Are There Two Gospels

Let's take a look at Galatians chapter 1 at what is The true gospel we need to ask ourself are there are two gospels or three or four or more That's been an issue that has been a difficult issue that the church Struggles with the day and that's always been the great challenge of our most holy revision to maintain a true and the pure Biblical gospel. I think this has always been the preeminent issue among theologians and among different denominations It is historically then the issue that is divided Catholics and Protestants that has caused a Rift between what we would call liberals and conservatives that a bone of contention at least in different shades of the gospel between our minions and those who call themselves Calvinists between the new Orthodox and the evangelical the Reformed or the Neo-Evangelicals battle over this thing and so do even the Pentecostals and those who are non-carrasmatics How is a man made right with God? This will always be always the key issue of life and it will always be the major theme around which all religious controversy swirl That is because religion Is the most important facet of life not economics and not politics And not the social sciences or education not even the family religion Is the chief end of man Chief reason for existence I think that's alluded to in our shorter Catechism that asked the question what is man's primary purpose and the answer you know? It is the glorify God and enjoy him forever then we ask the question well By what authority do men know how to glorify and enjoy God and we say the only authority? For glorifying and enjoying God is the Bible just the word of God and made up of the old and new testimonies And then the question proceeds thirdly to what does the Bible primarily teach? We answer the Bible primarily teaches what men must believe about God and what God requires of man So the whole issue of Religion lies at the very purpose and center of our existence as men made in the image of God made for his purposes and his glory That's why Martin Luther and the great reformers had a Theistic Center to their life they saw all of life all of government and Politics and war and all of these things swirling around the issues of religion I have quoted this to you before But I think it's such an important statement and and then brings such conviction to me that I don't mind Climbing it to you again roll in bacon in his famous book here I stand which is his biography of Martin Luther described why Luther was the man that he was and why he Towers among everyone else and what is called the modern era of Western history Baton says Luther's principle in religion and ethics alike must constantly be born in mind If he is not at times to appear unintelligible and even a bit petty But the primary consideration with him was always the preemidance of religion Into a society where the lesser breed were given to gaming and war string and wenshing At time when the choice or short were glorifying in the accomplishments of man Brode this Luther and Transpired the song of angels stunned by the wrath of God Speechless before the wonder of creation lyrical over the divine mercy a man aflame with God For such a person there was no question which mattered save this How do I stand before God? Luther would never shirk a mundane task such as Exorning the electorate to repair the city wall in order to keep the peasants pigs from rooting in the villagers gardens But he was never supremely concerned about pigs and gardens walls and cities princes and peasants are any and all of the blessings and nuances of this mortal life The ultimate problem was always God and man's relationship to God For this reason political and social forms were to him a matter of comparative indifference Whatever would foster the understanding the dissemination the practice of God's word should be encouraged and Whatever impeded it must be opposed This is why it is futile to inquire where the Luther was a democrat and aristocrat or anything else religion was for him the chief end of man and All else was purple that means that Times have not really changed much We like to think and we would say well Luther lived in a spiritual age we live in a secular one But it's interesting that even in our postmodern world it is religion That captures the hearts and minds of men Now we don't use that word today. That's a politically incorrect word We have replaced the word religion with the word spirituality There it seems to be a bevy of books on spirituality and That spirituality is usually focused upon the mystical the esoteric The individualistic idea just God and me Unlike religion that is written and and Prophored for doctrine and for duty and ethics for groups of people I noticed that people who focus on books of spirituality Major on the early church and the medieval mystics and generally ignore both the reformers and puritans and the great revivalists of the church They are being written principally by men and women from liberal denominations whose religion quite frankly has been gutted They don't believe anything anymore And so these people are left to their own Individual spiritual that's all they have left in life just Jesus and me There are exceptions There's a wonderful book written by a man who's an anglican named Alistair McGrath entitled Spirituality in an age of change to rediscovering the spirit of the reformers I commend you to it and it to you. It's a good book We don't agree with everything that Anglican says but he seeks to honestly bring in the historical and reformed tradition of spirituality and to show us how all The spiritual things we look for can be found in the historic gospel and Christian faith There's the writings of a man named Hughes all of them old T.C. USA. Administrative believe he teaches at Princeton I'm not sure he writes about the historic reformed as sex of spirituality and perhaps most importantly in the last 30 years Is a book written by Richard Loveless who still alive and yet his book I think could rightly be called a classic It's called Dynamics of spiritual life and evangelical theology of renewal These two PC USA ministers and this Anglican with whom I have Communed with these books share with me a concern about theology and history and the church along with spirituality out Healthy thing to do We struggle brethren with the same Basic spiritual issues today that the apostles of the early church struggled with Medieval scholastics argue about that the reformers and the time of the Renaissance battled over with others and Puritans Revivalists were concerned in the age of the church's growth and expansion around the world. What is the one? true historic gospel. How is a man made right with God and And how does he maintain that right standing with him? That is always will always be in this fallen world long as men are born into this world with original sin Damned from birth and looking for some way out of condemnation and into life They're going to struggle with that issue Luther is right It is the doctrine by which the church rises or fall is one hundred percent corrected Even today there are movements among men who profess to be reform to undercut the Historic and true gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ the same and Paul's day That's why he writes this little epistle that we know is Galatians and That's why he says at the very outset what his major concern is in writing to the church in chapter 1 Beginning in verse 6 what he says I am amazed That you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ But even though we are an angel from heaven should preach to a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you let him be a Cursed as we have said before so I say now again If any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received let him be a curse For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God or am I striving to please men if I were still trying to please men I would not be a bond servant of Christ Paul says look I'm amazed You're stupified and wonder we could even say I am shocked That you're so quickly deserting this one true Christ-centered biblical gospel that I gave you for false Gospels that are really not gospels at all and that is why I want to write this particular letter to Interesting it seems to me that this letter written within between six and twelve months after Paul visited these people Is concerned with this issue of deserting the two gospel. It's not an easy thing to maintain Listen to Richard Loveless as he sets forth some of the pretenders to the gospel of Christ and how they worm their way into our thinking Viewed from one perspective The Protestant Reformation was an effort to remake every sector of the church according to the biblical direction But in another sense the spiritual heart of the Reformation was more simply an effort to rebuild the understanding of the Christian life incorporating Luther's insight on justification The full success of this venture has been repeatedly Ported by the ease with which sinful men can twist the essential truth of Luther's insight on the one hand justification by faith can be transformed into the whole unbiblical teaching of justification without sanctification Which Bonhoeffer called cheap grace But on the other hand Puritan and pious efforts to guard against this abuse often led to a mixture of ascetic Legalism in the realm of spiritual discipline and unbalanced stress on auxiliary methods of assurance Testing the one's life by the inspection of works and searching for the internal witness of the spirit of Spirit Luther's teachings on assurance of salvation through naked reliance on the work of Christ Later the shift towards rationalism in parts of the church began to obscure the holiness of God and the depth of sin Introducing a moralism which found no use at all for the doctrine of justification You know brethren Loveless is absolutely on target if you take all the religions of the world and certainly All of the different aspects of so-called gospel in the Western world You can boil them down into four categories really you can lump them under four gospels There's the gospel of legalism The gospel of rationalism or moralism the gospel of anti-nomenism or cheap grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ Three false gospels one true gospel and And that's what we're going to study in the next few weeks We're not going to have time tonight to go through all that so this is going to be a two-part message We'll look at what these false gospels are and how they present to us false hopes and false answers to real problems And next week we'll look at the true gospel and the motives for preaching it Loveless goes on and says this These three aberrations from the biblical teaching on justification cheap grace Legalism and moralism still dominate the church today a Large part of institutional Protestantism assumes that all professing Christians and perhaps all men are justified Whether or not they show evidence of conversion and sanctification This is simply the modern form of cheap grace Another sector of Protestantism and much of the Catholic tradition overlooks both the problems of Prophetiation for sin and the deliverance from its grip and Presence the essence of Christianity as simply doing good on a social or individual basis This is the contemporary expression of Enlightenment and Enlightenment moralism The evangelical sector of the church descending from the Puritans and pious Through a number of religious awakenings has remained a vestigial awareness of the holiness of God The depth of sin and the substitutionary aspect of the atoning work of Christ and the doctrine of justification by faith But all too often it retains a legaled mixture where it is most deeply serious in its piety And at the same time falls into either cheap grace or individualic moralism, which is inconsistent which is there with its very theology So these things that that we talk about legalism rationalism anti-nominism a prevalent today they find themselves again and again offering us false Solutions easy answers to difficult spiritual problems where the only answer according to Paul is Jesus Christ and in crucified That's what I want to do tonight. I want to look into our own hearts and into the history of the church To see whether or not any of us in this room harbor any vestiges of these false gospels legalism rationalism Anti-nominism. Let's look at them one at a time before we do that. Let's pray Father, we are about to ask you to search our souls teach us about false gospels which lead to false religions and false hopes and even false Christ We ask you to do this tender way and yet in a direct way Speaking to each one of this individually and all of us corporately We might rely more upon Jesus Christ and him crucified to some men foolishness the others a scandal But we who are elect we who are being saved He is the power of God and the righteousness of God in human flesh We yield ourselves into his hands for his purposes tonight and ask that he be supreme in these moments to follow We pray this for his sake and in his name in men Look again if you will at verses six and seven Paul says I am amazed that you are so quickly Let's take a long time. It's not difficult. It's rather easy and quick I'm amazed that you are so quickly Deserting him that is Christ who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel Which is really not another Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ What are these disturbing gospel these distortions of Christianity? Well, they are three. Let's look at them one at a time First there is the false gospel of legalism This gospel teaches us simply that a man is made right with God that is he justified or saved on the basis of some sort of Rulekeeping that makes him acceptable to God Ultimately legalism leads to a religion of rule keeping whether it's trying to keep the commandments of God Or trying to keep the rules of the church or trying to follow the teachings of human leaders Things that are substitutes For yielding to Christ in total legalism Ultimately becomes a religion based upon salvation by dead works Usually this legalism is not purely a salvation by works That's one of the mistakes. I think we make today If I were to say that some of you were legalist you would vehemently deny this you would say I do not believe That a man can be justified by works alone Mostly, gilest don't I don't even believe the Pharisees Held to a doctrine of pure Salvation by works Legalism is a doctrine of faith plus works What makes it so notorious and so so injurious to our faith is that it impunes the finished and satisfactory work of Christ That's the problem that Paul was dealing with in Galatians these people were not teaching Listen carefully to me. They were not teaching that a man would be justified if he just was circumcised and kept the Lethical law they were teaching that a man needed to first believe in Christ and then keep the works of the law in order to be just by faith Plus works equal justification According to the Judah is just and according to many people in our modern world I grew up with this religion. This is the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church Listen to the Catholic Catechism is it explains how people are justified by a combination of the grace of God and the Maritorious works of men Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom On man's part it is expressed by the ascent of faith to the word of God which invites him to conversion and And in the cooperation of charity with the promptings of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his ascent Let me just explain what they're saying there that a person first give us a scent to Christ he yields to Christ. He has faith in Christ But then he must cooperate with God by his own Maritorious works that they cloak under the word charity. They've changed that in the last few years They used to just come out and just say the works of holy religion now they use the word charity So it's faith plus works in which they cooperate with God in order to be justified Now we maintain that Paul teaches that apart from the works of the law men will be justified In fact, no man will be justified with any works of the law Justification is what we call in theology a monogistic work Monod, airgast, one work. It's the work of God. God does all the work to justify it You do absolutely zip nothing. It's the free gift of God After you're justified in order to grow in your life as Christ in sanctification You do cooperate with God But you cannot take sanctification and justification and bring them together and make them both the justifying process That is what Kapalasism does when it says God's grace and man's freedom Co-operate in man's justification They go on to say since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace No one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification at the beginning of conversion But moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity we can then merit for ourselves and for others The grace is needed for our sanctification for the increase of grace and charity and for the attainment of eternal life Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer Prayer attends to this grace that we need for meritorious action In other words, we begin by the free gift of God's grace But then we have to work in order to merit the things that ultimately lead to an increase of grace that assures us eternal life Sound confusing. Well, it is Sound close to the truth. It's awful close Sound wrong It is But legalism always acknowledges grace and faith in the spirit What it adds to that though is man's religious works and That legalism constitutes the vast majority of the world's relations is a lot Judaism all of the cults that I can think of Eastern Orthodoxy Roman Catholicism Several branches of of what we would call Protestant fundamentalism are all Inundated with legalism First you believe then you work Maybe you're right with God who knows You don't brethren it even bleeds its way into the PCA you believe that This idea that that we're not totally acceptable Unless we take the law more seriously. They were not really reformed Unless we cross all of our T's and dot all of our eyes the same way You say one that's not true the PCA doesn't teach that any man can be justified by the works of law. No one does No one does It's always faith Plus doing something else that makes you acceptable to God in the proof of that is if you just have faith and don't do something else Then you're treated as someone who's not acceptable to God That's how you know you're a legalist People have accused me over the years of being legalistic They say you're too narrow You're too opinionated Too all steered on you ever smile Treat your children like you treat us. Yes That's why they're the mental wrecks that they are And you know what I do tend towards a legalist so do you It's the seed in every human soul We come by from mom and dad Adam and Eve But when they rejected God by faith and disobeyed in bad works And we're given a chance to come back by the promise of God the covenant of race a future Messiah Continue to try to work To get back into God's state we come by it naturally The interesting thing is the one who criticizes me for being a legalist Well, she thinks that as long as she gives a strict tide 10% no more Is not openly immoral and goes to church at least 90% of the time that she's right with God Doesn't seem to bother her that she's Eat enough with materialism with the other 90% that she's been married several times before That she sits in church with a judgmental spirit of everybody in the room See a legalist is one who never quite sees his own problem A legalist according to Jesus Christ is one who makes it hard for everyone else to be right with God But it's incredibly easy for him to be that way Listen to Christ Luke chapter 11 Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the platter But inside of you you're full of robbery and wickedness You foolish ones did not he who made the outside make the inside also Forgive that which is within as charity and then all these things are clean for you But what do you Pharisees for you paid tithe on mint and brew and every kind of garden urban yet? disregard justice and the love of God But these are the things you should have done without neglecting others What do you Pharisees for you love the front seats in the synagogue and the respectful greetings in the marketplaces What do you for you are like concealed tombs and the people who walk over them are unaware of it Won't you lawyers as well for you way men down with burdens hard to bear while you yourselves are not even willing to touch the burdens with your little finger A legalist always makes it difficult for you to feel right with God But he always feels that way he doesn't even live by his own rules Because his salvation listen to me is based upon performance But not a performance to God's standards but to his own performance oriented people materialistic people people concerned about success their image their status People who are enamored with law and with picky rules and nitpicky rituals and different formulas These are the kind of people who are closet legalists and the proof of the matter is You've always got to guard your soul from legalism Now legalism has a first cousin But it's different enough to warrant its own gospel and that's the false gospel of rationalism rationalism It's just a variation of legalism It teaches us that a man is made right with God. He's justified. He's saved Because he intellectually knows the right answers And in the exterior can do the right thing This is the man whose religion is dominated by moralism speaking and doing the proper thing It's a religion that is relying heavily upon propriety The right answers the right attitudes acceptable conduct intellectual respectability political correctness It is a socially acceptable religion drawing its strength from the approval of those who are the majority around it This particular religion has three cardinal virtues that it relies upon being nice attaining an education enacting socially proper in certain circumstances It has its own set of ten commands here they are thou shalt be acceptable positive proper respectable rational practical scientific intellectual always in the majority and correct You must never have wrong answer This is the fellow of the girl who really thinks In the recesses of their mind they really think when they get to the judgment seat of God There's going to be a pop quiz That they're going to whip out a pencil and paper And give all the right answers and God's going to say something amazing You're so intelligent Come on in We're eating up with it It's the gospel of the enlightenment The idea that the classical liberalist hand that there was a right way to do things that men were growing evolving into intellectual prowess such that they could conquer all their problems Answer all the questions There was no revelation, reason replaced that There was no mystery, there was science We didn't have to rely upon the doctrines of the church The sociologists and psychologists tell us how God was growing we were growing with him It's all this process theology All these ideas that we were becoming better sometimes even smarter than God It's the gospel of secular humanism It's the gospel of cultural Christianity Of the American mainline churches The idea that being nice and respectable Is being a Christian We hear it all the time Well he's such He's such a wonderful Christian gentleman He even find it in the PCA again It's the TR It's the guy who reads the Puritans and knows the standards And he can pull them forward and backward But you know what? Don't do them But he knows them He's a confessional fellow Forget the fact that his doctrine never changes his life Never molds his character Never really makes him any different Forget the fact that he's never forced to In any difficult way apply Or obeys something that would force him out of his comfort zone in his respectability It allows him to live comfortably around How into the actually And even sometimes with his words openly condemn me He says the right And we're about to do it It's that idea that Knowing is just as good as doing It's the moralistic creature He dominates our age The guy who talks about doing right I'll even say at the end of the sermon now the moral of this story He's like Aesol getting us fables He never seems to point us to the cross Never tells us that Grace is all we have Never ask us to be a fool for Christ To die for our Sanderson Die to self and Become nothing That's Not acceptable Not proper After all This is salvation by having the right answer God prepares that we look foolish The third false gospel Is the one that probably Is the most dominant in our country at this time And that's the gospel of anti-nomenism It's the gospel of what Dietrich Monhoff and others called chief grace It's the gospel that teaches simply that a man is made right with God He's justified He said because He prays of simple prayer and as Jesus who knew his art But he doesn't have to surrender to Christ's Lordship We'll follow him in obedience He saved my formula Of easy faith But in fact grace to him means it's easy That's what grace is easy It's the gospel that leaves me comfortable in my sense So it affords me the opportunity to be justified but not worried about being sanctified It's the one that allows me to take Jesus as Savior but not as Lord It allows me to have a faith that's never proven or perfected by good works as James says it ought to be It's grace without holiness obedience or service It's the idea that religion is supposed to be comfortable and easy and pleasurable after all God is loved But he never hold it never shrink never precise It's this possible This false gospel that incidentally James is condemning his epistle I think it's interesting that in the same year that God began to reveal to his apostles the New Testament He gave them Galatians and James the battle these false gospel of legalism and rationalism and anti-nomenism to give us the biblical balance at the very groundwork of the New Testament faith It is this idea, brethren That religion should be known by four things or five First of all, it shouldn't make you worry about sin If God is love you shouldn't worry about anything It's the idea that you ought to be comfortable and happy It's hymns or a rumpy stompy kind of play pen sort of thing, you know It also is the idea that you are allowed to resist all efforts to change and we've gone after all I'm okay you're okay It's the first of its greed of Satan It's the religions as like Neil Diamond Don't think It's emotive Irrational It's mystic It's the idea That we can reject all moral absolutes because after all that's not what the Bible says to me To me and Jesus we've got our own thing going It is unfortunately the gospel that dominates the pentecostal and charismatic movement It dominates the majority of evangelicals including dispensationalists And the mainline church which honestly and accurately need not be called liberal anymore. They're not It would be good if they returned to liberalism. They are now near Orthodox They're existential it. It's all what we experience and it gives itself over from this anti-nomean cheap grace Emotive type of thing to mysticism. That's why we find so much new age creeping into the evangelical Pentecostal and the Orthodox church A preoccupation with angels and visions and miracles and channels and guides and apparitions and quite frankly just weird things Go to the Christian bookstore sometime and look at the number of books you find on the rack that either talk about How to things or feeling good about yourself or how to have a happy fill in the blank and all about angels and apparitions and after that experiences and how many compared to those you find on Doctor on history on suffering On holding I defy you to go to the Christian books for any way you find one Popular selling book on holding it today You won't find it Anti-nomenism or cheap grace or eb bullies him whatever you want to call it is simply salvation by means of pleasure It is This inordinate preoccupation with feeling good about yourself It never seems to realize that as long as you feel good about yourself There's not a whole lot god can or will do in your life It seems to have lost this historical idea of the reformers and the Puritans and even the church fathers before them and even I might say The medieval scholastic like Thomas Aquinas that there was such thing as a holy dissatisfaction that motivated a person To seek for something more But our gospel says oh no I have Jesus as my savior in my heart. I have all I need or want That's why it's so cheap And so shallow and incidentally loved ones that's why in the face of opposition and suffering And challenges it folds so quickly and gives up Rolls over Like someone who doesn't want to fight god is a god of love But he's a god of holiness too He wants us to feel good about ourselves. I suppose as long as we see ourselves in Christ and honor and glorify him He wants us to experience forgiveness But not a forgiveness without repentance and confession and surrender He wants us to experience the fullness of life after we've died this out And the thing we have the most difficulty accepting is that he does not think That suffering is a fantasy In fact, I think if god were to critique our easy believeism which he has in the New Testament He would ask if this question Why do you think that I would make your lives Any easier than that of Christ my only begotten thought If you want to know him and the power of his resurrection Then you are destined to know the fellowship of his suffering. It isn't going to be easy

In this world you have tribulation But take courage Christ has overcome the world Rather, these are the three false gossips swirling around us all the time And just as I said the seeds of legalism are in me and you So are the seeds of rationalism who doesn't like to get the right answer Who doesn't like to be the teacher's pet Who wouldn't want to be God's pet And who doesn't want to feel good and have an easy way I mean if there's a shortcut why not take it Crying out loud We got enough problems in this world Jesus said we don't need to look him for more If there's any shortcut There's no easy way And the problem with these three false gossips is they all offer something that's not real A knowledge So to somehow impress God Some list of rules it will somehow pay for the things we've broken on another list Some deep affection of God has makes himself Oh well, they're wretched little church, but I love many way It's just not that way Let me close by having you look at what the real answer to these religious quandary are It's over in 1 Corinthians chapter one We do need Righteousness We do need to keep the law We do need wisdom we need to have the right answer And we need holiness We do need to feel good about ourselves And there's a way to have that But not apart from Christ For Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter one beginning in verse 18 this For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness But to us who are beings to us who are being saved it is the power of God for it is written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. I will set aside Where is the wise man where is the describe where is the debate of this age has not God made the foolishness Have made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God God was well pleased to the foolishness of the message preach to say those who believe For indeed Jews ask for sign there is your mystic And Greeks search for wisdom. There's your legalistic rationalist The we preach Christ crucified To Jews a stumbling block into the Gentiles foolishness But to those who are the call both Jews and Greeks Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God because the foolishness of God is Why is there men and the weakness of God is stronger than men For consider your calling brethren that there were not many wise according to the flesh not many mighty not many noble The goddess chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise Got to show them the weak things of the world to shame the things of the strong And the base things of the world and the despise goddess chosen the things that are not that he might nullify the things that are That no man should boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus Who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption That just as it is written That him who boasts boast in the Lord There's what you need First 30 By God's gracious doing you have found yourself in Christ Jesus Who became to us wisdom from God he is the right answer And righteousness he is the one who keeps the rule And sanctification he's the holy one Who will make us feel holy in him and he is redemption It is Christ who gives us these things There's no finding them apart from him And therefore any other gospel Any other religious teaching in so-called Christendom That points away to being acceptable to God and leaves out this one small detail of Christ crucified is accursed It's damnable. It is to be rejected Not relied upon Our job loved ones is to examine our hearts tonight and to come clean before the Lord and say look Lord I tend to be your rationalist I tend to be legalistic I'm a guy who loves cheap grace admit it to pray about him that's it And go to Christ Who will bring to you the thing you pray that then you need And will humble you in the process So that your wisdom your righteousness your holiness your standing before God Will not be in yourself But in Christ And that my friend is the God Any man? Let's pray Father, it is so easy to overlook that one person The one who is the hero of it all Jesus Christ and to think That somehow our rationalistic moralism are propriety Our legalistic Phariseism rooted in performance and our anti-Nomian lust for cheap grace and feeling good about ourselves will somehow be overlooked As we over the Christ We know they will not That they are all rejections of the Christ of the cross and his suffering and death and therefore they are tremendously offensive to you And should have no part of parcel in the Christian life We confess to you that we share these leanings these tendencies these love To be right to be good to feel good And we pray that you would channel those desires in a biblical manner Into Christ and our union with him So that in him we have wisdom from you and in him his righteousness becomes our And so that in him the grace of the Holy Spirit makes us holy people who can feel good about themselves because You're doing a good work in perfecting them until that final day Give us this hope humble us in repentance to turn from these false hopes and give us faith to claim to Christ and increase our understanding and our dependence upon him so that over time We do not grow to need Christ less but even more and more Until someday He is everything and we are nothing This is the only gospel you will accept The only way you will accept us the only way we will be right with you and just in your sight So give it to us if we get we pray and guard us from these These trinkets and trash offered in its place Do it for our good for our salvation and growth for the strength of your church for the revival of your religion and do it for the honor of Christ Our beloved one In whose name and for whose sake we do pray Amen Now may the Lord bless you and keep you May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you may the Lord lift up his smiling Countenance upon you all and give you always peace amen