If a friend promises you a gift and tells you how to receive it, and an enemy promises you the same gift and tells you a different, much easier way to receive it, whose voice–friend or enemy–would you believe and obey? I am the voice of your Friend; the Institutional Church proclaims the voice of your enemy. The gift awaits at the end of the Lord’s strait, narrow way, not Satan’s wide, broad way. I am one who warns you repeatedly about listening to the wrong voice. Unfortunately, 99.9% of those who seek the gift (salvation) are listening to the wrong voice. I am one of a very few God-directed voices crying out in the spiritual wilderness that is modern day professing Christendom. As was the case with my ministerial predecessors (the prophets and apostles), very few are listening to God’s voice. Nevertheless, I will continue to speak His Words (voice) as long as He allows. Today I lift my voice to teach those with eyes to see and ears to hear about justification, without which there can be no salvation.

“If you don’t get Romans, Romans will get you,” I was once told. The subject of discussion was the Law, and God’s supposed destruction of it. At that time I believed the statement which I later learned was the voice of Satan. I was always told that the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church of Rome was about the death of the Law on the cross. Not so. Paul’s letter to the Romans concerned Justification, which he mentions 21 times. The apostles often wrote and spoke in response to a question concerning the Christian walk (lifestyle). In this case the question concerned the initial removal of one’s past sins. A popular belief in the Rome church was that one’s obedience to the Law (summarized in the Ten Commandments) would prompt God to forgive one’s past failure to obey them–to sin (1 Jn. 3:4). Paul tells the church in no uncertain terms that initial justification–the removal of all PAST sins–is granted on the basis of faith and grace, not on obedience to the Law. The message to us is that we can do nothing to warrant the initial act of justification in that it is awarded only through our faith and God’s grace.

Here is where Satan slips into the picture and pulls the Biblically ignorant off of God’s Truth track and onto his (Satan’s) counterfeit track, the episode involving Adam and Eve serves as our perfect example. As a result of the devil’s track change, church people have for some 1900 years believed that Paul was writing about salvation. The church’s (Satan’s) “truth” is that salvation is awarded on the spot at the moment one expresses faith in God’s grace. Multiplied billions of unsuspecting salvation seekers have been led away from the Lord’s strait gate, have not entered it and walked its narrow way. Instead they have and have been led through Satan’s wide gate and strolled along his broad way (Mat. 7:13,14). Believing that they had everything they needed and knew all they needed to know, they had only to stay on their present course until death or the rapture. Christ’s Words to the Church at Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-17) warns the end-time (31 A.D. to the present) church about that unquestioned “truth.”

True understanding of God’s Word comes ONLY through intense, continuous, relentless open-hearted study of the Bible (Isa. 28:9,10,13). For this reason Paul told Timothy the evangelist that he must study the Scriptures in order to be “approved by God” (2 Tim. 2:15). If an ordained, Paul-taught and approved minister of God had to study the Word to keep himself in God’s good graces, what does this say about everyone else? Though unmentioned, Timothy knew he had to believe and obey what he learned in order to be approved by the Lord. Faith without works, He tells us in James 2:14,18,20,24,26, is dead faith that cannot save the soul.

Initial justification is awarded by faith and grace. However, to REMAIN JUSTIFIED one must obey the Law. Paul makes this perfectly clear in Romans 2:13 where we are told that it is not those who hear the Law who are just(ified) in the eyes of the Lord, that only he who obeys the Law will (remain) justified. To obey (be a doer of) the Law is to have no sin–to be righteous. One who continues to sin (break the Law) after being justified is a false believer. Once having ones past sins forgiven, one must keep sin out of his life. The Lord, speaking through the Apostle John, tells us that he who sins is of the devil (1 Jn. 3:8) and therefore cannot be of God. In verse five he tells us that Jesus came to take sin out of our lives, for IN HIM (where the true saint lives spiritually) THERE IS NO SIN. Therefore, if we sin we cannot be IN HIM. In verse 6 John writes that he who lives IN HIM does not sin. In verse seven we are told that we must be righteous (sinless) because Christ is righteous–WE MUST BE LIKE CHRIST (1 Jn. 2:6). In verse nine God says through John that whoever is begotten of God DOES NOT SIN, for His seed (Word) remains in him, meaning that it is believed and obeyed by him, which eliminates sin. In 1 John 2:24 we find a general, all-inclusive statement that summarizes the above stated Truth: “… LET that (Word/gospel) abide in you (saints) which you heard from the beginning. IF that which you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will abide in the Son and in the Father.” God’s Word must abide in us–must be believed and obeyed by us–in order to remain in the Father and the Son. We must be doers of the Word/Law/gospel/Truth and not hearers only. To not obey the Word is to deceive ourselves (Jam. 1:22). EVERYTHING COMES BACK TO LEARNING, BELIEVING AND OBEYING THE WORD OF GOD. Anything less is doing service to Satan and deceiving ourselves..

Note in Romans 3:25 that initial justification concerns ONLY the removal of one’s PAST sins. From that moment on THE LAW DOMINATES THE BELIEVER’S LIFE UNTIL DEATH. As Jesus said in Matthew 10:22, ONLY those who remain in good standing with Him–remain justified–until the end will be saved. As the Lord tells us repeatedly, in order to retail one’s justification one must keep sin out of his life for “sin is the transgression (breaking) of the Law” (1 Jn. 3:4). One can remain justified–sinless/righteous–only by quitting sin totally, meaning to obey God’s Law without fail. God and Christ abide in a saint in the form of the Holy Spirit. Sin (Law-breaking–iniquity) separates us from God (Isa. 59:2), meaning His Spirit (power–Lk. 1:35). Sin causes Him to remove His Holy Spirit from us. This allows Satan full access to us. Without God’s Spirit abiding in us we have no chance against him. This is why one sin leads to another, then another, ad infinitum, King David being the perfect example. IF a true saint happens to sin (1 Jn. 2:1) he has an advocate with the Father–Jesus Christ the righteous. Jesus is the mediator between the truly repentant saint and the Father (1 Tim. 2:5). However, as He tells us in Romans 2:5 and Hebrews 6:1-6, if the believer continues to sin after receiving justification, his sins are not forgiven. Instead they accumulate along with God’s wrath which He will pour out on the “sinner saved by grace” on the Day of Judgment. Note that Paul is addressing those in the church. THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN TO THE CHURCH ABOUT THE CHURCH. MUCH OF WHAT IS WRITTEN IS IN THE FORM OF WARNINGS.

Justification summary: Initial justification is awarded by God based on His grace and our faith. In order to maintain justification we must obey His Law. To break any part of that Law is to sin (Jam. 2:10), which separates us from Him and makes us unrighteous. The unrighteous are not in Him in that there is no sin in Him. Whether one is justified and remains justified is a matter of choice. As one who has experienced the removal of the Holy Spirit due to sin, I can assure the reader that what is written above is true. L.J.