you will remember. Grace is Jesus being our Savior. We gain access into this grace by just believing in the cross of Jesus.
My friend then said that we shouldn’t go in a cave like the Gnostics. I didn’t make the connection. Why are Gnostics in caves? He meant the Essenes. Those were the people who abandoned society and went into caves. There were Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. We know about the first two from the Bible, but not much about the Essenes. This is because, well, they went into caves. But why was he talking about the Essenes anyway?
After sleeping on it I realized why he accused me of going in a cave. The man is works-oriented. All he can think of is doing works for God. So when I said we are saved and sanctified by faith without works like Paul said, he immediately assumed I was a cave dweller that did nothing for the Lord. He thinks of works, I do not. That’s why I didn’t make the connection. His mind is on what he does for God, mine is not. HMMM, what does that sound like? Oh, I know! The sheep and the goats that Jesus spoke of. The goats appealed to their works. The sheep didn’t remember anything they did. The sheep were just sheep, and did not know what they were doing. The goats were goats and needed to convince themselves, and God, that they were sheep. If you go to bed every night and wonder if you did enough for God that day, you are a goat.
My religious friend and I were coming from separate places. I was coming from the point of the gospel. His point was religion. I was building on Christ. He was building on church doctrine. I was simple in my belief, which was not diverted from the cross. His belief was an endless diversion of “church things” that took his attention away from the Savior.
He wanted to reach the world for Christ without Christ. He wanted to preach a message of endless duty, church teachings, rules for discipline, and anything else that pastors will think up in order to fill their churches so that they can build bigger buildings from donations. I wanted people to be saved by Jesus, and to let their lives be influenced by God and not by me.
Religious people end up working for their church instead of for the Savior. They listen to all sorts of teachings that are biblically misinterpreted. Yes, they get these teachings from the Bible, or at least they base them on the Bible, but the problem is they misunderstand the Bible and go on to teach things they shouldn’t.
Do you realize that we are not under most of the
Bible? We are not under the law or the prophets that pointed to the law. We are not under all of the “law things” that Jesus said, or the Jewish epistles. We are under grace, and you can learn of grace in the letters of Paul. Jesus gave Paul all that Paul wrote in his letters, so you are listening to Christ when you listen to Paul. It was Christ’s will that His word would be brought to light by the preaching of Paul, Titus 1: 3.
If you disagree with me about being under the law that Moses wrote, and the law that the Prophets pointed to, and if you want to be under the law, then….you….are….cursed. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do EVERYTHING written in the book of the law. Everything means both the moral law and the ceremonial law. Clearly no one is justified by the law. Rather, righteousness comes by faith, in opposition to obeying commandments.
If you are a Christian and you have doubts about this, I ask you, “What have you been believing in?” This should be your hallmark doctrine. You should be preaching this Good News. For everything else is no good news, just futile attempts to be a sheep. Check yourself to see if you are in the faith.
You will never understand Paul if you are a religious thinker. These religious people worship the Bible, but the first Christians did not have a leather bound, “words of Christ in red” Bible made by Zondervan. Do you think that the Galatians had the old and new testaments in a book? No!! But they did have the gospel that was preached to them by Paul. This is the gospel that saved them. This is the only thing they were under. And since Paul is the apostle to the nations, it is the only thing we are under.
I will tell you the gospel now. If you believe it, you will be as saved as you will ever be. You can never add to your salvation by learning more and more church stuff. You can only ruin it. And after you believe this gospel and want to read the Bible, read it from the foundation of the gospel and not from the traditions of churches, or you will turn into my religious friend.
Now the gospel: Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, He was buried and on the third day He rose from the dead. Believe this simple sentence if you want. It will set you free. Or, if you want, you can choose to become religious. It will lock you up.