Know your course, set your heading

1 Corinthians 2:2 (AKJV):  “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Have you?  What does that verse entail?  Have you agreed with God that:  “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” Romans 3:23;   you being part of “all” must see your own sin, your dead state, your wretchedness and realize your dead apart from God.  Needing forgiveness that is received in Christ:  “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;” Ephesians 1:7.  With that forgiveness comes life: “And ye will not come to me (Jesus), that ye might have life.”  John 5:40.  To realize that you need a savior, you need saving, that you are dead and one that is dead is incapable of any action but belief.

Understanding not only that your dead but that Jesus, the Christ died in your place to satisfy God’s righteousness requirement for your salvation.

Christ died a horrendous death in that you believe that by His death is your pass for all sin ever, not just yours alone.  That in believing what God has said of His son justifies God to justify you; GRACE.   By that grace, that grace from God extended to you when you believe what God has said.  Grace is also the key that allows one to unlock faith, by just believing what God has said.   “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”  2 Corinthians 11:3.  

Then comes the gospel that saves us, saves the world today, now, this time, not times past nor ages to come but now:  “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;  by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.  For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;  and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”  1 Corinthians 15:1-4.

How do we see this gospel played out in us who have truly believed?  “ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.  I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”  Galatians 2:20-21.  I believed,  at that moment I died and was risen with Him, I believe the scripture and Jesus Christ, I will trust in His faithfulness to me because by faith I believe Him: “For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: forI know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”  2 Timothy 1:12.  

The scourge of Christendom today is that man will add to that gospel. An addition to is a rejecting of what Christ has done.  Man says the gospel is good and we must believe it but also get baptized, keep sin confessed, join a group, a fellowship, a study, give tithes, dress certain way, given a list of  don’t do’s and then given a list of do do’s.  All that is added is a perversion of the gospel of Christ and His, again HIS! finished work.  

Paul addressed that perversion of the gospel in writing: “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:  which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.  But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.  As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.  For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”  Galatians 1:6-10.  Paul then later writes of the judgment of this tampering and adding to the gospel:  “ Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.  (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)”  Philippians 3:17-19.

Don’t add too nor take away, be content and abide in Him who has saved us who just believe.  Don’t add to nor take away “so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”