You Have Heard It Said … But I Say Unto You
This is a series of articles that specifically show how we misunderstand Bible Truth when we don’t view it through GOSPEL EYES only.
Satan’s greatest attack and warfare is to blind our minds to Christ’s gospel (II Cor 3:15-17, 4:4). If he can hinder gospel belief, he can stop the power of God flowing into us, and thus the life and presence of God flowing out of us.
SATAN LOVES RELIGION! This is living by principles, precepts and standards of any type. They keep us in defeat, because we can never get it totally right and perfect. Under any type of law the mandate is, “Be perfect, even as you Father who is in heaven is perfect” (Mat 5:48).
Satan loves God’s law because it is the strength of sin (I Cor 15:56). He gets us to mix the Old Covenant law with the New Covenant gospel. This is like mixing the blood of animals with the blood of Jesus. He knows that doing this keeps us “Double-minded and unstable in all our ways.”
As ‘the angel of light,’ Satan preaches religion in the form of PARTIAL TRUTH. He knows if he preached something totally off-the-wall, no one would believe it. But when he mixes in PARTIAL TRUTH, we are quick to say, “Amen!” He wants us to live with incomplete beliefs, wrong assumptions and incorrect perceptions. These are not necessarily WRONG, but they are only PARTIALLY TRUE.
If he can keep us living at a lesser spiritual level than the gospel reveals, he keeps us in bondage to SELF. Jesus says for us to “deny ourselves” (Luke 9:23). Life is a battle: the kingdom of SELF vs. the kingdom of GOD. This battle began in the Garden of Eden with The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad.
Jesus taught us God’s Kingdom reality: “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). This means to repent of EVERYTHING else you have ever believed of a spiritual nature, and ONLY believe the gospel. This is how we live the abundant life of Christ (John 10:10).
I call these messages:
“YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID…, BUT I SAY UNTO YOU”
This is a phrase Jesus used a lot.
It describes my goal:
to contrast what is often taught and believed
with what we lawyers call, “The truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth” — of the finished work of the cross of Jesus.