Saved By Grace
Yes we are saved by grace! We by no means are saying that our salvation hinges on “doing” anything other than accepting the gift of grace and professing our belief in Yeshua as Messiah.
John 1: 17 “For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ”
But grace isn’t new, exclusive only to when Yeshua arrived:
Genesis 6:8 “But Noah found favor in the eyes of LORD”
Exodus 33:12 “…I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight”
Deuteronomy 7:9 “From this you can know that Adonai your God is indeed God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and extends grace to those who love him and observe his mitzvot, to a thousand generations.” (Mitzvot is Hebrew for commandments).
2 Peter 2:7: but he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the debauchery of those unprincipled people;
Grace existed before Yeshua, but the means of grace was Yeshua. He also properly lived the law (God’s instructions) and interpreted it.
However, once we are saved, if we truly love him we will be set apart. We will walk differently, in love for our Father as Yeshua did and we are to do the things he did. One of the many things he did was obey the commandments of our Father Yehovah, God in heaven.
It is not Grace vs Law, is it Grace with the Law.
1 John 2:2 “ He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
1 John 2:7 “ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.”
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
We know this isn’t popular with mainstream Christianity but after having God reveal his truth to us, we cannot go back.
1 John 2:15-17 “ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
Luke 6:26 “Woe to you, when all people [the world] speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
God does not punish those who are ignorant of his laws (Numbers 15:25-31), but we feel we are to walk the way Yeshua walked in order to be a light to others so that they can see Him in us. Because we love Yeshua and God our Father, Yehovah, we want to obey his instructions to show him that love.
Chris’ love language is acts of service, mine is words of affirmation. We are married and will always stay in a marriage relationship, but if we deliberately did not do or say the things we know the other person needs in their love language, we would have a pretty sad marriage. But because we know what the other needs, we both purposefully do or say those things so that the other knows person knows they are loved.
God showed us he loved us by dying on the cross for us Ephesians 5:25: “For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her.”
We are to show him we love him by obeying his commands. Obedience is what is expected of the bride. Ephesians 5:22: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”
Obedience is God’s love language. So we will speak it to him as best as we can by obeying his instructions.
When we know what God wants, but deliberately do what we want to anyway, it is angering to God.
Hebrew 10:26: For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
Acts 3:19: Repent, therefore and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.
James 1:22 “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”
We know that things that are of this world or loved by the world are not of God, God has written his Torah on our hearts (Deut. 4: 6, Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 10:16). We also know that the enemy hates those who follow God, and expect to be attacked for our commitment to follow Yehovah.
Revelations 12:17 “Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
After learning how God determines his calendar, and understanding his appointed feast days and how they are prophetic shadow pictures of things that will come, the scriptures came alive to us in a whole new way.
When Jesus proclaimed “I am the light of the world” during the Feast of Dedication, it made so much more sense. That he was the sacrificial lamb and the first fruit offering, made his sacrifice come alive. He was born during the fall feast of Tabernacles, (as the word became flesh, and tabernacled among us), and was not placed in a barn but a sukkah.
This made his coming perfectly fitting the prophesy and our understanding became full and exciting. We wanted to learn more and are learning more every day. As believers in Yeshua, we are grafted in to God’s family, and are expected to follow his instructions for us as heirs. (Numbers 15:29) We are not going to follow man made traditions, either from Christianity or Judaism.
This revelation is being made to many around the world in every nation, it is a time of ingathering where God is bringing together believers around the world to knowledge of his truth about his instructions (Torah).
It was prophesied that in these times we will come to God saying “ADONAI, my strength, my fortress, my refuge in time of trouble, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, saying, “Our ancestors inherited nothing but lies, futile idols, completely useless.” (Jeremiah 16:19)
Zechariah 8:23 “ADONAI-Tzva’ot says, ‘When that time comes, ten men will take hold – speaking all the languages of the nations – will grab hold of the cloak of a Jew and say, “We want to go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.”