Do You Love God?

You shall have no other gods before Me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image––

any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,

or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water

under the earth; you shall not bow down to them

nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a

jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers

upon the children to the third and fourth generations

of those who hate me, by showing mercy to thousands,

to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Exodus 20:3–6

            Do you love God? If so, then keep His commandments! Do you admit to being a Christian? Then keep His commandments! Do you desire to be a witness for God? Then keep His commandments! Do you wish to be formed into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ? If So, then keep His commandments! Theology is so simple: Do what the Bible say sot do, and don’t do those things the Bible says not to do! Simple, yes: but hard to do for we are still burdened with sin, that original sin that plagues us, that attempts to control us, and we cannot do this alone and God does not ask for us to this alone. We have the Holy Spirit to listen to, and this is by His word, and we are enlightened by that word and led by the Holy Spirit to keep His word. The Holy Spirit will not pull you out of the mud, those circumstances apart from God because you took you eyes off the God, His word, and did not allow the leading of the Holy Spirit to lead you. John tells us: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:8). Do you say that you are “born again,” that is born of God? The keep His commandments: “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him” (1John 5:18). What if I sin? John the apostles give us great hope and joy: “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”(1John2:1). How many rely on that verse so that they commit sins and believe that all is or will be forgiven. Will it? The writer of Hebrews explains: “For is we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignations which will devour the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:26–27). Keeping God’s commandments is so important for a Christian and Jesus Christ ensures us of that importance: “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5;19).

            I will admit: most of my blogs are polemic and may at times have that which causes me to be called pedantic. One who sets standards high. I do this not just for you, but for me, and writing in such a way reminds me of the very things that I write. Some may even speak notoriously about me. Some may even think that I am teaching a sect. This would not be true for I hold to the unity of the Church, and preach the truth as given to us from the Bible. It requires much study, in the original languages, even to read men who wrote on subjects that are needed for us to remain free of sinning, to return us to the truth. Therefore I fight, to suppress, to crush, to fight against, even assault sects, schisms, superstitions, and heresies, as much as I am able and I will not cease to do battle against them, and this to be done, not on my own power, my own presuppositions, relying wholehearted on the help of God. The goal and the mission of this blog is to make cause for change, from the outside, in, or to change the inside so that the outside manifests the inside. The truth.

            Retrospect often is so clear, so revealing, and so hard because we lose sight of what the past was, what incurred, and the past fades. Yes it can be so clear, so revealing, and those occurrences come alive, that is, if we take the time to examine the past. Here is a question: How did we come to this point in time, those things we see and do, those things we accept? Reading men who wrote in the past reveal to us that which was so prevalent in the church, those things that we have come to accept as normal but was not considered normal by many when they examined the church in light of Scripture. History! Ugh! At least for some. Yet to know history is to know the present.

            What does history, at least in the last 300 years, history of the church reveal? Liberalism is an ideology that leads many people today to live and practice pluralism, and be autonomous, even to the point of living in antinomy. It is wrong, yet liberalism has found its way into the Christianity forming liberal Christianity. There are two books that I suggest you read: 1. Christianity & Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen (1987); ISBN: 0-8028-1121-3: 2. Real Christianity, by William Wilberforce (1797); ISBN: 0-8307-4311-1.

            I opened this blog with Exodus 2):4–6, and in the next blogs I will expand my writing to include a liberal change that has affected many people for all these many years, and especially can I see that liberal Christianity has allowed idols to be produced, in church, in home, and in the lives of many Christians. We need what a true Christian needs: the truth, and then keep that truth.

Come to Me, all you who labor

            And are heavy laden,

And I will give you rest.

                        Matthew 11:28

Begin each day in prayer

Richard L. Crumb