Thursday, July 14, 2005

Reforming the 4 Spiritual Laws

Here is a must read post from Christian artist/Reformed Evangelist Steve Camp over at CampOnThis. As someone who offended many in my college evangelism class for daring to question the validity of the Four Spiritual Laws, I really appreciate Steve's revision from a Reformed/Biblical persepective. Here is brief summary of the new and improved Four Spiritual Laws:

LAW ONE: God hates you and has a terrible plan for your life.
LAW TWO: There is nothing you can do about it. Man is sinful and utterly lost.
LAW THREE: But Christ came and died in our place and fulfilled God's law and all righteousness, took all of the sin, its guilt and penalty...
LAW FOUR: May God grant you saving faith and the grace to repent of your sin and receive Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior for eternal life so that you may have peace with Him forever!

Or here is more positive approach:

LAW ONE: God is holy, loving and just and has a plan for your life that He predetermined in eternity past according to His sovereign purpose and pleasure before anything that was made, was made.
LAW TWO: Man is totally inable to save himself for he is totally depraved and thoroughly sinful due to Adam's original sin in disobedience to God's command in the garden; which has been imputed to all of Adam's posterity--encompassing fully the guilt and penalty of his sin. Therefore, man is incapable of pleasing and satisfying a holy God by his own good works, religious practice or ceremony; or by charitable, philanthropic acts of kindness toward God and His creatures. For our righteousness is like dirty filthy rags rendering to us condemnation under the wrath of God for all eternity.
LAW THREE: Christ alone is the way, the truth, the life. He lived the perfect, sinless life; He alone satisfied God and fulfilled all righteousness and the Law in His life, death and bodily resurrection so that that same righteousness, by faith, can be imputed to every believer in Him so that we might have peace with God forever. Christ, though being sinless, holy, and undefiled was treated on the cross as if He lived our life, so that we being sinful, unholy and completely defiled might be treated through grace as if we lived His life. He was the perfect, sinless High Priest; and He was the perfect sinless sacrificial Lamb given. He is both Savior and sacrifice; Priest and propitiation; Lord and Lamb.
LAW FOUR: Repent from your sin (deny yourself), turn to Christ (take up your cross) and take the gift of the Holy Spirit (and follow Him). Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Submit to Him as Lord and receive Him as Savior.

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