REIGN OF GRACE NEWSLETTER
      Vol. 4, No. 8  August, 2002

 The lead article in this issue is another installment on the series “Christian Morality and Ethics.”  This one deals specifically with the matter of Godly sorrow over sin which brings believers to seek to obey God and fight sin as motivated by grace and not legalism.  The other article is entitled “The New Gnostics.”  This article deals with a prevailing problem amongst those who claim to preach sovereign grace but who promote what they call preaching Christ or preaching His Person over and above the doctrine of Christ.  As always, we invite any questions, comments, or suggestions.

   Bill Parker, pastor
   Eager Avenue Grace Church

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      CHRISTIAN MORALITY, THE PURGED CONSCIENCE, AND GODLY SORROW UNTO REPENTANCE

 All who claim to be Christians desire in some degree to be people characterized by morality.  How then are we to deal with the problem of immorality?  This is not an easy question to answer.  And when we consider the Biblical record of some of God’s most admired saints, like King David, a man after God’s own heart, committing some of the most immoral acts imaginable, the problem becomes more complex.  Man’s answers are worse than the problem.  Some conclude that as we are all sinners and do immoral things, salvation  is doing enough good works to outweigh the bad.  Other admit we cannot do enough good works to earn salvation, but what we can do is confess our sins, repent, and do penance. Many who claim to be Christian say we must accept Jesus as our personal savior, then confess, repent, and do penance.  The Bible calls this “going about to establish a righteousness of their own” (Romans 10:3).  This appears righteous and moral to men, but it is an abomination to God.

                                                                 THE ISSUES OF FREE GRACE
 
 True Christianity reveals the only remedy for sin to be God’s grace in His provision of righteousness by the Lord Jesus Christ.  True grace teaches God can only save sinners if His holy law and inflexible justice are satisfied.  No amount of works done by a sinner, and no amount of confession and repentance, can atone for sin.  One sin imputed (legally charged) to a sinner demands eternal damnation.  God’s grace teaches that the only hope for any sinner is a way in which God can be holy and just and not impute sin to the sinner.  God’s Gospel, therefore, reveals how God appointed His Son to be the mediator of the covenant of grace.  God the Father conditioned the salvation of His elect upon Christ and sent Him into the world as their representative and surety to become incarnate, obey the law perfectly, and to have their sins imputed to Him.  The Gospel reveals how Christ suffered, bled, and died on the cross of Calvary, and in His obedience unto death established an everlasting righteousness of infinite value to be imputed to His people.  Based on Christ’s righteousness imputed to sinners, God saves, blesses, communes with, and entitles sinners to salvation, while at the same time, He remains holy, just, and righteous.  In Christ He can be both a just God and a Savior.

 The Gospel shows how sinners are saved, forgiven, and preserved for eternal life based on Christ’s righteousness alone.  This includes the non-imputation of sins to the sinner (Psalm 32:1-2; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21).  It stands to reason if God imputed these sins to Christ, He cannot justly impute them to the believing sinner (Romans 8:31-34).  The sinner’s best efforts to keep the law before and after salvation are totally excluded from the ground of attaining or maintaining salvation.  The Gospel reveals how Christ’s righteousness alone insures all of salvation, including the work of the Holy Spirit within the sinner, before he begins to try to serve God.  The Gospel excludes the sinner’s best efforts to keep the law and exposes such efforts aimed at attaining or maintaining salvation to be wicked in God’s sight because they are opposed to the glory of God and the preeminence of Christ.

                                                 A COMMON CHARGE AGAINST GRACE

 The clear preaching of God’s grace always risks the charge from self-righteous religionists of giving free rein for people to sin as much as they want without any motivation to obedience or restraint from sin.  Legal religionists say, “You are saying we don’t have to live holy lives; it doesn’t matter what we do.  You give people license to sin.  You don’t preach man’s responsibility to obey God’s commandments.”  This objection is natural considering we all by nature are legalists.  All we know by nature is to try to attain and/or maintain salvation by our efforts to keep the law of God.  Some cover themselves under a cleverly disguised system of works by claiming it is God who enables them by His grace to meet the conditions required to attain or maintain salvation.  They call this grace, but it is merely a more subtle form of legalism.

 Self-righteous religionists see the preaching of free grace as removing all motives for obedience and all restraints from sin.  Grace does remove all legal motives and restraints.  When we first hear God’s grace in Christ, we see that it removes our natural legal motives to obey God and fight sin, therefore, we conclude that this doctrine promotes licentiousness and not obedience.  This is wrong.  Salvation by God’s sovereign grace removes all legal motives and restraints, but in a believer it replaces these sinful motives with an infinitely more noble motive, a higher morality and ethic, the motive and restraints of grace revealed in love to God and gratitude for His grace.

 It is sad to say but this charge of licentiousness is sometimes promoted by the irresponsible behavior of believers.  King David’s sin with Bathsheba gave “occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme” (2 Sam. 12:14).  When true believers give in to sin in these areas and/or use their liberty in Christ to cover or excuse sin and licentiousness, they promote these charges against the Gospel and lead people to conclude that there is nothing to the God we worship and serve, the Christ we trust, and nothing to our Gospel and our profession of faith.  This is why James wrote, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” (James 2:20).

 We must consider the issue of motivations and restraints.  How are God’s true preachers to promote morality and restrain from immorality?  There are two things of which we must be constantly reminded:  (1) God the Holy Spirit never commands or promotes obedience with legalism, and (2) God the Holy Spirit never promotes licentiousness with liberty.  God the Holy Spirit always commands and promotes obedience with grace, and He always forbids licentiousness in light of the believer’s  liberty.  Christian liberty is not freedom to break God’s law and give in to the passions of sin.  It is freedom to serve God as one who has already attained and fully entitled to all of salvation based on the righteousness of Christ freely imputed and received by faith.

 This is contrary to our natural thoughts.  It  seems right for forgiveness of sins, restoration to God’s favor and fellowship, to come at the cost of confession and repentance.  By nature men cannot conceive of God’s free and unconditional forgiveness based totally on the righteousness of another.  This is what God’s people see and have received by the Spirit of God – “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are FREELY given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12).  This is what the “natural man” will not receive (1 Cor. 2:14).  His self-righteousness and religious pride will not let him receive such blessings as the forgiveness of sin unconditionally.  He reasons, “There must be something I must do to obtain these blessings.  All of it cannot be mine totally based on the righteousness of another.”  We see in King David, for example, that it was not the prospect of attaining forgiveness that resulted in his confession and repentance.  It was the realization of forgiveness already obtained by God’s grace in Christ Jesus that resulted in confession and repentance (2 Sam. 12:7-13).

 The argument then is not whether or not true Christians should promote obedience and avoid sin.  True children of God should be the most obedient, moral, dedicated, zealous, and virtuous people on earth.  We who have been given the abundance of God’s grace in Christ Jesus have so much for which to be thankful.  We ought to strive to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We ought to be so grateful to God who has blessed us freely and unconditionally in Christ.  We ought to express our love and gratitude in acts and deeds of obedience as we seek to be conformed to Christ, our perfect example of love and obedience.

                                                             GODLY SORROW OVER SIN

 A believer who uses grace to excuse disobedience, liberty to condone and rationalize licentiousness,  is one of the most offensive people on earth.  He is a disobedient, ungrateful child.  This is why he must be recovered, not with legal threats of punishment or mercenary promises of earned reward(s), but with the assurances of grace (Galatians 6:1).  This, and only this, will result in true godly sorrow over sin that will result in repentance to deliverance from such thoughts and practices (2 Corinthians 7:10a).  Recovery by legalism will only result in “the sorrow of the world” that results in death (2 Corinthians 7:10b), because it brings about legal repentance and fruit unto death.  The person who claims to believe the Gospel but who cannot be recovered graciously unto godly sorrow reveals he is not a true believer and never has been.

 Godly sorrow over sin is the product of a purged conscience in light of the assurances of faith in Christ according to the Gospel of God’s grace.  It is the vexation  of a believer’s conscience, not over the legal guilt and defilement of sin as if he could be brought back under condemnation and separated from God, but over remaining sin in his character and conduct (Rom. 7:14-25).  Since his conscience has been purged from the legal guilt and defilement of sin, the believer is to be assured that he is in a state of justification and life based on the fact that God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to him and that God can never again impute the legal guilt and defilement of sin to him.  Christ has redeemed him from the curse of the law by shedding His precious blood (Gal. 3:13).  The believer can never again be condemned or separated from God.  He is eternally saved and has “no more conscience of sins” as to the legal guilt, defilement, and dominion of sins.  He does, however, have a keen awareness of the remaining sins of his character and conduct.  This awareness of remaining sin is the source of Godly sorrow and is meant to  inspire and motivate him to seek to mortify all sin.  This sense of sin is an awareness of the powerful presence and influence of sin over all that he thinks and does in seeking to love God perfectly and love his neighbor as himself.  It is that which he confesses continually before God and men and that which makes Christ and His righteousness more precious (Phil. 3:7-10; 1 Pet. 2:7).  It is that which makes him continually thankful that God cannot and will not impute the guilt and the defilement of sin to him (Ps. 32:1-2; 130:3-4; 1 John 1:7–2:2).

 Here is where we see the difference between Godly sorrow over sin motivated by the Holy Spirit and legal sorrow motivated by the natural conscience.  Godly sorrow will seek and find relief only in Christ and His blood.  It will never cause us to find relief in our confessions, repentance, or obedience.  Godly sorrow is an awareness of remaining sin, a confession and ashamedness over sin, without legalism and self-righteousness.  In the fight against the powerful influence of sin in our character and conduct, we must also continually fight against legal and self-righteous thoughts.  Christian ethics teaches that legalism and self-righteousness are the worst of sins.  Legalism and self-righteousness are an assault upon and offense to the redemptive glory of God as well as a reproach upon both the Person and atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is why we who are saved by the grace of God must be made continually aware that even with all the remaining sins of our character and conduct, God cannot impute the guilt and the defilement of sins to our persons.  God cannot because He is a just God and a Savior.  He imputed the guilt and the defilement of our sins to Christ, and Christ satisfied law and justice for those sins (Rom. 8:33-39).

 Being assured of this is a matter of faith (believing and walking by God’s Word), and it is the testimony of the cleansed, purged, conscience.  Without this faith and testimony, all confessions of, sorrow over, struggles with, and attempts to mortify sin are no more than the legal and self-righteous efforts of lost sinners, unbelievers, and the fruits of a legal, corrupt, and evil conscience.  This kind of sorrow always leads sinners to seek relief from sin somewhere other than the grace of God and the blood of Christ.  When a sinner, under a sincere and acute awareness of his sinfulness, fears condemnation over the guilt of sin and separation from God over the defilement of sin, he is not looking to and resting in Christ.  He will most always seek relief, assurance, and comfort elsewhere.  He will always seek to quiet his defiled conscience with his confessions, sorrow and shame, promises to do better, and efforts to repent and obey.  This is legalism, an abomination unto God.  It is the opposite of Godly sorrow over sin and opposed to Christian morality and ethics.

 Also, in the fight against the powerful influence of sin in our character and conduct, we must also be able to distinguish between our state before God in Christ and the condition of our character and conduct in this present world.  As to our state before God in Christ we as believers are “holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:” (Col. 1:22).  “Holy” means the legal defilement of sin that separated us from God has been totally and eternally removed by Christ.  “Unblameable” means the legal guilt of sin that kept us condemned and under God’s wrath has been totally and eternally removed by Christ.  “Unreproveable” means that in Christ we are everything we ought to be and will be.  In Christ we are perfect with no room for correction or improvement.  Some people claim that these blessings are future and not present for a believer, but God that as Christ is, “so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).  God tells every believing sinner to consider himself “freed from sin” (Rom. 6:7) and to reckon himself to be “dead indeed unto sin” (Rom. 6:11) just as Christ, his representative and substitute, is dead unto sin (Rom. 6:9-10).  Christ did not become dead to sin as to His character and conduct.  As to His character and conduct He did no sin and knew no sin.  The only way He became dead to sin was as to the legal guilt and defilement of the sins of God’s elect imputed (legally charged or accounted) to Him.  He, therefore, died unto the guilt and the defilement of sin, so that sin could no longer have dominion over Him.  When God’s elect are brought under the Gospel, and when God imputes Christ’s righteousness to them, cleanses them by the blood of Christ, and brings them to faith in Christ and repentance of dead works and idolatry, they become dead to the guilt and defilement of sins and no longer under the dominion of sin.  They become holy, unblameable, and unreproveable as to their state, and this can never change.  It is eternal salvation by God’s grace, and the believer’s character and conduct must be totally excluded from the ground of attaining or maintaining this state.

 God’s testimony and our own experience as believers tell us that our character and conduct do not yet match our state.  As we are holy, unblameable, and unreproveable as to our state in Christ, our character and conduct in this life are anything but holy.  Our character and conduct in this life are anything but unblameable.  When we sin, we are to be blamed because we commit the sin.  We cannot blame God (James 1:13-14).  Our character and conduct in this life are anything but unreproveable.  We all have need for improvement in every area of loving God and our neighbor.  The standard and goal of our obedience is perfect conformity to Christ.  God says that we are to strive after holiness and not to settle for less (Matt. 5:48; 1 Pet. 1:15-16).  There are three things we must keep in mind in light of this goal:

 (1) We will never attain holiness in character and conduct in this life.  Some people ask, “Then why should we try if we cannot attain it in this life?”  Christian morality and ethics, as well as the cleansed conscience, never give the believer excuses to give up trying to attain holiness even though he cannot reach it in this life.  God’s purpose in leaving us in this condition here on earth will be discussed later, but God commands His children to seek after holiness, to try to imitate Christ.  It is true we cannot attain this perfectly in this life, but it also true that we can now, as believers, try without legalism.  Our efforts to obey God and mortify remaining sin without legalism honor God, exalt Christ, and remove all grounds for boasting in ourselves.  They also promote the glory of God in the salvation of sinners (Matt. 5:16) and testify that our claim of faith and love is genuine.

 (2) We will one day attain the goal of holiness in character and conduct.  This will be realized when we are glorified with Christ.  We who are now in a state of justification and life, but who are yet plagued with remaining sin, will then be perfectly conformed to Christ and perfectly holy, without sin, in our character and conduct (Rom. 8:29-30).  Attaining this goal in glory is not attributed to our efforts to obey God but to the grace and power of God and based on the righteousness of Christ.

 (3) Our efforts to be conformed to Christ, to be holy, to fight and mortify all sin in our character and conduct, do not make us holier, more saved, or more sanctified.  When we consider our character and conduct, we must realize that there are degrees of obedience, of conformity to Christ, of growth in grace and in knowledge.  There are degrees of improvement.  There are, however, no degrees of holiness, salvation, and sanctification.  Anything less that perfection is sinful and unholy.  Many speak of progressive holiness and progressive sanctification, but these are not biblical terms.  We who are saved by the grace of God are made holy as to our state by the merits of Christ’s obedience and death, not by our works and efforts.  We are sanctified by the Father in divine election.  We are sanctified by Christ in His atoning work to save us from our sins.  We are sanctified by the Holy Spirit when He gives us spiritual life and brings us to faith and repentance in the new birth, but even this is not a progressive work.  From there we as believers are to grow,  fight sin, seek to obey and improve, not to become holier, not to be saved, and not to be sanctified, but because we are already holy, saved, and sanctified by the grace of God.  We are never to fight sin and seek to obey God to become saints but because we have already been made saints by the grace of God in Christ.

 All of this is a matter of faith and must be settled in our hearts, our consciences, before we can obey God acceptably and promote Godly sorrow over sin.  It is this Godly sorrow over sin in light of God’s marvelous grace towards us in Christ that the Holy Spirit uses to convict us without legalism and motivate us to be ashamed of our sins, to repent and do better in seeking to love God and our neighbor more than we do.  Every true believer should ask himself, “How fervent and zealous was I when I was a lost legalists?  How fervent and zealous am I now as a sinner saved by grace?”  Consider the power of grace as a motivation for obedience, and this will show us how ashamed we ought to be that we are not more obedient, more fervent and zealous, more sorrowful over remaining sin in our character and conduct.

 It has become popular for many who claim to believe the Gospel of God’s sovereign grace to promote a saving knowledge of Christ apart from knowledge and understanding of the doctrine of Christ.  Some promote this by disparaging the doctrines of God’s Word and by claiming they were saved before they heard its doctrine.  “Doctrine,” they say, “is a matter of growth after one comes to know Christ.”  Others promote it by attacking any who would say the doctrine of Christ is necessary as the means and instrument by which the Holy Spirit brings sinners to salvation.  They accuse any who do not buy into their view of being “know-it-alls” and “intellectual Pharisees.”  They call us “gnostics” and accuse us of preaching knowledge as a condition for salvation, or that a person has to know all theology and doctrine before salvation.  They say we preach doctrine but not the Person of Christ, or that we place the Person of Christ in the background and give honor only to His work, His righteousness.  These charges are ridiculous and have no foundation in truth, but it becomes typical of the arguments fostered by those who refuse to face the facts of Scripture.

 The truth is that these accusers are more in tune with Gnosticism than they realize.  They are, in essence, the new Gnostics.  Who were the Gnostics?  The Gnostics were a varied group with many factions and different beliefs, but the ones with which we are concerned were a group of false Christians who claimed to have a special and personal knowledge of Christ.  The term gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis which for the Gnostics came to mean a special, indescribable, undefinable, and personal knowledge of the divine.  The problem with these Gnostics was that their claim of special knowledge of Christ was not supported by the doctrine of Christ as revealed in the Word of God.  For example, the Apostle John dealt with some who claimed to know Christ but who denied the doctrine of His humanity (cf. 1 John 4:3).  This is why John concluded in 2 John 9 , “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God.  He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.”

 These new Gnostics accuse us of being Gnostics because we claim to know some things in the doctrine of Christ and that this basic knowledge is necessary in the salvation of sinners as it is doctrine and knowledge revealed in the most basic Gospel.  Many teach that the Apostle John in his first epistle was exposing the Gnostics of his day who would say, “We know ...; we know ...”  But John was not exposing those who had knowledge, and he was not belittling true knowledge of Christ based on right doctrine.  John addressed believers over twenty times as those who know the issues of salvation.  These new Gnostics claim to have knowledge.  They claim to know and love Christ.  It is not knowledge itself they disparage, but knowledge based on right doctrine as opposed to their own special, subjective, undefinable knowledge.

 One thing is certain – Any claim of a special, personal knowledge and relationship with Christ that cannot be supported by the doctrine of Christ’s Person and work as revealed in the Bible is presumption.  Some accuse us of complicating the simple gospel with deep doctrine that confuses people.  “The gospel,” they assert, “is no more and no less than Christ.”  Others take great pains to place a dividing line between the Person of Christ, the doctrine of Christ, and the work of Christ.  They claim, “It is Christ who saves, not doctrine,” or “We preach and trust a Person, not doctrine.”  Some even go so far as to declare that in salvation we come to the Person of Christ and not to the work of Christ.  The following article entitled “Christ Himself is Salvation” appeared in a bulletin from a “sovereign grace” pastor and is a good example of this modern-day gnosticism –

 “‘The Lord is my light and my salvation.’  It is well to see salvation in the work, life, and death of Christ; but we must never forget that the essence of salvation lies in His Person.  HE HIMSELF IS SALVATION!  It is WHO He is which gives virtue to WHAT He does.  We are bidden to come, not to His work, but to Himself.  The gospel losses (sic) much of its sweetness when the PERSON of Christ is put in the background and honor is given only to His work.”

 The reason an article like this promotes a current trend towards Gnosticism is that for many the preaching of Christ and coming to the Person of Christ is no more than subjective, personal experience that cannot be defined by truth and doctrine.  For them saving knowledge of Christ has nothing to do with hearing, understanding, and believing of the truth as presented in the doctrine of Christ.  They have, in some way they cannot describe, reached the gnosis, that indescribable, personal knowledge of Christ that takes precedence over doctrine.  They cannot explain it.  They can only tell a person, “If  you ever get it, you will know it.”  Although it is true that  salvation involves a personal, subjective experience, it is false, misleading, and deadly to omit the preaching of the doctrine of Christ (the basics of the Gospel message) from this personal, subjective experience.

 It is true that salvation is in the Person of Christ.  Apart from the glory of His Person there would be no saving value to His work.  The Person of Christ should never be “put in the background,” and no Gospel preacher should give honor “only to His work.”  It is not true that the “essence of salvation lies in His Person,” as if to say  the essence of salvation is not in His work.  The essence of salvation lies in both the Person and the work of Christ.  The Person of Christ without the work of Christ means nothing to sinners, and the work of Christ without the Person of Christ means nothing to sinners.  Had Christ walked this earth in the glory of His Person and not finished His work of atonement, there would be no salvation.  In fact, we could rightly say that His Person is part  of His work, because His work required His incarnation.  The Apostle Paul preached and determined not to know anything but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, indicating both the Person and the work of Christ (1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2).  He spoke both of preaching Christ and preaching the cross, both Christ’s Person and work (1 Cor. 1:18; Phil. 1:15-16).  He also spoke of glorying in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31) and glorying in the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14), both the Person and the work.  The glory of God lies in the salvation of sinners by His grace through Christ.  Christ’s glory as Mediator lies in the fact that He finished the work His Father gave Him to do (John 17:1-5).  Christ was raised from the dead, not because of who He was and is, but because of what He accomplished.

 The fact is the Bible simply will not support any separation between the Person and the work of Christ in the presentation of the Gospel.  The doctrines of Christ’s Person and His atoning work can be distinguished, but they can never be separated.  Christ’s Person is never to be presented so as to exclude, diminish, or de-emphasize His work as if there were saving value in His Person apart from His work.  Christ’s work is never to be presented so as to exclude, diminish, or de-emphasize His Person as if there was saving value in His work apart from His Person.  It was His glorious Person that gave infinite and eternal value to His finished work, and His work identified and declared Him to the Son of God incarnate, the one and only Savior of sinners (Rom. 1:1-4).  The Gospel does not merely lose its “sweetness when the PERSON of Christ is put in the background and honor is given only to His work,” it loses its truth and becomes a false gospel.  We could just as well say that it becomes a false gospel when the work of Christ is put in the background and honor is given only to His Person.  I challenge those who promote this separation of the Person and the work of Christ to give one Scriptural example to support their view.

 The same holds true with the issue of right doctrine.  One cannot biblically separate the preaching of Christ from the doctrine of Christ.  The doctrine of the Gospel identifies and distinguishes the true and living God from idols, the true Christ from counterfeits, and the only ground of salvation from false grounds.  The doctrine of the Gospel identifies and distinguishes true grace from cleverly disguised false gospels that merely claim to preach salvation by grace.  How can we come to the God of salvation through His Son based on the right ground apart from hearing, understanding, and believing the doctrines that identify and distinguish God and His salvation?  Some of our critics will insist on accusing us of putting Christ’s Person in the background and giving honor only to His work, His righteousness.  Some will accuse us of detracting from the Person of Christ and over-emphasizing doctrine.  But these are empty accusations that cannot be supported with evidence.  I challenge any who would level these charges to produce evidence.

 Someone may argue that the person who wrote the article above may not have thought about such implications, and that they meant well.  What was their intention?  I remember a man who was promoting the same things telling me, “I’m just trying to combat those who say salvation is no more than mere intellectual agreement to a system of doctrine.”  I asked the man to give me one example of anyone who claimed that salvation was “no more than mere intellectual agreement to a system of doctrine,” and he could not give even one example.  The main concern, however, I have over articles like this is that they promote a separation between the Person of Christ and the work of Christ.  And for many people this justifies them in promoting a separation between the Person of Christ and the doctrine of Christ.  They would claim they are saved by a Person, and the implication is that their salvation had nothing to do with any knowledge or understanding of right doctrine.  Some go so far as to claim they were saved in ignorance and only afterward learned doctrine, even the Gospel as they see it.

 The Gospel commands sinners to come to Christ, the Son of God incarnate based upon His finished the work of redemption.  He made an atonement for our sins and established a righteousness that enables God the Father to be both a just God and a Savior.  Sinners are commanded to come to Him as the One and only Savior who finished the work He was given to do.  If He had not finished the work, it would be useless to come to Him.  Sinners are commanded to come to Him as Savior.  A savior who did not do what is necessary to save is no savior at all.  Sinners are commanded to come to Him as their great High Priest.  A high priest who does not  perform the duties of his office is not much of a high priest.  I would also ask any who are perplexed over this issue to consider the emphasis Christ Himself placed on His work – John 5:36; 9:4; 10:37; 14:11; 15:24; 17:4. The danger of the attitudes described in this article is they cause people to conclude we must somehow  separate the Person and the work of Christ.  They may promote an undue fear to cause them to wonder, “Am I placing too much value on the work of Christ and not enough on the Person?”  This is ridiculous if a person is truly preaching the Gospel because one cannot preach the Gospel without preaching both the Person and the work of Christ.  Are we left to mystical standards and judgments of men who have a special, mystical insight into this or special knowledge by which to judge this issue?  Is this not a new Gnosticism?  I cannot stop the accusations of these new Gnostics, but I can take great comfort in that what I preach as the Gospel is supported by God’s testimony.  I would only ask any who are confused on this matter or swayed by the accusations of these new Gnostics to search the Scriptures and judge accordingly.