ART 5 THE NECESSITY OF RIGHT DOCTRINE

ART 5 - THE NECESSITY OF RIGHT DOCTRINE

by BILL PARKER

God uses His truth revealed, preached, defined and empowered by the Holy Spirit in regeneration and conversion to dispel the powers of darkness and bring lost sinners to a knowledge of Him (Rom. 6:17-18, Col. 1:12-14). True knowledge revealed and defined in the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, is the means which God uses to draw His people unto Himself so as to secure them in His fellowship (Rom. 1:16-17). It is this truth revealed that God uses to glorify Himself in our hearts, to exalt Christ and give Him all the pre-eminence and to exclude all ground of boasting in ourselves (2 Cor. 4:6). What does a sinner believe that would give evidence of his salvation? HE MUST BELIEVE GOD'S GOSPEL (Mark 16:15-16). This Gospel includes the very doctrines of God which actually invade our minds to overcome the sinful principles of works religion and to establish in us the principles of grace (2 Cor. 10:5). The Gospel is God's declaration of salvation conditioned on Christ alone wherein the very righteousness of God, the imputed righteousness of Christ, is revealed as the ground of salvation. No sinner is saved who is ignorant of this (Rom. 10:1-3). Can a person be intellectually brought into the kingdom of God? Everyone who is brought into the kingdom is brought in intellectually. Now, it is not intellect alone or the mind alone. It involves the affections and the will, the whole heart. And it is God the Holy Spirit who brings sinners into the kingdom (John 6:44-45). Is everyone who is brought into the kingdom an intellectual? No, but they all have a revealed, God-given knowledge of the only ground of salvation, of how God is just to justify the ungodly based upon the merits of the blood and imputed righteousness of Christ (2 John 9-11).