“Living by grace instead of by works means you are free from the performance treadmill. It means God has already given you an “A” when you deserved an “F.” He has already given you a full day’s pay even though you may have worked for only one hour. It means you don’t have to perform certain spiritual disciplines to earn God’s approval. Jesus Christ has already done that for you. You are loved and accepted by God through the merit of Jesus, and you are blessed by God through the merit of Jesus. Nothing you ever do will cause Him to love you any more or any less. He loves you strictly by His grace given to you through Jesus.” Jerry Bridges (Transforming Grace, 73)
Evangelist Morgan Campbell in his commentary on Galatians writes:
“One teaching that is totally absent from all the cults is the gospel of the grace of God. No one is taught in the cults that he can be saved from eternal damnation by simply placing his faith in Jesus Christ. It is always belief in Jesus Christ and “do this” or “follow that”. All cults attach something to the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith…..It is never taught that faith in Christ alone will save anyone.”
“Paul is concerned here to show that no one can be educated into the kingdom of God. Paul had not, he says, learned his gospel in the presumed Christian catechetical schools of Jerusalem. Where then had he learned it? It had come directly through a revelation, “unveiling”, of Jesus Christ, he says. On the road to Damascus, Paul had received a transforming revelation. The source of all revelation is God; and the content of this revelation was Christ.” Alan Cole, Commentary on Galatians
Carl Teichrib in his research book “GAME OF GODS” writes:
In California the Black Panthers waved guns and demanded “justice and peace. The US Supreme Court said “no” to public prayer in school. America’s fabric was torn by domestic assassinations, and the “political truth” of the JFK inquiry undermined public confidence. Paul Ehrlich was selling population control: “We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.” “Hip Marxism” – the New Left – promised can end to oppression; a bright future of social quality and cultural transformation. Radical student movements made the evening news.
As the Esalen Institute a “religion without religion” was being birthed, combining psychedelics, yoga, sex, psychology and liberal theology into a new humanistic spirituality – adjustable to one’s felt needs. In San Francisco, Anton LaVey formalized a pragmatic, anti-Christian religion – the Church of Satan – “a temple of glorious indulgence” that would “recapture man’s mind and carnal desires as objects of celebration.” To LaVey, his Church was the real counter-culture. It certainly embodied the spirit of the age.
Closer to Los Angeles, members of Elysium were shedding their clothes “for the well-being and advancement of the public.” In Laurel Canyon, a new music scene was churning out anthems for America’s Cultural Revolution; leaving a trail of personal wreckage. Colorado’s Drop City became an artistic vortex for “a new society in which the individual may fill both his spiritual and physical needs while doing just what he wants. On a farm in New York, 400,000 people danced and frolicked in the mud and rain. Woodstock, “An Aquarian Exposition,” celebrated “love and peace.”
Dreams for sexual freedom, social and political utopia, and a world imagining itself into a new reality flittered in the minds of millions…
America wandered in a maze of moral dilemmas…
Mistrust and anger marked the domestic spirit. Mass demonstrations tore at the nation’s fabric. Troops were not just being sent to the jungles of Asia, they were marching on the streets of Detroit, Chicago, and Washington D.C. At Kent State university, members of the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students. America wandered in a daze of lost meaning.” Carl Teichrib “Game of Gods”