I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ (Galatians 1:6-10).

A Man Is Still Only Justified By Faith in Christ Alone

Men and women please believe me I am not trying to be an alarmist. It simply remains my firm conviction in Christ that I have only saying what needs to be said. And truthfully, I am even doing so reluctantly. Why things have become so ridiculous that the other day a person who happens to be a Roman Catholic was overheard saying – “Jesus was a liberal.” No doubt the inmates have not only taken over the asylum but they are now franchising it.

Sadly what needs to rediscovered today is the proper view of how the Evangelical Protestant must approach this critical subject of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and those who would alter it such as the Church of Rome, and those who are expanding it through the contemplative spirituality of her brazen daughter The Ecumenical Church Church of Deceit (ECoD) as her own Emergent Church leaders now even attack the Christ’s atonement itself. One of the best ways to do that is to look more closely at the above verses from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the churches in the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia. We know it of course as the Book of Galatians. Dr. Robert Mounce, who has worked on numerous translations of the Bible, tells us:

Galatians stands as an eloquent and vigorous apologetic for the NT essential truth that man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ – by nothing less and nothing more – and that he is sanctified not by legalistic works but by the obedience that comes from faith in God’s work for him, in him and through him by the grace and power of Christ and the Holy Spirit (NIV Study Bible,1985 ed., p.1779, emphasis added)

Let’s stop right here for a minute. What Dr. Mounce, a noted Evangelical Biblical scholar, has just explained to us is exactly what the historic orthodox Christian message itslef has always been. In other words this answers the critical question: How is a man saved from his debt of sin before a Holy and Righteous God? And clearly a debt requires a payment of some kind, does it not? For the wages of sin – [which is the debt] – is death – Romans 6:23. However you may recall, that Christ Jesus already paid that “wage” – that debt – with His Own death. But what is being obscured today in the ECoD is He did it in spite of what mankind is like, and not because of some inherent goodness on our part.

The Fast Erosion Of The Gospel

And this is actually the heart of the matter before us today in the purity of God’s Gospel. That’s why Dr. Mounce can say – “Galatians stands as an eloquent and vigorous apologetic for the essential NT truth that man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ – by nothing less and nothing more.” It is truly such a shame, and a travesty of God’s justice, that this has been allowed to slowly erode over the nearly 500 years since an Augustinian Monk named Martin Luther nailed those 95 Theses Of Religion upon the door of Castle Church Chapel at Wittenberg. Theses, which essentially said – “We protest” – and became the very document that would end up igniting the whole Protestant Reformation.

Men and women, it is vital that we come to fully understand what is at stake here. For we need to get this truth from our head down into our very hearts. Dr. Mounce is reminding us of this truth when he says – “Galatians stands as an eloquent and vigorous apologetic for the essential NT truth that man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ – by nothing less and nothing more.” And we state this more concisely by saying man is justified by the grace of God alone – through faith alone – in Christ alone.

And this is the absolute truth that even while mankind still considered God Himself as our enemy, by His own grace – and because mankind was worthy of this – through obedience to God the Father alone, Jesus Christ of Nazareth died alone to atone for the sins of man. Then our Lord rose alone as our justification; Soli Deo Gloria! For it really is as the great missionary David Livingstone once said:

People talk about the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paying back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own best reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and such a thought! It was emphatically no sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which Christ made who left his Father’s throne on high to give himself for us?

I realize that this is hard for us to see right now. Tragically, these times we live in today are chock full of so many petty distractions and worldly Christianity. And that’s why it is so important for us to be patient with each other as God reveals these things amidst the incessant din of countless voices that constantly vie for our attention. Truthfully this era of apostasy in which we live is so shallow and superficial, and so far from the way our Lord would have His people live, that it is becoming all but impossible for us to hear the Voice of God anymore. And we need to pray for those mediatating fools who are going deep within their own corrupt, degenerate, and sinful natures in an attempt for an alleged “divine union.” O they’ll hear a voice alright, but it most assuredly isn’t God’s (see–2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

What Was Clouded By The End Of The Spear Controversy

Now, regarding this idea of sacrifice, just around the time Tozer was doing most of his writing a man known as Nate Saint went on a mission with Jim Elliot to Ecuador. They were led by God to try and reach the Auca Indians, a group of people who were known as “savages” by their neighbors. Another time we may go into this in more detail, but for our purposes here, Saint, Elliot, and 3 others would end up being murdered by these very Indians that they were trying to reach for Christ.

And so Nate Saint knew exactly what he was talking about when he said, “If only we could grasp the significance of the Incarnation, the word ‘sacrifice’ would disappear from our vocabulary.” And here is what the Devil is trying to obscure about these true Christian missionaries:

Much later, one of the Aucas who had helped to kill the five martyrs explained that the tribe, who had almost no contact with outsiders that did not involve killing or attempted killing on one side or another, wondered why the whites wanted to make contact with them; and while they wanted to believe that their visitors were friendly, they feared a trap. After the killings, they realized their mistake. When they were attacked, one of the missionaries fired two shots as warnings, one grazed an Auca who was hiding in the brush, unknown to the missionaries. It was therefore clear that the visitors had weapons, were capable of killing, and had chosen not to do so.

Thus, the Auca realized that the visitors were indeed their friends, willing to die for them if necessary. When in subsequent months they heard the message that the Son of God came down from heaven to reconcile men with God, and to die in order to bring about that reconciliation, they recognized that the message of the missionaries was the basis of what they had seen enacted in the lives of the missionaries. They believed the Gospel preached because they had seen the Gospel lived.” http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/74.html

With all this in mind then, we now return to our own time of tepid indifference within the egregiously ecumenical sinner sensitive American Christian community today. What I am trying to get you to see is that Christ’s Church won’t even at least boldly stand for the actual Gospel itself anymore! O how is it we have fallen so far that we can possibly allow compromise concerning the very doctrine of salvation itself? Which is unequivocally by God’s grace alone–through faith alone–in Christ alone, which is what forever separates the true Body of Christ from Satan’s pride and joy, his apostate Church of Rome.

What has happened is that for too long we have been listening to saccharine spiritual cowards like Rick Warren and Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen. But when we think of real men of God like Nate Saint, we are able to remember the question Paul asks above – Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? And then as we survey the confused contemporary Christian scene in this self-destructing nation today I think deep inside we all know the answer…but even more importantly…so does our Lord and Master Christ Jesus…