The So-Called Problem Passages

Concerning the doctrines of grace, there isn't time tonight, as I blog, to list all the so-called "problem passages" - passages that would seem to imply that we are not saved by grace alone, after all.

I should sit up as late as necessary and share my thoughts on some of these passages, after all, I brought the subject up, didn't I? But I'm suddenly sleepy, and as I scrunched under the covers with my laptop just now, my comfy pajamas came alive with an incredible amount of static cling, and that puts me in a peckish mood. I sit here, looking shrink-wrapped in a pair of old lady pajamas. That is not the way one wishes to look when expounding on the profound. I absolutely don't have a solution to the problem, so I'll make this post short, lest my laptop and I somehow arc electrically. I'm afraid if that happens, it could stop my heart - the static in my jammies is that bad.

Suffice it to say, every passage of Scripture must pass through the cross. All of human history passes through the cross, and so do the problem passages. Jesus said it this way, to the teachers of the law:

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

Jesus, full of grace and truth, is the One about whom all Scripture testifies. To interpret any passage from any other foundation, is bad exegesis at best, dangerous at worst. Hebrews says it this way:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son...

Friends, unless you are a stark raving antinomian, determined to hate the law of God, there never has been and never will be a single passage that contradicts the blessed works of righteousness that flow from our identity with Christ. Unless you are a grumpy exacting legalist, determined to hate the idea of your eternal security, there will never be a passage that contradicts the beautiful grace of God.

All Scripture is given by God, and God has summed all things up in Christ. There are no problems with passages, only problems with thinking. Search the Scriptures...in them you think you have life, and they testify - Old Testament and New Testament - of Jesus Himself!