The vast majority of professing christians are taught that in some way, and to some degree, what they do or do not do has some bearing on their ultimate and eternal destiny. They believe that what they do, or abstain from doing, is a contributing and determining factor to their attaining or maintaining salvation. In other words, they believe that their obedience and disobedience plays a major role in whether or not they get saved or stay saved. Most who name the name of Christ claim to believe that salvation is all of grace. But the reality of the situation is that most of them have no idea what true grace is and no idea of what salvation is and what it entails, because they have never been taught the truth. Most believe that what Christ has done in obtaining salvation is to have initiated the state of being saved which is then activated when a person believes. Whether or not a person remains ‘saved’ is subsequently conditioned on a combination of what Christ has done for them and upon their own obedience and faithfulness towards Him. Few there be who truly and savingly believe that what Christ has done has not been to merely initiate some process of salvation in a person which must then be perpetuated by that person’s own individual obedience to the Law of God, but that He has in fact saved eternally those for whom He died. The Word of God teaches that salvation from beginning to final glory indeed rests upon obedience, yet not the imperfect obedience of individuals, but solely on the Perfect Obedience of ONE: Jesus Christ.

"For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19 cf. Isa. 53:11). The Scriptures teach that a man can be made righteous, but that the righteousness required in order to present a man faultless before a Holy God is something which sinful man cannot produce. There is nothing in man’s character and conduct, potential or actual, which can endear him to God. This saving Righteousness does not come from the many, in other words, it does not come from each individual that is ultimately saved, but the many are individually made righteous by the obedience of only One. The righteousness required for salvation comes from only ONE source. Saving Righteousness does not come from the many, nor is it expected to, but is produced by another on the behalf of the many. Only the Righteousness of this One is sufficient. Only the Righteousness produced by this One meets the Standard which is set by God and is deemed fit by God to make a multitude Righteous in His sight. The irony of blind so-called ‘Christian’ ministers, who lead vast congregations of equally blind followers, when they warn against deadly teachings such as those taught by the Roman Catholic Church which claim that Mary is a co-redemptrix (co-redeemer) with Christ, and comment that such a teaching blasphemously adds the work of another to what Christ has done to secure salvation, is not lost. In the very next breath, these ministers declare that our own obedience is essential if we are to remain saved! "By grace alone!" they shout, all the while insisting that an individual’s efforts at obedience to God are an important, even integral, part in the maintenance of one’s salvation. Like the Romanists, they teach that something more than the work of Christ alone is necessary to secure one’s salvation. Like the Romanists, they teach that God needs help, man’s help, if any are to be saved.

The above Scripture from Romans 5:19 shows clearly why and how man is in a state of lostness and despair, and declares the only thing that can change the state of lost man and make him righteous. The first half of this important verse states that it was not the individual sins of each person which initially brought them into a state of lostness. Man’s sinfulness was the result of his initial fall into sin, in the Garden of Eden. The sins of the individual are the evidence of his sinful and lost condition. Man is not a sinner because he sins, but man sins because he is a sinner. Mankind’s state of lostness was brought about, or caused, by the sin of one man: Adam. Adam was the federal head of the entire human race. Adam was the representative of all mankind and by his sin, by his disobedience to the command of God, the entire human race was plunged into a state of spiritual darkness, deadness and hostility towards the true God. This is shown clearly in several Scriptures, such as Romans 5:12: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "Paul assures us, that in Adam all die. And, if so, ‘tis certain that in Adam all sinned. Tell me now, how came that personal Sin of Adam, to be charged upon us? How can his having eaten the forbidden Fruit, render us liable to Death and Damnation? How, but by Imputation? Adam was a public Person: he represented the whole race of mankind: his act was imputed to his whole posterity." (JH) In this same way, by representation, Jesus Christ the Righteous One came to this earth as the Federal Head, the Representative, not of every man but of all those whom God had given Him, and by way of imputation, His obedience is looked upon as theirs. "Thus believers are made Righteous by the obedience of their everlasting Head Christ Jesus, even as they were made sinners by the transgression of their mortal father, Adam." (JH) "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, WHICH IS BY ONE MAN, JESUS CHRIST, hath abounded unto many" (Rom. 5:15). The grace of God, and the Gift of salvation which comes by God’s grace, does not come because of you or me, by anything we are or have done or will do, but solely by, and because of, One Man: Jesus Christ, by Who HE is and by what HE has done. "For as in Adam all die, even so IN CHRIST shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). Only those who are found in Christ, that is whom He represented and who abide in His Doctrine, believing His Gospel, are made alive (see 1 Jn. 2:9; Mk. 16:16).

Christ was made in the likeness of His seed, the spiritual seed of Abraham, whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren (Heb. 2:11). The following Scripture passage is crucial to a biblical understanding of who Jesus Christ made atonement for, or Represented, thereby giving us an insight into what He accomplished by that atonement: "For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him THE SEED OF ABRAHAM. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:16,17 cf. Heb. 2:12). Reconciliation is the Savior’s business. Christ’s Work of reconciliation was done for His brethren, the Seed of Abraham. Who are the seed of Abraham? "And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:29 cf. Rom. 4:16). These are the seed of Abraham and Christ’s brethren (Matt. 12:49,50). The seed are the many whom Christ Jesus came to save (Isa. 53:10,11). Christ’s perfect obedience to God will be imputed to all those for whom He died, thus making them righteous before a Holy God. Christ’s obedience refers to "...the labors of His life, and the Agonies of His death: all which He exercised and suffered, in Conformity to His Father’s Will, for the sake of fallen men; that they, by HIS Righteousness, might be made righteous; that, having these credentials, they may be admitted into the Court of Heaven, and carrying this Passport, may be admitted into the everlasting Habitations." (JH)

You will notice that Romans 5:19 does not mention a single word about the individual sinner’s obedience being necessary, or in any way a part of ‘getting’ saved, being saved or remaining saved. This is not to say that obedience is not required on the part of the justified sinner, but it is not required in order for him to attain or maintain his salvation because it is an impossibility for any man to obey the law of God perfectly. The Scripture says that "...ye are all the children of God BY FAITH in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). The salvation of a justified sinner is not based on his obedience, but is grounded in the obedience, or Righteousness, of Christ ALONE. Why, if saving righteousness could come from man, would God have provided a Savior and declare Him to be the only one Who can produce this Righteousness? IT IS ONLY PERFECT OBEDIENCE THAT CAN ATTAIN AND MAINTAIN A STATE OF SALVATION AND RIGHT STANDING BEFORE GOD. And there is only ONE Who has ever produced it. That is the principal reason why man needs a Savior, one who could and would obey the law of the Lord perfectly. Romans 5:19 speaks only of a solitary obedience, of a unique and particular obedience, an obedience which could never be produced by any ordinary man, but only by a Supreme Being, an Extraordinary Man. In the matter of salvation—that is from regeneration through to final glory—the Scriptures speak of the OBEDIENCE OF ONE FOR THE MANY, which makes a man righteous, not of the obedience of the many out of love for the One. Romans 5:18 says "...BY THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF ONE the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." It is clear from the context, and when comparing Scripture with Scripture, that the all men referred to here are all those who will be found in Christ: "For as in Adam all die, even so IN CHRIST shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). None are alive who are outside of Christ, who abide not in His Gospel. Only in Christ is a man made acceptable to God: "To the praise of the glory of HIS GRACE , wherein HE HAS MADE US accepted IN THE BELOVED" (Eph. 1:6 cf. Rev. 7:14,15). God’s love and God’s mercy are found only in Christ. The way to salvation is by grace, not by works; by what God has done not by what we do. This adds weight to Romans 5:21, in that justification, the state of right standing or acceptability before God, has been achieved, not by the imperfect obedience of the many to the One, but by the Perfect Obedience of One for the many. Imperfect obedience is NO obedience at all and rather than gain God’s favor, it only attracts His Wrath (Rom. 4:15), for He has said that salvation can only be by the Obedience of His Son and none other. There is only one Righteousness which saves. This is such a glorious truth, inspiring great joy and gladness in the true believer. To know that one’s salvation is not based or dependant on one’s own deficient and substandard efforts to either get saved or remain saved, but wholly on the effort of Christ Jesus the Lord which is both Perfect and Everlasting, is of endless comfort for those to whom such Truth has been revealed. It is foolishness, however, to the unbeliever for he can never savingly grasp this truth of God, that it is only by Another’s obedience that a man can stand justified before God, and never his own. The evidence of a man’s lostness is not merely shown by his sinfulness, but is highlighted by the fact that he believes he can, by his own efforts, recommend himself unto God. To try and gain God’s favor by our own efforts at obedience is like pumping air into a punctured tyre. No matter how much you pump, or how vigorously, the tyre will always end up flat. In fact, this tyre is so wrecked and torn that it cannot be fixed and must be replaced by a new one. So, too, the Christian is not a creature who has been patched up, but one who has been made new in, and by, Christ. When a person tries to get to God by their own obedience, they are denying and opposing the Biblical Truth that the Obedience of Christ is that which God has established as THE ONLY WAY a man can be saved (see Jn. 10:1,9). Verse 17 of Romans 5 makes clear that the free gift of salvation spoken of in verse 18 comes only by the Righteousness of One, Jesus Christ, which is also a gift, and that it is HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS ALONE which saves and justifies a man ETERNALLY! Though there are no Scriptures which actually say only by Another’s righteousness can one be saved, it is understood that in saying that by the Obedience of one shall many be made Righteous the Scriptures make clear that there is no other source from which this Obedience can come. "By the Obedience of one" excludes the obedience of any other. "That as sin hath reigned unto (eternal) death, even so might grace reign through Righteousness unto ETERNAL LIFE BY JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD" (Rom. 5:21). The grace and salvation which comes from the True God comes ONLY through, and because of, the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. These things cannot be merited or gained by the obedience of any sinful man but can only be received based on, and because of, the obedience of a sinless Man. The Word of God clearly teaches that this one Righteousness which alone saves, does not come through the efforts of man’s inadequate and inept obedience to the law, but by GRACE reigning through, and because of, the Obedience, or Righteousness, of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Salvation. For man to attempt to attain salvation by his own efforts at obedience, is to vainly dream the impossible dream and to reach for the unreachable height. The righteousness required for salvation is out of man’s league, for only the God-Man is qualified to achieve it.

So we see plainly from the above Scriptures that this righteousness which is required by God in order for Him to declare a man to be in right standing with Him, must be a Perfect Righteousness, and that Righteousness can only be achieved by ONE man: the Man Christ Jesus. Anyone who thinks differently to what God states is a fool. Any who look to anything they can do to either get saved or stay saved fall into the category of those who trust in their own heart, whom God calls fools (Prov. 28:26). The Scriptures bear record that none can be saved by their own righteousness, but only by the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. There is no salvation unless it is by means of the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. He indeed is the ONLY Way to the Father. He is the Savior, He is the Deliverer, He it is to Whom we must look TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL ELSE, including ALL our own efforts at religious obedience and morality. HE OBEYED, HE SAVES, HE KEEPS. Our hope does not lie within us and our ‘capabilities’, motivated by high religious fervor, diligence and sincerity, but only in the supreme and distinctive capabilities of, and which are exclusive to, Another: Jesus the Lord Who is the Captain of our Salvation (Heb. 2:10). "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of Righteousness by faith" (Gal. 5:5 cf. Rom. 9:31,32). Only by the Righteousness, which includes the Glorious Death, of Jesus Christ can any man come to the Father and expect mercy and grace in the Day of Judgement.

Romans 5 states that this saving Righteousness is a gift, indeed a free gift. In other words, it is not a gift which is given to someone because they have in some way endeared themselves to the gift-giver. It is not given because they have in any way merited or deserved the gift, simply because this gift is entirely unmeritable! It is completely undeserved. It is something which is not, and cannot be, merited by those who receive it. Salvation is not something which is earned or obtained by our works but is a gift given by His Grace, and the Righteousness which saves is not our own but that of Another which is given or imputed to us. The Christian is not judged by his merits for he has none, but is judged by the Merits of Jesus Christ imputed to him. If salvation is a free gift which comes only by the Righteousness of Another, then it is vividly clear that it cannot be something which is attained but given, not purchased but received. SALVATION IS A GIFT GIVEN BY GRACE, NOT A WAGE EARNED BY WORKS (see Rom. 4:4). Grace is the unmerited favor of God towards the ungodly, or, unrighteous. The saved have done nothing in any way, shape or form, to catch the attention of the Gift-Giver and influence or motivate Him to give them anything. This is evidenced by their still being called ungodly right up until the moment of salvation (see Rom. 4:5). Prior to salvation, all that a man is and all that a man does in no way changes or affects his ungodliness and unrighteousness before God. Only after a sinner has been imputed with the Righteousness of Christ can he be rightly called Godly and Righteous. It is Christ alone Who is the reason for the Gift. It is His life and death which has provided the only Righteousness that saves. Scripture states clearly that the only thing a man does merit is death: "For the WAGES of sin is death; but the GIFT of God is eternal life THROUGH Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).

Anything and everything that lost man does in the name of religion, even in the name of Christ, which he thinks will gain or maintain a saved state, can only further condemn him, for Christ refers to such people as workers of iniquity (Matt. 7:22,23). All those who are outside of Christ, that is who are not born again, cannot produce any good works in order to get saved. All they can do, in fact the very best they can produce, is referred to by Christ as works of iniquity, and no one has ever become justified before God by works of iniquity. Salvation is not a reward for man’s efforts at obedience, for those efforts are imperfect and unacceptable. Therefore it can only come solely as a Gift according to the grace and mercy of God which is all based on the perfect and acceptable efforts of Another (see 2Tim.1:9). Salvation does not come by a man ‘doing his best’, but because of Christ having done His Best. In contrast with the ‘churches’ and pulpits of today and yesteryear, the focus of Scripture is wholly on the Giver, not on the one to whom the gift is given. The attention of the true believer is on Christ’s Righteousness and not his own efforts at obedience. He is not preoccupied with thoughts and observations of his own life and ‘goodness’ but is completely taken up with the Life, Death and Obedience of his Savior. Righteousness is not something which a man can, by his own efforts, acquire for the Scripture says that there are none righteous: "...there is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10 cf. Psa. 53:2,3). Nothing clean can come from that which is unclean (Job 14:4; Psa. 51:2,5,10). Good fruit cannot come from a corrupt tree (Matt. 7:18). Perfection can only come from that which is perfect. Does it not, therefore, stand to reason that Perfect Righteousness, or Obedience, which God’s Law demands, can only come from one who is himself Perfect and Holy?

False christianity has taught, and continues to teach, a fear-based salvation theology. It is a ‘salvation’ which is legalistic, in that it teaches that man must do this or that to get saved and then must do that or this to stay saved. It is a salvation not grounded upon, or made sure because of, the Person and Works of Christ, but on man’s decision making and subsequent moral and religious conduct. It does not give God ALL the Glory for salvation because it is not conditioned solely and wholly on Jesus Christ the Savior, on His Obedience and Death alone, but gives room for a man to boast because it is a salvation conditioned on how well a man behaves himself during his life on earth. It leads man into a life of fear and uncertainty rather than freedom and assurance, of focusing on his deeds which leads to self-righteousness, rather than hoping in the deeds of Another which is true humility. The entirety of its message is ‘Christ has saved a people for Himself’, yet their immediate and ultimate destiny hinges upon their own individual adherence to the Christian way of life. Paul the apostle, like every true believer, had confidence in nothing else and in no one else but Jesus Christ and His Righteousness: "But God forbid that I should glory (boast), save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ..." Despite the establishment of a Perfect Obedience by Another, ‘do and live, disobey and die’ is still their message, whilst claiming at the same time that the salvation they teach is by Christ alone through grace alone!

Terms, the language of Christianity, are so very familiar to those who name the name of Christ. Even the secular world recognizes terms such as ‘grace’, ‘faith’, ‘salvation’, ‘to be saved’, ‘to get saved’ etc. They are heard in religious gatherings every Sunday across the world, from the televangelist to the local ‘minister’, and upon hearing them, most are under the immediate impression that they know what is meant by these terms. Everything else in Scripture requires careful study, but these things are automatically, almost mystically, ‘known’ by all who profess faith in Christ. As long as those words are mentioned in sermons and conversations, then all is well. This is the attitude many people have and they don’t even realise it. The vast majority of professing christians throughout the world are familiar with the language of Christianity but so few are aware of the meaning God has attributed to His Words. People have heard these terms and phrases uttered so many times that they believe they rightly and correctly understand the biblical meaning of such terms simply because of their familiarity with them. One of Satan’s most effective weapons in his effort to deceive is to promote a false and erroneous understanding of the Words of God. Just because one knows the words does not necessarily mean one rightly understands the true meaning of those words. If there is no proper understanding there can be no legitimate believing. True understanding and comprehension is not realized simply because we have a view, or opinion, on a matter, by what we think a word or phrase means, but by acknowledging what the Author has intended.

What do the above terms actually mean? What would your answer be to someone if they were to ask you, ‘What do you mean saved? What do you mean by salvation? What is grace?’ and ‘How is a man saved and what is it to be saved?’ Let us take a closer look at what the words salvation and saved mean and how they are used in the Word of God. This will prove an invaluable aid in arriving at a proper and biblical understanding of salvation and the saved state. From this we may gain clearer insight into, and a proper biblical perspective of, what is required for the salvation of a man, what has been achieved or accomplished, and the intrinsic meaning of the word ‘salvation’. The word salvation literally means rescue, safety, deliver, health, save, saving. To be saved is to be rescued, to be brought from a place of danger to one of safety, obviously by another. "In the N.T. salvation is deliverance from sin and its spiritual consequences, involving an attachment to the Body of Christ, and admission to eternal life with blessedness in the Kingdom of Christ." (SZ) The word saved in Scripture means to save i.e. deliver or protect, heal, preserve, save, be (make) whole. Salvation, or saved, speaks of rescuing and preservation by another. The Psalms illustrate this perfectly "Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble..." (Psa. 32:7). It speaks of being made whole by another. The Scriptures speak of the saved as being preserved in Christ. In writing to the brethren, Jude referred to them as "...sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called" (Jude1 cf. Col. 3:3; 1 Thess. 5:23). "Since every believer is sanctified in Christ Jesus, 1 Cor. 1:12, cf. Heb 10:10, a common NT designation of all believers is ‘saints’, ie. ‘sanctified’ or ‘holy ones.’ Thus sainthood, or sanctification, is not an attainment, it is the state into which God, in grace, calls sinful men, and in which they begin their course as Christians, Col. 3:12; Heb 3:1." (H&V) The true believer is preserved and is also reserved by the Father, in Christ and unto Christ. The Bible states that, "He preserveth not the life of the wicked....He preserveth the souls of His saints..." (Job 36:6 & Psa. 97:10 cf. Psa. 31:23; 145:20; Prov. 2:8). To preserve something is to protect it, to guard it from decay or dissolution. To reserve something means to obtain or secure by advance arrangement. This is what God has done through Christ. He has reserved His chosen ones from before the foundation of the world, and now preserves them by His great Power (see Eph. 2:10-14). Scripture says that God has begotten us "...to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, RESERVED in heaven for you, who are KEPT by the power of God through faith unto salvation..." (1 Pet. 1:3-5 cf. Col. 1:5,6). The saved sinner has been made alive by God and is kept alive by the power of God through the God-given Gift of Faith, not by the earned reward of the sinner, or by any effort on his part. The above Scripture tells us that the one who is kept by the power of God is done so through faith, not works, UNTO salvation. The word kept here means to keep, guard, preserve spiritually. The certainty that their salvation is eternal and shall not fade away is proof positive that their salvation is in no way conditioned on their unprofitable deeds, but on the Righteousness of another.

The true believer is sanctified, or set apart, by the Father for Christ and is unremittingly kept, or preserved, in that condition. In other words, that condition is maintained solely by Christ the Savior—His Person and His Works—as the Representative, or Surety, of His people. All those who are saved are protected and kept in that state by Christ. Any man trying to get saved or keep himself saved by his own efforts at obedience, does not know the Savior or believe in the Gospel which reveals that Savior and His Righteousness. He is like a man trying to attract a magnet with another magnet of the same polarity. Rather than attract, it does nothing but repel. The more you try and attract it the more it moves away. The word preserved in Jude 1 sheds even more light on the state of the saved. It means to guard (from loss or injury) by keeping the eye upon; to detain or withhold for personal ends, hold fast, keep. "And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and WILL PRESERVE ME UNTO His heavenly Kingdom: to Whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen" (2 Tim. 4:18). Notice the conviction, the absolute certainty and confidence of the writer, of his being preserved unto the heavenly kingdom. There is no doubt in his mind, because he knows his salvation is not conditioned on his imperfect obedience but entirely upon Christ’s Perfect Obedience. Salvation is not conditioned on the empty and unprofitable works of man, it is not by deeds of the Law that a man is saved, or justified, but by faith in the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If any part of salvation came by the works of men, then it would not be by solely by faith based on the Work of Christ "Because the law worketh wrath...Therefore it (salvation) is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the Promise might be SURE to all the seed..." (Rom. 4:15,16 cf. Rom. 3:19,20; Gal. 3:10). Throughout the New Testament works and grace are shown, not to be co-workers or fellow laborers, but are always contrasted. One never sees grace and works on the same building site, as it were. This promise of salvation is sure, not because of the works of those who will be saved, but because of the gift of grace. Is it any wonder that Christ Jesus uses language as is found in the Gospel of John in reference to His sheep: "...I give unto them eternal life; and they shall NEVER perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand" (Jn. 10:28 cf. Jn. 11:26)? To be saved also means to be found. The saved sinner is said to be found by God, as a shepherd finds his lost sheep: "For thus saith the Lord God; Behold I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out...and WILL deliver them..." (Ezek. 34:11,12 cf. Lk. 15:4,5). It can be guaranteed that when God finds one of his lost sheep they will never, and can never, return to a lost state because they have been saved, or found, eternally: "And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him: for they know His voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers" (Jn. 10:4,5). God, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, watches carefully over them, His gaze never leaving them. Because He will never leave or forsake them, they will forever remain with Him: "And I will make an everlasting Covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, THAT THEY SHALL NOT DEPART FROM ME" (Jer. 32:40 cf. Heb. 13:5; Psa. 89:28-37 & Isa. 59:21). The elect are those whom the Father has reserved for rescuing. To be saved, therefore, means to have been rescued by another from a place of danger and subsequently preserved in a state of complete safety without fear of ever returning to the site, or situation, one was rescued from.

The apostle John speaks of true believers as having passed from death unto life (1 Jn. 3:14). This passing from death unto life is something which can never be reversed for it is everlasting, it is a one way journey. It has come about because of the Blood and Obedience of Jesus Christ—Christ’s Blood having forever washed away every sin that could damn us; and Christ’s Obedience unto death, has established for His people the Perfect Righteousness which God’s Holy Law demanded. "And being made Perfect, He became the Author of ETERNAL SALVATION unto all them that obey Him" (Heb. 5:9 cf. Isa. 45:17; 2 Thess. 2:16; 2 Tim. 2:10). To say that one can return to a state of spiritual death after being saved from it, is to deny the Eternal Saving Power of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. It is to deny the eternally effective nature of Who He is and what He has done for His people; that He is a Complete Savior and that the saved are now complete in, and by, Him and in need of nothing. Jesus says: "He that heareth My Word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath EVERLASTING life, and SHALL NOT come into condemnation; but IS PASSED from death unto life" (Jn. 5:24 cf. Jn. 6:39,40; 1 Jn. 3:14).

The Psalmist says, "For the Lord loveth judgement, and forsaketh not His saints; they are PRESERVED FOREVER..." (Psa. 37:28). The word preserved in this verse means to hedge about (with thorns), guard, to protect, attend to, beware, be circumspect, take heed of, keep, mark, observe, preserve, regard, reserve, save, watch. There is the meaning of what salvation, being saved and kept saved, is all about! Salvation is being brought from one place to another BY ANOTHER, and eternally protected from one’s former state of being and residence and preserved in an entirely new place and condition. This verse shows clearly that the Lord preserves all His people, and that eternally. He does not abandon and forsake them because of their sins, nor does He remain with them because of their obedience, but because of Christ’s Obedience, in that He has established a Perfect Righteousness by which they are eternally saved. The Righteousness of Christ alone has removed every barrier which previously obstructed fellowship between God and man. They cannot be kept from God because of their daily sins, because God imputed those very sins to His Son, Christ Jesus, Who atoned for their every sin: "...by His Knowledge shall My Righteous Servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities" (Isa. 53:11). Romans 5:10 informs us that "...we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son..." It is God’s will that He never remember their sins again (Heb. 8:12; 10:17). This is a fact that clearly points to the sufficiency of Christ’s Sacrifice on the behalf of His people, and that nothing more is required for their salvation: "Now where remission of these (sins) is, there is no more offering for sin" (Heb. 10:18). GOD WILL NOT CHARGE THEM WITH THEIR SIN. IN FACT, THERE IS NOW NO REASON FOR HIM TO DO SO, LEST HE COUNT CHRIST’S WORK ON THEIR BEHALF AS NOTHING: "BLESSED IS THE MAN TO WHOM THE LORD WILL NOT IMPUTE SIN" (Rom. 4:8 cf. Psa. 32:1,2). And so, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus..." (Rom. 8:1). Where once God’s Law and Justice demanded the damnation and eternal destruction of the elect, who were by nature the children of wrath even as others, now God’s Law and Justice demand their justification and eternal salvation because of the Imputed Righteousness of Christ. Scripture says that "...without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Heb. 9:22), so it stands to biblical reason that where there is shedding of blood there is full remission of sin. God does not rescue His chosen ones only to leave them to themselves to maintain or keep themselves a rescued people in a safe place, but He rescues them and remains with them eternally, keeping them safe and free from all that would dare attempt to remove them from that tranquil place. None can snatch a saved man from the hands of the Son or the Father (Jn. 10:28,29). The hand is that which holds and secures an object, and so the Christian is said to be held safe and irretrievably secure in the hands of God. No one can loosen God’s grip or prise His hands apart. God rescues His people, He finds all His lost sheep and places them atop His shoulders and hedges them about with thorns, an obvious reference to impenetrable protection. In God’s safe keeping they are out of harm’s way and unassailable. God is their impregnable Fortress (Psa. 91:2). God is their Shield (Psa. 28:7 cf. Psa. 18:1,2) and He guards all those He has rescued and will protect them throughout time and eternity. He attends to them and watches over them vigilantly. He keeps them and observes them, or watches over them, not like a human shepherd who grows weary and slumbers, but as the Great Shepherd of His flock Who never tires, rests or sleeps (Psa. 121:4; 23:1). In light of this, how can any of His sheep go astray from before His ever watchful eyes? He both reserves and preserves them. They are set apart under the watchful, loving and eternal protection of the Father: "...Salvation is of the Lord" (Jon. 2:9 cf. Psa. 3:8) and is therefore everlasting.

God is the COMPLETE SAVIOR. He has done it ALL (Rom. 8:29,30; Eph. 1:3ff; 2 Pet. 1:1-4). He saves His people from their sins. He reserves them, He preserves them, He keeps them, and that eternally. God is not in the business of temporarily saving anyone. The salvation of none to whom the Righteousness of Christ is imputed is subject to later alteration. Nothing of God’s saving work is in any way provisional. His salvation is not fleeting but permanent, because it is based on the saving and eternal Person and Work of Jesus Christ His Son. "That cannot be an object of temporary value which He sought by coming from heaven; and if their is any object of any real magnitude in this world, it is the soul which the eternal Son of God died to redeem." That which is perfect is pure and is therefore not subject to corruption, which is why it will never fade away. That which is perfect requires no additive. It is of a certainty that if sinful man could add anything to that which is perfect, it would immediately cease to be perfect. The salvation God gives is everlasting; the Life He bestows is Eternal and His people shall never perish. By the obedience of One shall many be made eternally righteous. A Christian remains a Christian according to 1 John 2:19. There was no point in God having established and provided a Perfect Righteousness if that Righteousness was not everlasting! If the Righteousness that saves is not eternal then it must be conditional. If salvation was not eternal, based on Christ and His Righteousness, then all we are left with is a salvation which is restricted by, and conditioned on, man and his efforts to obey the Law. Seeing then that by the Law no man is justified, none would ever be saved. If the gift of salvation is not eternal and based on the Righteousness of Christ, then it must be that God has conditioned salvation on individuals who could never do anything to obtain it or keep it, and therefore it would have been nonsensical to provide it.

One of the reasons that so many false teachings regarding salvation remain prominent today is the lack of understanding, and in most cases complete ignorance, of what a Covenant relationship is. God is a Covenant God. A covenant is a contract, an agreement. The easiest way we in the West can understand it is by looking at the institution of marriage—where two parties vow allegiance to, and support for, each other till death separates them. God has made an agreement, a Covenant, with His Son Jesus Christ, and all those whom Christ died for, who are said to be in Christ, are therefore part of that Holy and Eternal Covenant which can never be broken. The Eternal Covenant is between the Father and the Son and all whom the Father has chosen and whom the Son has lived and died for, are in a relationship that will never, and can never, end (Heb. 7:22,25). Neither the Father or the Son can break that Covenant, hence it is an eternal Covenant. We have been created new creatures in Christ and because we are of Him, of His Seed, we will always remain His children. Just as a son can do nothing to change the fact that he is the son of his father, so too, there is nothing a truly born again Christian can do to alter the fact that he is the son of His Holy Father, and has been made so eternally. The new creature is an eternal being, not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (Jn. 1:13): "Of His own Will begat He us with the Word of Truth..." (James 1:18). Unlike our physical bodies which suffer corruption daily and will eventually die, the new spiritual man is without corruption and therefore shall never die. In light of this, it is quite bizarre that for most, "The cultivation of the old man is considered more practical than the creation of a new man in Christ Jesus." Works religion is consumed with cultivating a ‘better man’ rather than rejoicing in the fact that the saved man has been created NEW in Christ. God’s Word says, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature" (Gal. 6:15). In other words the difference between salvation and damnation is not what you or I do, or do not do, but it is being made a new creature in Christ which makes the difference. Salvation is not by conformity to certain rites or customs, nor by our individual efforts at obedience, "but the grand inquiry is, WHETHER A MAN IS BORN AGAIN, and is in fact a new creature in Christ Jesus." Paul says "And as many as walk according to THIS RULE (cannon, or, doctrinal standard); peace be on THEM, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16). Either one walks according to the rule of ‘do and live disobey and die’, or one walks according to God’s doctrinal standard: "Except a man be born again; he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (Jn. 3:3). Man can never become saved by ‘improving himself’ but is saved because he is a totally new creation in, and because of, Christ. ‘Re-inventing’ oneself is not the way to God. Being re-created by God is that which is necessary in salvation.

Warnings of a loss of salvation can be heard from many pulpits today. They say that disobedience to God by one who is considered saved, can lead to a loss of salvation which can never be regained. In other words, they say that although salvation has been gained by Christ, it can be lost by the deeds, or the absence of them, of the individual. These ministers of Satan are trying to convince their hearers that what Christ has done was enough to get them saved, but is not enough, in and of itself, to keep them saved! They truly do the Roman Catholic Church proud. Romanism insists that they who believe that all of salvation is conditioned on Christ alone, are cursed! For these people, the matter of remaining saved is conditioned upon the obedience of each individual and does not rest solely upon the Person and Obedience of Christ. The Gospel they preach is a false gospel, for the ‘salvation’ they speak of is not one which is grounded upon the Righteousness of Christ, but is conditioned on the righteousness of the individual. They oppose His Righteousness with their own and thus preach a gospel of works rather than the Gospel of Grace. The true believer desires "no higher honor than to be saved (completely) by the Son of God." If any part of salvation is conditioned on man then that is a works salvation. They are truly anti-Christ who condition salvation on man, for they place themselves and their own righteousness in the place of Christ! This false christianity is nothing short of Babylonianism, a religion which is just as unsound as any other worldly religion and which cannot, and never has, saved anybody.

Some say that salvation, once lost, can be regained by a ‘re-dedication’ of one’s life to God and a renewed moral reformation and resolute determination to obey the Lord, and sincere promises to the Lord ‘to do better this time’. This is something which is totally foreign to the Scriptures. If you think that you, by your own religious deeds, can make up any ground which sin has taken from you, you are in a deceived state and the ‘christianity’ you have been taught is not the Christianity of the Bible. In fact, your efforts at making up for past sins is a far worse sin than those you are trying to make up for, because in doing so you are denying Christ and the only Righteousness God has declared can send sin into remission: "...to declare HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS (not yours!) for the remission of sins..." (Rom. 3:25). Scripture says that if such a thing as losing one’s salvation were possible, then it would be impossible to again ‘save’ that person (Heb. 6:4-6). Either Christ has saved His people for all time or He has not saved any at all. Anything which is contrary to this flies directly in the face of all that Christ is, and all that He has done for His people as their Complete Savior and Redeemer. It is an out and out denial of Eternal Redemption, of Christ as the Surety and Propitiation, or Satisfaction, for His people, and repudiates the Power of the Life and Death of Christ as sufficient to save, and keep saved, all for whom He died. "...He entered once into the holy place, having OBTAINED ETERNAL REDEMPTION for us" (Heb. 9:12ff.). Because this Redemption is Eternal, it stands to biblical reason that it is based on what the Redeemer has done to obtain it. If the Redemption is eternal, it shows that no sin from which one has been redeemed can make the redeemed person unredeemed again or unredeemable, for EVERY sin is precisely what the person has been eternally redeemed from! Those who deny such Truth are really saying to God, ‘what you have done in sending your Son to die for sins was good and needful but was not enough to do it all, hence we must add to what Christ has done to ensure our futures are secure and sure for heaven’.

Any religion that teaches a salvation conditioned in any way, to any degree, upon the sinner is one which does not abide in the doctrine of the all sufficiency of Christ Jesus the Lord to save, and keep, all for whom He died. They may talk of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Grace’ etc., but it is a counterfeit jesus they speak of and a sham grace they promote. Such thinkers are spiritually insane and know not God, for they abide not in the Doctrine of His Son (1 Jn. 2:9) which attributes all of the glory of salvation unto Him (1 Cor. 1:29-31). Their false gospel teaches that what Christ has done on the behalf of His people can be undone, that His Work has not achieved or guaranteed any eternal benefit but has merely provided a door around which man must now construct the house. A house, it might be added, which can collapse at any time thus rendering the door useless. Such teachings are an abomination. They are so satanic as to be beyond words. They undo all the doctrines which make up the Holy Gospel Message, which alone gives all the glory for salvation to God because it conditions all of salvation upon His Son. They tear at the very Character of God, displacing Him from His Throne and placing man there in a self-governing, sovereign and autonomous reign over his own destiny.

Our righteousness, our works, our best efforts at obeying God are the exact opposite of, and are in contrast with all that God’s Law and Justice demands. God’s Law demands pure and unblemished obedience and God’s Justice demands full and complete payment for sin, neither of which can be fulfilled or provided by mere man. Those who oppose such teaching insist that ‘God has set the ball rolling by having given Jesus to the world, but it is now up to man to keep that ball rolling on the highway to heaven’. These teachings are diametrically opposed to what the Gospel of Christ teaches and all who believe them are lost. They come from the heart of Satan and are the very antithesis of all that God’s Word says about the lost state of mankind and the only Way to Salvation: the Obedience of the Perfect Man, Jesus Christ. These people consider that to believe one is sure for heaven based on the Righteousness of Christ alone is presumption, and would rather lean on their own efforts, with all their deficiencies, and draw comfort and assurance from that.

What God has done is eternal the Scriptures say, and none can undo what He has done: "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him" (Eccl. 3:14). "Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked?" (Eccl. 7:13). Some may argue that man indeed can, by his disobedience, undo what Christ has done, for though God made man sinless, man was still able to choose to disobey God and lose God’s favor. This is true. However, it must be noted that God did not make man eternally sinless when he created him. God created man subject to change. What Christ has done is ETERNAL. "As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give ETERNAL LIFE to as many as Thou hast given Him" (Jn. 17:2). The Life that Christ is the Author of is EVERLASTING (Heb. 5:9). The new creature in Christ is made so eternally. This cannot be over emphasised, for it testifies of Who Christ is and what Christ has done for His people. If man was made eternally sinless by God and was still able to undo this work of God, it would have to be said that God is not Sovereign and that what God desires can be prevented, or at the least interfered with, by man. "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psa. 115:3). The following is what God Himself has to say about His Will: "...I Am God, and there is none else; I Am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I WILL DO ALL MY PLEASURE...I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it" (Isa. 46:9-11 cf. Dan. 4:35). Now does that sound like a God Whose Will can be changed, affected, or altered in any way?

So much of what the Devil, and those who follow him, teach, whether it be ignorantly or knowingly, is so very subtle. Satan, for the most part, leaves the obviously evil and overtly anti-God teachings to the minds of men for they, in their lost and depraved state, blinded by the god of this world, are eminently qualified to invent for themselves erroneous teachings and images of gods that cannot save. Satan is a very religious creature. His religion is the most popular on the planet and his followers number in the billions. He has far more religious people following him than those who are irreligious, and he is happy to have it so. Satan’s religious empire, made up of every false religion on earth, has one main rule: the rule of do and live, disobey and die. The rule that by a man’s deeds he can gain eternal salvation, and that by a failure to ‘measure up’, man will forever miss heaven. In other words, man’s destiny is in his own hands. It is only the true Christian who is of God. The whole world, including all the religious world outside of Christ, lies in wickedness (1 Jn. 5:19). Satan’s gospel of grace is really a disguised gospel of works which continues to deceive both sides of professing christendom: the Arminian and the Calvinist side. He has imitated God’s grace, forming his own version which, when stripped of it’s veneer, is revealed as nothing but works. Satan’s religions are man-centered. All the attention is on man and what he does and needs to do rather than on God and what He has done. This is one of the reasons why so many ‘sermons’ from pulpits today are nothing more than psychological pep talks, rather than Gospel-centered teaching. Satan’s primary goal is to promote his lies in the very name of the God he so utterly detests. His main method of operation is not to come out and openly declare his hatred for God and His Son but instead has opted for a much subtler war on the Holy God and all who seek to follow Him. SATAN HAS DECLARED WAR ON TRUTH, NOT IN ORDER TO DESTROY TRUTH, BUT TO SUPERIMPOSE IT WITH HIS OWN VERSION. For instance, Satan will tell you that Jesus is indeed the Christ (Matt. 24:5), but what he says about his ‘jesus’ identifies him, not as the one and only Son of God Who came to save His people from their sins, but as another christ, a false christ of whom God does not testify and who cannot save.

There are many truths in Satan’s arsenal of false teachings. Satan uses the truth in order to weave his lies into the lives of the unsuspecting. Satan uses the truth merely as a Trojan horse by which he can introduce his deadly lies. The healthy meal is made deadly by even a small amount of poison. After the poison is mixed in, it is no longer considered a healthy meal but a deadly one, despite keeping its inviting odor and appearance. The Scripture says that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump (Gal. 5:9). A little lie changes a big truth. Yet, no matter how much truth you add to a lie it can never become the truth, but will always remain a lie. You see, a lie mixed with the truth changes the very fabric of that truth, consuming it and transforming its very essence into a deadly lie. 2 + 2 = 4, but if anything were to be added to the correct answer of 4, even the smallest fraction, then even though the answer may contain the truth, it is made an untruth by what has been added to or taken from it. The value of the truth is not realised, because it has been used in the fabrication of a lie. A ‘good’ lie always has within it some degree of truth in order to make it more palatable, but truth, when it has anything added to it or anything removed from it, ceases to be truth and will not profit any. So it is with the lies of Satan. His lies are mixed with truth so as to appear as one thing, but in reality be something quite different. A lie not only distorts the truth but is also a misrepresentation of reality.

What we learn from this is that we need to beware of everything which comes to us in the name of religion, in particular that which comes in the name of Christ Jesus the Lord. "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (1 Jn. 4:1 cf. Matt. 24:4ff; Acts 20:30; 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Pet. 2:1). We must question all things, for to question is to think. We must test all things by the Word of God. Yet even in saying that, there needs to be clarification as well as adding a vital note of caution. Every cunning false teacher out there encourages their followers to test what they are saying by the Scriptures and their followers believe that the method they have adopted to do this is naturally the correct and biblical one. To properly and biblically test the validity of a teaching to see whether it comes from God or man, one must know how to do so. One cannot merely listen to a man’s teachings, make note of the Scriptures he refers to in his sermon, look them up and then conclude that because those Scriptures are indeed in the Bible, it is proof positive that what the preacher is saying about them must be true. Others ‘test’ the words of a preacher by turning to a commentary by a ‘christian’ writer, usually a dead one for they are often the most revered, to see whether his words are true or not. Others choose to refer only to those writers whom they know are in agreement with them. You would be surprised how many believe that this is ‘testing the preacher’. Rarely, if at all, do they ever investigate the writings of those who point out the errors of, or who teach that which is contrary to, what they believe. None of these methods are the correct way to test the words which come from a man’s mouth in the name of Christ. The proper and biblical method of testing the veracity of a man’s teachings is to hold them up to the Light of the Word of God: "...they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11 cf. Psa. 119:105), to compare Scripture with Scripture (cf. 1 Cor. 2:13). By the Light of the Word you will be able to see through the teachings that are brought to you and see if they line up with what God says, or if they are completely out of alignment with His Word and therefore invalid. See if what the preacher is saying agrees with the whole of Scripture. Do not simply go by one or two verses, but compare what he is saying with whole passages of Scripture, even whole chapters and books of the Bible. Don’t accept what the preacher is saying merely because he is able to connect a few verses from different parts of the Bible, but concentrate on the context, on the passage, chapter and book the particular verses come from. On hearing this many will say, ‘but that will take a long time and I am a busy person’. My friend, you had better take the time, and make sure it is quality time, to examine what has been brought to you and your family in the name of Christ, for your eternal future depends on what you have embraced as the truth of God. Jesus says "...If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matt.6:23). YOUR SINCERITY IN THE MATTER WILL GAIN YOU NO ACCESS TO GOD. SINCERITY IS NOT THE KEY TO FREEDOM. CHRIST SAYS THAT IT IS THE TRUTH THAT SHALL MAKE A MAN FREE!! (Jn. 8:32). Scripture says, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Prov. 14:12). There is nothing in this life which is inconsequential, and the repercussions of what a man believes and has acted on in this life will be eternal. See if the theme of a man’s message is constant throughout the Bible and not concentrated on just one verse or passage. For instance, many teach that Christ died for every single individual ever born. This is based on such verses as John 3:16, 1 John 2:2 and 1 Timothy 2:6. But if this were true, how on earth would this concur with the whole theme of the Bible, which teaches one sacrifice for the people of God. The Old Testament sacrificial system taught of a blood atonement made by the high priest on the behalf of, not every person in the world, but exclusively for the people of God, who at that time were the nation of Israel. No provision was made for any other nation. That whole sacrificial system with its ceremonies and blood sacrifices, was all a shadow of the true Sacrifice that would save eternally, that of the Holy Lamb of God. Again, not for every person ever born but for the people of God, a people chosen from every nation, not just Israel. The Gospel of John shows conclusively that Christ died for His sheep, His people, and that He prays not for the world but exclusively for those whom the Father had given Him. There are verses throughout the Bible, and not just in a few isolated passages, which prove that the death of Christ was for a people chosen by God, based on His mercy and grace, before the foundation of the world. The whole Message of the Bible is about a predestinated people whom Christ came to save from their sins. The overriding theme of God’s Word is ‘Jesus Christ and what He has done for His people’. The Scriptures are to be examined, not only to see whether who we listen to or read is wrong, but to see whether or not we ourselves have a proper understanding, to see whether it might be we who are wrong.

The whole basis for the false and deadly teaching that man can lose his salvation, or that man can contribute to gaining or at the least maintaining his salvation, comes from a heart which does not believe, and is therefore not trusting, in the Works of Christ as being wholly sufficient to save eternally all those for whom He died. It rests on the lie that man is not a creature who is utterly hopeless and incapable of pleasing a Holy God by his own sincerest efforts at obedience and worship; that man is not dead in sin and therefore dead to God, but merely sin-sick, able by his own free will to raise himself up and come to God. Let us now spend some quality time with the Scriptures so that we may see clearly what the Lord Himself says about man and what it means for a man to be dead in sin, dead to God, lost, without hope and without God in this world. This will lend strong support to the fact that True Obedience can only come from Another and that only His Righteousness can save.

God warned Adam that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he would surely die (Gen. 2:17). Satan countered by telling Eve that she would not surely die (Gen. 3:4). Which do you believe: God’s Truth or Satan’s lie? Is man dead or not? Those who believe Satan say that man is not totally depraved or totally incapable of coming to God, God’s way, but that man is merely partially depraved. He is not spiritually dead but merely sin-sick, wounded by the Fall but not mortally. They say that man is not drowned in sin but is simply drown-ing and awaits a lifesaver to be thrown to him, which he would immediately take hold of. Satan’s lie, that man would not die simply by disobeying a single command of God, is the lie that gave birth to the false teaching which says that man can, by his own free-will, choose God at any time. It is promoted and believed in by most who profess to be christians. The word die, as used by God in His warning to Adam, means ‘dead’, ‘worthy of death,’ ‘destroy,’ ‘die,’ ‘kill,’ ‘slay very suddenly’. In fact, in EVERY instance where the word die is used in both Old and New Testaments, ALL speak of death, NONE refer to a mere state of sickness! Ephesians 2:1 speaks of man being dead in trespasses and sins, and in verse 5 of the same chapter, it speaks of Jesus making ALIVE (not well) those who were DEAD (not sick). Along with a host of other Scriptures, Colossians 2:13 also speaks of sinners being dead in their sins. When the Lord Jesus said that a man must be born again if he is to see (understand, perceive) the Kingdom of God (Jn. 3:3), He did not mean that a man must be physically re-born, for man has been given but one life to live (Heb. 9:27). Jesus was speaking of a man being spiritually born again, being spiritually regenerated. To be born again is to be brought back to spiritual life from a state of spiritual death. To be born again is to be ALIVE again! All who believe man is merely sin-sick, believe and promote Satan’s lie to Eve that she would not surely die, for they say "we are not surely dead".

Romans 3 clearly shows the fallen and destitute condition of man: "As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10), the word righteous meaning innocent, holy, just. There are none who are innocent of sin and therefore there are none who are holy and just, before God. In light of this, man can never be justified by anything he does. The Bible does not say that there are none moral or religious, but that there are none holy and innocent and therefore in right standing with God: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23 cf. Rom. 3:9,19,20). All man’s efforts at obedience fall way short of the mark which God has set. All are sinners and unclean, without a righteousness, or any way of producing that righteousness, which meets the demands of God’s Holy Law and Justice. All fall short of perfection, which God’s Holy Law and Justice demand in order to be satisfied. Scripture declares that "... verily EVERY man at his BEST state is altogether vanity" (Psa. 39:5), in fact, "...all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing..." (Dan. 4:35); "For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Eccl. 7:20);"Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Psa. 53:3 cf. Psa. 14:2,3). The last two verses in particular show clearly that man, while rushing about doing that which appears good in his own eyes (Judg. 17:6) and all the while thinking that it must, therefore, also be good in God’s eyes, can in reality do nothing good in and of himself in God’s sight (1 Sam. 16:7). Man can do nothing which God can accept, for all that man does is stained and corrupted by his sinful state. "How then can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. HOW MUCH LESS MAN, THAT IS A WORM?..." (Job 25:4-6). The Law of God, which must be perfectly and fully obeyed, can only condemn those who do not obey its every jot and tittle (Gal. 3:10,11 cf. James 2:10). No matter how fragrant the rotten apple may still be, it is powerless to ever change the fact that it is now rotten.

Isaiah 64:6 makes the following clear and incisive statement: "But we are ALL as an unclean thing, and ALL our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..." Notice that it is not our evil works being spoken of here but our very righteousnesses, our good works which are described as filthy rags! The righteousnesses, or ‘good works’, of man are compared in this verse with "...menstrual cloths associated with one of the most extreme forms of ceremonial uncleanness under the law of Moses (Lev. 15:19-33; 20:18). They are of such a nature as to be treated with the greatest discretion by the genteel, disposed of immediately, never reused. These ‘filthy rags’ are in our text joined with ‘an unclean thing,’ the leper afflicted with another of the most extreme forms of ceremonial uncleanness (Lev. 13:45ff)." (DP) In other words, man approaching God with his own ‘good works’, his own efforts at obedience to God’s Holy Law and attempts at reconciling with the Most Holy One, rather than with the Righteousness of the Mediator alone, is tantamount to approaching God as a man infected with leprosy and clothed in used menstrual cloths! That is the picture, the disgusting and putrid picture that God sees, of man in his most moral and religious state coming to Him clothed with his own righteousness, rather than the Pure White Robe of the Righteousness of Christ. Man at his very best, when he has reached the highest level of ‘goodness’ and uprightness he can in and of himself before God, appears as nothing more than the sorry creature pictured for us so graphically in Isaiah 64:6.

The first thing that Adam and Eve did after having sinned, was not to run to God but to run away and hide from God, clothing themselves the best they knew how in an effort to hide their nakedness from God. This was not acceptable to God, hence His clothing them with coats of animal skins (Gen. 3:21). Adam clothing himself is typical, or symbolic, of mankind’s attempt to adorn itself with its own good deeds to meet with God’s approval, and God clothing Adam was typical of God clothing His elect with the Robe of the Righteousness of Christ. This is all part of the Covenant relationship (cf. Lk. 15:22). "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for HE HATH CLOTHED ME with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the Robe of Righteousness..." (Isa. 61:10 cf. Zech. 3:4; Rev. 7:14). We must be clothed with His Righteousness and not our own if we expect to enter into His Joy. We must be clothed in robes that are washed and made white in the Blood of Christ, not in rags which are polluted with our ‘good’ works. Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast also teaches this. One man had entered the wedding feast not clothed with the proper wedding garment. Jewish tradition had it that the father of the groom would invite guests to the wedding of his son providing them all with the garment they were to wear. Any who had not on the appropriate garment evidenced the fact that they were not invited (see Matt. 22:11-14). So it will be on that Great Judgement Day. Any who are not clothed with the Robe of Righteousness provided by the Father of the Groom, shall not be admitted into the heavenly Glory. What kind of imbecile would take the chance of not being permitted entry to a wedding by wearing a bunch of filthy rags rather than an exquisite set of clothes he has been provided with freely? Such imbecility is also owned by those who insist on approaching God with at least some of their ‘good’ deeds. As Christ has said, man can and does outwardly appear righteous before men, but not so to God. Outwardly they are like beautiful whited walls but inwardly they are full of all uncleanness (see Matt. 23:27,28). Any who dare present themselves to God clothed with the garments of their own works will only discover His displeasure and vengeful wrath, for by this they show they did not know God or obey the Gospel of Christ (2 Thess. 1:8).

The Bible states that "There is none that understandeth..." (Rom. 3:11). "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Psa. 14:2,3). This shows that no man in his natural fallen state has any true perception of God and so cannot comprehend His way of Salvation, but is completely devoid of understanding. Instead, he only has a natural, rebellious rejection of the true God which stems from his perverted view of God as a result of spiritual blindness. Natural man cannot understand the things of God, for these things can only be spiritually discerned by those whom He has made alive unto Him: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (see 1 Cor. 2:9-14). To discern spiritually you must first be born again. The things of God can only be determined, or rightly judged and distinguished, to be the things of God by one who is born again, or spiritually alive, which none by nature are, hence "...there is none that seeketh after God" (Rom. 3:11) The word seeketh in this verse means ‘to search out’, ‘to investigate’, ‘crave’, ‘demand’, ‘worship’, ‘seek after (carefully, diligently)’. No one by nature is in pursuit of the True God. All are headed in the opposite direction, chasing after false gods that cannot save! There are none who seek after God, that is, that seeks after the True God His Way. This is quite a remarkable Scripture when one considers how much religion there is in the world and how many people there are under the sincere impression that they are ‘searching for God’. Think of how many religions there are and how many billions of people give their heart and soul to their religions and to their gods. Think of how many tears have been shed in sadness and grief over sin and how many tears of joy and delight have been poured out during, and after, the myriads of experiences people believe they have had with God. Think of how many people are presently studying Bibles and religious books, supposing they are understanding God better and how many institutions of learning have been established in the pursuit of the study of God. Nevertheless, Scripture maintains that NONE, NOT A SINGLE PERSON ON THIS EARTH, BY NATURE, IS ACTUALLY SEEKING AFTER GOD!! This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that man’s quest for God and salvation, in and of himself, is a futile quest doomed to failure before it even begins for man is dead to God, and despite all his religious endeavors it is never the TRUE God that he seeks. To fallen mankind, He truly is the ‘unknown God’. There is not a more putrid stench upon this earth than that which comes from lost man’s religious efforts.

Man cannot understand the true God unless he is given an understanding from God: "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath GIVEN us an understanding, THAT WE MAY KNOW Him that is True..." (1 Jn. 5:20 cf. Matt. 11:27;13:11,15,23). "But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me..." (Jer.  9:24 cf. Jn. 17:3). Without this God-given understanding, man cannot recognize and know the true God, hence his embracement of the myriad of false ‘gods’ that have been created in the mind of man, which is the birth place of so many false deities to which man has attached himself (Acts 17:23 cf. Isa. 45:20). Man’s search for God may be likened to a blind man stumbling around in the darkness, not knowing what he looks for and being utterly unable to recognize it even if he could find it. "They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Rom. 3:12). Nothing man does will profit him in God’s sight. All his religious efforts produce nothing which can ever prosper a man in the sight of God. Nothing man can produce is of any value before God. No man, by nature, follows the only way of salvation that honors the Redemptive Character of God, which excludes all occasions of boasting in the sinner, for every religion which natural lost man follows conditions salvation on the sinner, thus giving the sinner room to boast. To summarize, "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:18).

Contrary to what most people believe, every man by nature is not a child of God but a child of God’s wrath (Eph. 2:3), and a child of the Devil (Matt. 13:38; Jn. 8:44). Man drinks iniquity like water the Bible says, and is depraved in mind (Eph. 4:17-19). "Behold, He putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" (Job 15:15,16). Man is a creature whose mind has been blinded by Satan and to whom the Gospel is hid (2 Cor. 4:3,4), who does not understand the Words of Christ (Jn. 8:33,34) and therefore cannot know the things of God (1 Cor. 2:14). Pay no attention to the man who tells you that you can have salvation without knowledge. Those who teach such lies merely display their own ignorance, an ignorance which will ultimately damn them. There are many who falsely accuse true believers of conditioning salvation upon knowledge of certain doctrines. But how can this be when the knowledge we speak of, which comes by hearing the Gospel, is the glorious knowledge that no part of salvation is conditioned on the sinner but solely on Christ! We teach Faith in Christ and not faith in our faith or knowledge. Knowledge is vitally important and absolutely necessary to the true worship of the True God. In order to worship the true God, in sincerity and truth, one must have a zeal of God which is according to knowledge (Rom. 10:2). Zeal according to ignorance of the knowledge of Christ, and which does not rejoice in the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, can only lead to a false god and a false christ. Knowledge is not a condition for salvation which man must meet, but is an evidence of salvation. Ignorance alienates man from God. It is not some magical attribute which attracts God’s pity towards a person, but is the distinguishing and single most incriminating evidence that reveals a person’s state of spiritual blindness. Those who do not know and believe the Gospel are alienated from the life of God. No one is ever saved despite their ignorance of the Gospel, but rather is lost because of it. Ignorance is not consistent with salvation for Scripture equates it with lostness, darkness, alienation and spiritual blindness. The Bible says that the lost walk in the vanity of their minds "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the IGNORANCE that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. 4:18). This is the result of Original Sin. Man in his natural state can never please God (Rom. 8:8), for without the Faith of God no man can please Him (Heb. 11:6). Observing man’s sinful, depraved state, one man has wisely commented, "Man does not have any earning power with God." (WP) Man’s natural way of thinking is at war with God’s Thoughts and God’s Ways (Isa. 55:8,9 & Rom. 8:7) and because of this, all his religious deeds do not amount to a hill of beans. Man cannot produce any good work that is pleasing to a Perfect and Just God, for God demands perfect Righteousness which no man can produce. God is a Just God and what He does must be in perfect conformity with His Holy Character, or He would cease to be God. God is Love, but "God does not sacrifice His Holiness to His love." God does not do what is right; whatever God does IS right. God has not established a Standard, His Law, only to disregard it by judging us according to our ‘good intentions’. God’s Holy Law must be fulfilled perfectly if any man is to have the righteousness which God’s Law demands a man must be clothed with, in order to enter heaven. All that comes to God must be of God. Man has no redeeming quality. Even the apostle Paul said: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing..." (Rom. 7:18 cf. Gen. 6:5). No man is ever going to become right with God by any work that he does or anything he abstains from doing, for man is a sinner and everything he does is tarnished with sin (Rom. 3:20). Anything and everything he offers to God is polluted with sin and completely unacceptable. "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse..." (Gal. 3:10). "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified BY THE FAITH of Christ, and NOT BY THE WORKS of the law: for BY THE WORKS OF THE LAW SHALL NO FLESH BE JUSTIFIED" (Gal. 2:16). Notice that this Scripture is not saying that man will not be justified by his evil deeds, but by his works of the law, his good deeds, in other words his efforts at obedience to the Word of God. Everyone knows that no man can be justified by his evil deeds, but none by nature are aware that not even by his good deeds can a man ever be justified before God. To think opposite to this is to fall for the lie that deceives every man by nature. No matter how much one might think or believe what they themselves have done in seeking to obey God will meet with God’s approval, nothing of what they have done will gain them anything for "...they are together become unprofitable..." (Rom.  3:12; cf. Heb. 7:18,19). It is a fairytale, it is pure fiction to believe that our obedience will gain us anything but God’s wrath. NONE shall be justified by their obedience to God but ONLY BY CHRIST’S OBEDIENCE, for His is the only Perfect, and therefore acceptable, obedience to the Holy God. "Surely, shall one say, IN THE LORD have I Righteousness and Strength..." (Isa. 45:24). "...their Righteousness IS OF ME, saith the Lord" (Isa. 54:17 cf. Jer. 23:6). The Righteousness which saves a man is not of man but wholly of God. It is Christ’s Righteousness which justifies a man, and because it is His Righteousness, God is said to be our Justifier, the One Who justifies us. "Justification being the legal and formal acquittal from guilt by God as Judge, (based on the Righteousness of Christ alone), and the pronouncement of the sinner as Righteous, who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ." If it was our own righteousness which justified us then we ourselves, and not God, would be the justifiers. It would have been our own works which gained our acquittal and not an exclusive act of God. It cannot rightly be said that another has justified us, if in fact we have earned that justification by our own righteousness, if we are in any way deserving of it. It would be our works and not His Righteousness which would justify us. It is clear then from Scripture that salvation, or justification, is all of Him. "To declare, I say, at this time HIS Righteousness: that HE might be Just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26ff.).

Man has been corrupted. It is a corruption that is of his own making (see Eccl. 7:29). The Bible states that man sits in spiritual darkness and is enslaved to Satan and in bondage to sin (Lk. 1:79; 2 Tim. 2:26; Jn.8:34). He is without God and therefore without hope in this world (Eph. 2:12), and can never do anything to change his condition—who he is and what he is. BLACK CAN NEVER BECOME WHITE. This is evidenced in the following Scripture: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23; cf. Lk. 18:26,27). Man’s condition, or nature, is that of a hater of God’s Truth and a lover of Satan’s lie (2 Thess. 2:10-12). He calls good evil and evil good. He calls God’s Gospel, which promotes Christ’s Righteousness, evil and Satan’s false gospels, which promote man’s righteousness, good. The very heart of man "...is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9); "...also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead" (Eccl. 9:3). Jesus Christ the Lord states: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light..." (Jn. 3:19, 20; 5:40). The evil deeds of natural sinful man consist not merely of his immoral actions and thoughts, but include his best religious efforts in order to make himself acceptable to God. There are many religious, many who even call Jesus Christ "Lord," who will never see Heaven. They teach a false gospel which does not lead to the True Christ. Jesus says of them that He does not know them, calling them workers of iniquity (wickedness, or unrighteousness) (Matt. 7:21). They believe their works are many and wonderful, but Christ, the Judge of all, calls these works iniquitous!

Has God shown us all this in order to drive us quite mad with utter despair, that we can never come to Him? Is the high, and obviously humanly unattainable, Standard which God has set meant to frustrate mankind to the point of rejecting such a standard as unfair? Was the gentleman correct who told this author that "God would never command a man to do something which He knows he cannot do." No. God has declared the sinful, fallen and utterly depraved state of lost man so as to drive us from ourselves and abandon any ideas we have that we can possibly come to God by our own efforts. If He had not done so none would ever realise their perilous state. The law of God was given, not because God expected any man to obey it, but to point us to Christ, the only one Who could obey it: "...the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:24-26). God has set the Standard, the command for perfect holiness, to lead us and point us to the only one who can meet all the demands of God’s Law and Justice, and the only one who can save: His Son, Jesus the Messiah. Christ says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me" (Jn. 14:6). Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Life and no one, not even the most sincere and religiously zealous, most morally upright person in the universe, can come to the Father but by Jesus Christ (see Heb. 7:25; Jn. 6:65).

But what exactly does that mean? How does a man come to Christ? And for that matter, how does a man get saved? The answers are quite simple. Firstly, man does not come to God, for the Bible says there are none that seek after Him. How can anyone arrive at a place they are not travelling to? Man does not know God. He cannot identify, and therefore is unable to distinguish, the true God from false gods, so how can he ever come to God? Secondly, man cannot get saved but is rather saved by another. Man’s getting saved suggests a salvation based on conditions which man can meet, whereas man being saved by another teaches that salvation is something which man cannot attain to, but is something which must be freely given or bestowed upon him by another and because of another. It is God that comes to man and not man to God. God is not the one who is lost. In regards to ‘seeking’, the Bible teaches that it is not man that seeks after God (Rom. 3:11) but it is God Who seeks after man (Ezek. 34:11,12). He is the Shepherd Who seeks after His lost sheep and finds them. They are not looking for Him, so how could they ever find Him? Salvation is not about what man can do to get to God and be saved, but rather what Christ has done that saves, or rescues, His people from their sins.

Contrary to most people’s thinking, man cannot simply raise his head to heaven and plead for mercy, for to whom is he pleading mercy? And upon what does he base that mercy? The man who has been taught nothing but Roman Catholicism is not pleading with, or seeking, the true God! And what of the man who has been taught all he knows about God by a so-called Jehovah’s Witness, or a Mormon, Muslim, Jew or Arminian? What of the man who knows nothing about God other than He created everything? Without blood, Atoning blood, no man can approach God and live. The Scriptures themselves ask how anyone can call on the true God if they have never been taught the true God—Who He is and what He has done—if they have never heard of Him? In opposition to this, many refer to the verse which says "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." But the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans does not stop there. He goes on in the very next verse to add the following significant and searching questions: "How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:13-15). "The Lord is far from the wicked: but He heareth the prayer of the Righteous....The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him IN TRUTH" (Prov. 15:29 & Psa. 145:18 cf. Jn. 4:23,24; 9:31). It stands to biblical reason that man’s sinful, fallen and reprehensible state precludes him from any possibility of calling upon the true God, for he does not know Him; he cannot recognize or identify Him; he does not understand His way, and, the most damning of all, HE KNOWS NOT THAT THE ONLY WAY A MAN CAN BE SAVED IS BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ANOTHER!! Every lost religionist who has died, has approached God with his own putrid righteousness and not that ONE acceptable Righteousness which saves. Man cannot accidentally stumble across the True God in his religious exercises, but God must reveal Himself to man if any are to savingly know Him "...no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27 cf. Jn. 17;2,3; 1 Jn. 5:20).

Look at every false religion in the world, including false christianity, and all you will see is man’s endless and vain attempts to find favor with his god by his own efforts at obedience. Every false religion, to some degree, promotes a salvation conditioned on man’s obedience, for this is all that lost man knows. ANY RELIGION WHICH CONDITIONS ANY PART OF SALVATION ON MAN IS A FALSE RELIGION! Whenever lost man thinks of Heaven and Hell, he automatically thinks he must do (thereby revealing that he believes, as all lost men do, that he can do) something that will recommend him to God and secure for himself a place in heaven. When you see a man trying to get saved or stay ‘saved’ by his own efforts at obeying God, you are witnessing a man who does not know God. For if he did know the True God, he would not be seeking to establish a righteousness of his own but he would be clinging to the only Righteousness that can save: the Righteousness of Another, the Righteousness of Jesus Christ the Savior. A lost man is one who cannot see that Law and Justice can do without his efforts at obedience in order to attain or maintain salvation, for all its conditions and demands have already been met and fully satisfied by the only obedience that can attain and maintain the saved state: a perfect Obedience. There is no point in anyone sitting down to invent the wheel, for not only has the wheel already been invented but it has been serving man for thousands of years!! There is no need for man to strive to come up with his own righteousness which cannot save anyway, when the only Righteousness that saves has already been established!

Paul the apostle testified of the Jews, that they were indeed a very zealously religious people, yet he prayed for their salvation because for all their zeal, they evidenced without a shadow of a doubt that they did not know God, in that they were seeking to establish a righteousness of their own based on their obedience to the law. ZEAL FOR RELIGION IS NO SURE SIGN OF SALVATION. "But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? BECAUSE THEY SOUGHT IT NOT BY FAITH, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone" (Christ and His Righteousness) (Rom. 9:31,32). It is abundantly clear in this passage from God’s Word, and in the one which immediately follows it, that none by their own obedience can ever attain to the Righteousness required for salvation and that there is only one way to salvation and that is by faith in the Obedience of Another. "Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, BUT NOT ACCORDING TO KNOWLEDGE. For they being IGNORANT of GOD’S Righteousness, and going about to establish THEIR OWN righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the Righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for Righteousness to everyone that believeth" (Rom. 10:1-4). Paul bases his need to pray for the salvation of the Jews on the fact that they are ignorant of God’s Righteousness and are seeking to establish a righteousness of their own. The only refuge for the ignorant is the ramshackle house built by their own righteousness, a house that simply will not, and cannot, stand. There are only two kinds of righteousness: God’s and yours. If you are ignorant of God’s Righteousness, then you are seeking to establish a righteousness of your own. And if you are seeking to establish a righteousness of your own, you cannot believe in and therefore be submitted to, the only saving Righteousness. And, you are as lost as the Jews whom Paul prayed for. The Scriptures always equate ignorance with darkness and lostness. Ignorance of the Gospel is a sign that the Gospel Light has not yet come, and is an evidence of lostness and spiritual blindness: an attribute of the misguided and hopeless. Everyone outside of Christ falls into this one category: they go about trying to establish a righteousness of their own. They have placed their confidence in something other than the Righteousness of Christ alone to save them. Whether they are aware of it or not, those who reject Christ’s Righteousness as being all that is needed for salvation, are seeking to establish, and are placing their trust in, their own righteousness—in something they do. The lost continually look to something other than, or in addition to, the Person and Work of Christ to find assurance for their ‘salvation’, for they have yet to believe in Christ and His Righteousness alone as being sufficient to meet ALL the conditions of salvation from beginning to final glory. This is called salvation by works and if one seeks after salvation by works, one cannot be seeking after it by faith, and one cannot, and will not be, saved on that ground, just as the Jews did not find that which they sought after because they, too, sought it not by faith in the Righteousness of Christ, but by seeking to produce this saving righteousness by their own obedience to the law. THIS DOES NOT IMPRESS GOD, BUT RATHER DRAWS HIS WRATH! God does not think as we do and is not dictated to by emotion, as we often are. HE JUDGES BY A SET STANDARD. Those who seek salvation by any other way than the Way God has provided, stand condemned already (Jn. 3:18). "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Rom. 3:28). Man is such a depraved creature who has not only sinned against the Great and Holy God but further compounds, or exacerbates, that sin by rejecting God’s way of salvation and seeking it by his own efforts at obedience. Rather than improve his condition, man’s reliance upon his own obedience only contributes to his lost and sinful condition, thus further condemning him. One cannot be in a saved state whilst being ignorant of the Way of salvation, for how can one possibly believe that which one is ignorant of? The Truth of God, that Righteousness can only be achieved by the Obedience of One, Jesus Christ, and that this Righteousness is a FREE GIFT from heaven which is dependant on no man but is totally reliant upon the God-Man, is something which can only be discerned spiritually, that is by one who has been made spiritually alive, or born again, by the grace of God. The ignorant are lost, and the lost remain ignorant until God shines the Light of His glorious Gospel, wherein is revealed the only righteousness which saves, upon them.

Men will crawl along on their knees for miles in the hope of finding favor with God. Some will literally whip themselves bloody, or discipline themselves to such an extent that they will shut themselves away in a monastery and take a vow of silence. In his attempts to find favor with God, man will clothe himself differently to the world and some will not wear any clothes at all! He will not shave his beard, he will eat only certain foods and worship on certain days etc. There is virtually nothing which man has not entered into in his vain attempts to reach God. He has set up and worshipped statues, erected monuments and blasphemously painted images of what he has imagined God looks like. He has bowed down to these idols, as well as virtually every creature, including himself. Religious man will refrain himself from partaking in the sinful lusts of the world such as drunkenness and fornication, in the belief that this will in some way impress God and help gain his salvation, or at the very least contribute to maintaining his purported saved state. Every false religion in some way, and to varying degrees, promotes the deeds of man as a vital element in a man’s salvation. THAT IS THE SIGN OF A DEADLY RELIGION. Christ and His Righteousness, is not, and has never been, enough for the religious world, even for those who go so far as to name the name of Christ and believe themselves to be followers of Him and believers in grace. Lost man, whatever his religion, is convinced that HE must do, or he will die. ‘Man must do or he will be utterly undone,’ is their warning. Such people are so blind as to not even realise their state of darkness. The lost do not know they are lost. One man has wisely stated, "Everyone thinks they are saved, before they are saved until they are saved." They claim to love Christ and to trust in Him alone yet they think they can lose their salvation and must remain obedient in order to stay saved! This is not what the Bible says loving Christ is, nor trusting in Him alone for salvation (Psa. 13:5,6). This is no different to what any false religionist believes. All of false religion’s teachings boil down to man and his own works being that which ultimately gets him into heaven. This is far removed from what the Word of God teaches. In fact, it is the very opposite. The Bible maintains that man is singularly incapable of the obedience required in order to be found righteous in God’s eyes, and that the only way a man can be saved or made Righteous is by the Obedience of Another.

The word ‘obey’ is not unlike the word ‘holy’. There are no degrees of holiness. One cannot be said to be mostly holy or partially holy. This would make as much sense as saying that one is partially married or a little bit pregnant. One is either pregnant or not pregnant; one is either married or not married; one is either holy or unholy. One is either obedient or disobedient. One has either hit the mark, or has missed the mark which is precisely the state of all men: "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). "Every act of obedience that we might think would recommend us to God is rejected by God’s law because it comes short of the perfection that God’s law demands as to the ground of salvation" (W.P.). The Law can only condemn that which does not perfectly meet its demands. Man at best can only offer to God an imperfect obedience, which really is no obedience at all. To be only partly correct cannot be construed as being correct in the true meaning of the word. The Scripture says that if one has failed in obedience to one of God’s laws, one has become guilty of all: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10 cf. Gal. 3:10). One cannot properly be called obedient unless one has obeyed perfectly. To obey is to do. That’s what the word obedience means: to do exactly that which you have been told to do: no less and no more (see Matt. 21:28-31; 1 Sam. 15). To obey is to carry out instructions or to comply with demands. If I have only done part of what I was told to do I have not been obedient, but disobedient. One cannot be called holy unless one is perfect and pure, for there are no degrees of holiness. If one has failed to keep one of God’s laws one has failed to keep the Whole Law, revealing oneself to be anything but holy, and therefore utterly incapable of ever producing the only Righteousness that saves. "...Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10). This is why God alone is referred to as Holy. "Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou ONLY art Holy..." (Rev. 15:4). And this is why ONLY BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE can the many be saved. At no stage in a lost man’s life is he viewed by God as anything but ungodly and unrighteous. Man is unholy and disobedient at his very best.

So, according to the Voice of the Word of the Lord man can do nothing to get saved or stay saved: "But that NO MAN IS JUSTIFIED BY THE LAW in the sight of God, it is evident: for, THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH" (Gal. 3:11). This is one of the principal reasons why God has given unto man a Savior. God wants those who are not a people to become His people (1 Pet. 2:9,10), and out of His great Love He has provided a Savior for these people who could never do anything to save themselves, and whose Righteousness is of God (Isa. 54:17 cf. Isa. 45:24). Christ has said "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him..." (Jn. 6:44 cf. Jer. 31:3). If this were not so, man would not need a Savior. If there was anything that man could do to get himself into a saved state and remain so, no Savior would have been necessary. In fact, the Bible says that if righteousness can be attained by man’s obedience to the Law then Christ has died needlessly: "I do not frustrate (neutralize or violate) the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. 2:21).What Paul is saying is that if Christ is not, by His Person and Work, the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of all of salvation, then He is no Savior at all. But Scripture says "And being made Perfect, He became THE AUTHOR OF ETERNAL SALVATION unto all them that obey Him" (Heb. 5:9). If any part of salvation, no matter how minute, is obtainable or maintainable by an imperfect work that sinful man can do, then the grace of God is neutralized (nullified) and Christ has died in vain. He is either All in All or nothing at all. He is everything we could not ever be, and He did everything we could not ever do. That is why God does not need our contributing acts of ‘obedience’ to get us saved or keep us saved, FOR WE ARE COMPLETE IN HIM!! There is no need to add anything to a glass which is already full. God is completely satisfied with what our Substitute has done! "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are COMPLETE IN HIM, which is the Head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:9,10 cf. 1 Cor. 1:30,31). If salvation were conditioned on the works God enabled man to do, man would have room to boast (Lk. 18:11-14) and salvation would no longer be purely by grace, thus making man a co-savior with Christ. Christ would have done His part and man would have performed his part, with the aid of God, and together, by a united effort, a state of salvation reached. Salvation is either by 100% grace or it is by works alone; it cannot be a combination of both. Like oil and water, they can never be mixed. "And IF BY GRACE, THEN IS IT NO MORE OF WORKS; otherwise grace is no more grace. But IF IT BE OF WORKS, THEN IS IT NO MORE GRACE: otherwise work is no more work" (Rom. 11:5,6). The combination of God’s grace with man’s works is a satanic notion and would only produce a volatile mixture which would explode in our faces. It would be like mixing fuel with fire! Paul the apostle taught that even if a man were to add a seemingly insignificant thing, such as the cutting of some flesh (circumcision), to what Christ has done, this would completely nullify the Works of Christ on the behalf of the sinner: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you NOTHING. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that HE IS A DEBTOR TO DO THE WHOLE LAW" (Gal. 5:2,3). Man cannot pick and choose what he will obey and base his ‘salvation’ on. If you seek to obey a law, a rule of conduct, in order to gain or maintain salvation, then you are a debtor to obey the WHOLE LAW PERFECTLY, not just those laws which you are attracted to because you feel you can obey them. If you embrace the Law as that which saves you, then you must also accept the fact that you must suffer the eternal penalty for failure to keep even one law perfectly. If you think that your obedience to even one religious rule is the capstone of your salvation, and the thing to which you often seek refuge in your mind that assures and convinces you that you are saved, YOU ARE A DEBTOR TO DO THE WHOLE LAW and CHRIST SHALL PROFIT YOU NOTHING!! It is man who places himself under this sentence because of his blind insistence that he must do something to get or remain saved.

Christ cannot be called upon by those who believe they can be justified, or become further qualified for heaven, by their adherence to the law of God (Gal. 5:4). Let no man think he will be saved who appears before God with his own righteousness, whilst claiming to have trusted and believed in the Righteousness of Christ. This would be like a man accused of robbery, proclaiming his innocence before the judge whilst holding the stolen property under his arm! If any man thinks that his salvation is conditioned on Christ’s work AND even one act of obedience on his part, even if he attributes that obedience to God, then the Word of God says that man must obey the whole law perfectly or perish. This whole matter of salvation is not being played under man’s rules but under God’s Rule. God is saying to us that if you do not place your entire trust in what He has done to save, then you are going to have to do the whole thing yourself! The one who believes that his faith is what makes him to differ from another, in other words believes that faith is a condition he must meet in order to get saved, is also a debtor to do the whole law for faith is not a condition that man must meet, or a work that man must do, but is a gift from God (see Rom. 4:5), Who is the only one Who makes the saved man to differ (separate thoroughly) from the lost man (1 Cor. 4:7).

Man is not only a debtor to obey the whole law of God perfectly but, having sinned, he is also a debtor to pay the penalty in full that his sin has incurred. Every man must appear before the Holy God either with Christ’s Righteousness or his own. It is either one or the other. Either you appear before the Holy God with the Perfect Righteousness of Christ imputed to you, or your own imperfect righteousness which you have produced. YOU CANNOT COME TO HIM WITH BOTH, for one is the result of GRACE and the other is produced by WORKS. If you come to Him with Christ’s Righteousness, you will not want anything to do with your own righteousness (Phil. 3:9). But know this, if you plan to appear before God on Judgement Day with any of your own imperfect righteousnesses, you must also stand before Him with all your sins, which remain charged to your account, unlike the saved man whose sins have been charged to Christ’s account, based on the rule of imputation. Imputation is a two-way street. You cannot have one without the other—you cannot believe one without the other "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; THAT we might be made the Righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). You cannot claim that your sins have been charged to Christ’s account, if you do not believe that one is saved based purely on the Righteousness of Christ imputed! Why? Simply because all those who have truly had their sins charged to Christ’s account believe that His Righteousness, which has been imputed to them, is the ONLY ground of their salvation. They do not look to what Christ has done AND what they do as the basis for their salvation. They do not believe that any part of acceptable and saving righteousness is produced by themselves, but only by Christ Jesus. You must stand alone, and your eternal future will depend entirely on your imperfect obedience to God’s perfect Law if your confidence lies in anything but the Righteousness of Christ alone. You cannot appeal to Christ, DON’T EVEN DARE THINK OF IT, if you look to anything outside of Christ and His Perfect Obedience for ALL of salvation. If you trust in your efforts at obedience as forming any part of the ground of salvation, to any degree, you will be accursed forever. If you depend on anything which you have done, are doing, will do, can do, aspire to do, don’t do, never wanted to do or never have done, as forming any part of the ground of your salvation, you are a LOST person and your righteousness before the Holy God is as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6). If righteousness before God is obtainable by an act of obedience on man’s part, or anything else which is outside of what His Gospel Message declares, in addition to what Christ has done, then the redemption of man did not require the death of the Son of God as Mediator and Representative, as Substitute and Surety of all whom God had given Him. Christ’s very Death was for the Redemption of the elect of God, the Precious Blood which He shed was for the remission of all their sins (see Heb. 9:15;10:18 cf. Isa. 53:11). Anything added to what Christ has done, anything trusted in apart from, or together with, what Christ has done, changes everything. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Gal. 5:9). If any man goes about seeking to obey any law of God motivated by the lie that his obedience will gain him favor with God, then that man is a debtor to do the whole law, and that perfectly. His debt to God is not cancelled, or blotted out, by what Christ has done, for if it was, if this was what the man truly believed, he would not be seeking to add to what the Savior has accomplished. He remains in debt to God and must, by his own efforts, try and pay the price. NO MAN HAS EVER DONE THAT, AND NO MAN CAN EVER DO IT. ONLY THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHIRST CAN SET A MAN FREE! "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth" (Rom. 10:4). The Savior, or Redeemer, of mankind is Jesus Christ the Righteous One and it is because of Who HE is and what HE has done that a man can count himself saved and in right standing with God. It is BY CHRIST ALONE that a saved man is presented perfect and blameless before a Holy and Just God. It is Christ and His imputed Righteousness, not the sinner and his efforts to become righteousness, which presents a man faultless before God (Jude 24).

There is nothing in man himself that can recommend him to God. The saved man has repented of his own defective righteousness and has entrusted himself only to the perfect Righteousness of Jesus Christ. His confidence does not lie in anything he has done but in what His Substitute has done for him. He looks to nothing in and of himself for assurance of salvation, but entrusts himself solely to Christ and His Righteousness. The Christian trusts in nothing and no one but the Righteousness of Christ, and because his trust lies ONLY and COMPLETELY in Christ’s Righteousness, HE HAS NO TRUST ‘LEFT OVER’ to place in anyone or anything else! IF RIGHTEOUSNESS COMES BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ANOTHER, THEN THAT IS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS ONE MUST WHOLLY AND SOLELY ENTRUST ONESELF TO. Christ’s perfect Righteousness is the only means by which a man is saved. To illustrate this point, picture the following: God is on one side of the ocean and the elect are on the other. How can God get His grace and mercy across to His people, and by what means can He then bring His people to Him? No other way than by means of a ship called ‘THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST!’ One must be wholly submitted to the Righteousness of Christ or one cannot be submitted to it at all. If Righteousness comes by another, then it is obviously and abundantly clear that to be saved, one must trust in something totally outside of oneself; in something which does not and cannot proceed from one’s own person. This does not come naturally to man, who obstinately adheres to his own views whilst rejecting God’s Word on the matter. If Righteousness comes by another then it stands to biblical reason that it cannot come from us, and so it is HE to Whom we must look and place our confidence in, and in Whom we must trust COMPLETELY. If ALL of justifying Righteousness comes from another, then ALL our trust, comfort, peace and eternal security should be in, and because of, that other. No one can rightly consider themselves a Christian if their trust is not completely in Christ Jesus the Lord. This trusting must be according to God’s definition of trust and not our own. You cannot be fully trusting in one thing whilst at the same time having confidence in anything else. God demands a righteousness in which even He cannot find a flaw. Only the Person and Work of Christ, the Representative of His people, qualifies a man for heaven. Only HIS Obedience meets every requirement of God’s Holy Law. Peace and assurance is the believer’s not because he finds comfort in the fact that he hasn’t committed a particular sin or types of sins, but that His Savior, His Representative, his Redeemer, has not committed ANY sin, but has perfectly obeyed every law of God, and that His perfect sinless Obedience has been imputed to him. It is by Christ alone that a saved man can come boldly before the Throne of Grace and enter into God’s glory without fear of punishment (Heb. 4:14-16 cf. Heb. 10:19,20).

But how so? How is it that man, who can do nothing in and of himself to get saved or remain saved, possibly ever come into right standing with God and meet with His approval based on the Obedience of another? How can another’s obedience make us righteous? To those who cannot discern the answers to these questions, there remains nothing but to believe that man must do his part in contributing to, and maintaining, a ‘saved’ state. The answer to the above questions, for those who have ears to hear, is Imputation: the charging of man’s sins to the account of Christ (on the cross), and in turn, the imputation of Christ’s Righteousness to those sinners for Whom He died. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21 cf. 1 Pet. 3:18). By way of imputation, God can remain a Just Judge and simultaneously be the Savior of those who have so terribly sinned against Him (see Isa. 45:21-24). "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS that are past, through the forbearance of God; TO DECLARE, I say, at this time HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS: that He might be Just and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus...therefore we conclude that A MAN IS JUSTIFIED BY FAITH WITHOUT THE DEEDS OF THE LAW" (Rom. 3:24-26,28). How can God be Just and the Justifier of those who have sinned against Him? By Imputation! God has wisely chosen, according to His purpose and grace, a people to become His special people, a chosen nation of believers and worshippers of the true and only God (Eph. 1:4,5). He has done this, not according to any of their deeds, but solely according to His great Grace and Mercy: "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, NOT ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9). Salvation is not something which is earned, but is a free gift which comes from God and is given to His elect ones. God’s Christ, Jesus the Holy One, was sent to this earth to live a life of perfect obedience and to die the death that was appointed Him. This was all done, not for Himself, but for all those whom He represented, all those for whom He was sent to save. Christ was sent to save His people from their sins, the Scripture says, and in this He could not, and did not, fail (Matt. 1:21).

In order for God’s Law to be fulfilled and His Justice satisfied, He requires total and complete obedience as well as complete and total payment made to His Holy Justice. Man could never obey the commandments of God because man, to begin with, is a sinner and all he does is stained with sin. A corrupt tree can only bring forth rotten fruit (Matt. 7:17,18). All of man’s deeds, even his best efforts at obedience, are a stench in God’s nostrils. No matter how hard a man may try to obey God, he always falls short of the Standard God has set. This is why salvation has graciously and mercifully not been conditioned on man’s efforts at obedience but on the Obedience of Another, on the only one who could achieve perfect righteousness: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God....(Graciously) Therefore it (salvation) is OF FAITH, (not of works) that it might be BY GRACE; (not reward) to the end the promise (not the offer) might be SURE (not merely possible) to all the seed (not everyone)..." (Rom. 3:23 & Rom. 4:16). The best a man could do in an attempt to satisfy the demands of God’s Justice would be to spend an eternity in Hell. Yet even in this state man could never pay for his sins, for in all his sufferings he would never cease from sinning. You cannot pay for sin whilst a sinner. Not even in hell can man make any restitution to God by his sufferings, because in hell man shall always remain a sinner, a sinful creature. And perhaps the worst part of hell for those who are there, and who will go there, is knowing that for all their sufferings they cannot atone for a single solitary sin, EVER! So from all this we see that there is nothing man can do, not his best religious work and not any amount of suffering, even if that suffering takes place in hell itself, that can even begin to meet the demands of God’s Holy Law and Justice. This is why man needs a Rescuer, a Savior. A Substitute Who can meet ALL of God’s demands of obedience and Who can also make full payment for all of a man’s sins. Jesus Christ has done this for all those whom God chose and gave to Him from before the foundation of the world (Jn. 6:37).

Christ was able to fully obey the Law of God in that He was not a sinner like other men, for He was not born of the seed of man but virgin born of the Seed of God (Matt. 1:23; Lk. 1:35). Christ Jesus lived a perfect life. He could not sin and He did not sin, thus establishing a perfect Righteousness, the only Righteousness, by which a man can be saved (see Matt. 5:17). Christ’s Righteousness does not only consist of His perfect obedience to God’s law as a man, but also His perfect obedience even unto the death of the cross. Christ suffered and died, not for Himself, nor for any other reason than for the sins of His people, to appease the wrath of a Holy God towards those people. Before salvation all God’s chosen, just like other men, were children of His Wrath (Eph. 2:3). Christ atoned for their sins fully, paying the price for their sins by laying down His Perfect Sinless Body on their behalf (Eph. 5:25,26 cf. Isa. 53:8; Jn. 10:11,15). The Perfect Sacrifice for an imperfect people; the Just for the unjust (1 Pet. 3:18 cf. Rom. 5:6). The sins of God’s people, His elect, were imputed (charged) to Christ and He took them out of the way, nailing them to His cross, signifying full payment made. The language of nailing their sins to the cross as found in Colossians 2:14, speaks of finality of payment. In the Middle East, the custom after full payment of a debt was to drive a nail through the account. This custom is also practised in Western countries. It can be witnessed whenever a bill, account or debt has a spike driven through it. It may also be seen in banks when a cheque is cashed or withdrawal slip is dealt with. They are both pierced through by a spike. It signifies that payment has been made IN FULL and there is nothing of the debt outstanding, nor anything more that the creditor can demand.

The Sacrifice of Christ was a sweet smelling savor to God (Eph. 5:2), for Christ was sinless and His sacrifice a perfect one, spotless and unblemished, as the Old Testament sacrificial lamb was, which was a type of the Christ Who was to come. This is one reason why Christ is called the Propitiation for our sins (1 Jn. 2:2). Christ is the Propitiation, or Satisfaction, to all that God’s Law and Justice demanded. It is faith in Him alone that saves, for He is the only one who has achieved anything! The Christian believes the truth because of Him. That’s why the true believer, and only the true believer, has his faith and hope ONLY in God and in nothing that proceeds from himself. THE FAITH THAT COMES FROM, AND IS GIVEN BY, GOD TRUSTS ONLY IN GOD. "Who by Him (Christ) do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God" (