Is Christ Enough

In all honesty, answer the question “Is Christ good enough, and is what he did necessary?. Is anything mandatory? Is anything essential outside the work of Christ? Legalists and liberalists will never, ever be able to answer, honestly, “Yes.”

The legalist believes that in order to maintain or earn your salvation, there are certain rules, criteria or actions that need to be met, as if to earn God's favor. They foolishly believe that by their own means they will be seen as righteous because of what they did. This person will often report what they've done or not as if they are worthy of some sort of praise. There is a call to repent of one's own righteousness (Lk 18:9-14), recognize your need for Christ and leave your life in his hands (Rom 3:23-26). You are justified by God through the work of Jesus. He imputed his righteousness upon you the moment you were saved. It is by Christ you are saved, not the law or things you can do (Gal 2:4-16). The law is needed to show your need to be saved (Gal 3:15-26). What Jesus did on the Cross was sufficient. Do not add to it, for if you try to add to what God did, then you are trying to be God, and Satan did the same thing (Is. 14:13-14; Rev 12:7-9).

The liberalist will tell you that God doesn't want us to follow rules, or that scripture doesn't mean what it says. The fact is, you can't earn God's favor, but a person who is truly saved has a regenerate heart. This new heart will hate sin and recognize the word of God as his word because the righteousness of Christ was imputed. The Bible tells us clearly what sin is: It's not just motive, but action (eg. Rom 1:21-32; Is. 5:20-21; Matt 15:17-20). God hates drunkenness, regardless of whether one is drunk out of rebellion or just to have fun with friends. Even your motive to do something good could be as evil as Satan's pride that got him kicked out of Heaven. To negate sin is to lessen what Christ did on the cross, therefore making him and what he did equally irrelevant to the legalist and liberalist.

Both sides are demonic and anti-Christ. What Jesus did is good enough and equally necessary. It is false teaching that says, “You need to tithe,” and “You need to go to church,” or even bless those things that God has unashamedly called evil. The regenerate heart will want to give generously and want to be in community with the church on Sunday mornings, and it will choose to abstain from sin. Self-righteousness and lack of restraint are equally damnable. We need Jesus to be right with God, and his grace to maintain us. Therefore, if we fall into either of these categories, we need to repent of that and actually be changed and live accordingly by the grace of God (Rom 12:1-2).