God and Christ do not have fellowship with us on the basis of grace but on the basis of what kind of person we are and how we behave. Anyone who walks with the Lord understands that Jesus is a Person, not an aloof system that operates in terms of the manner in which we have been able to bind God with certain "key verses."

If our religious beliefs do not lead us to Jesus the Person so that each day we come to know Him better, our religious beliefs are worse than useless. They are of religious Babylon—the organized religious confusion that keeps the believers ignorant of the Lord and His ways.

Jesus the Person has nothing whatever to do with a "grace" that receives the sinful and disobedient into the spirit Paradise, and then condemns those who never have heard the Gospel to the Lake of Fire.

The Lord Jesus receives the prostitute, the drunkard, the thief, the murderer, and everyone else who comes to Him for help. The Lord Jesus possesses the authority to forgive anyone whom He chooses and bring him into the Kingdom of God. This is the meaning of John 5:24, which is one of the more important of the "key verses" from which the deadly conclusions are drawn.

The thief on the cross who acknowledged the kingship of Jesus is an excellent example of the authority of Jesus to bring to Paradise whom He will. (Not knowing the background of the thief we do not know the depths of his repentance or the commitments he had made to God while hanging on the cross.)

Where the present-day understanding of Divine grace has gone off course is in the area of the distinction between coming to Jesus, on the one hand, and accepting doctrinal statements, on the other hand. Today's converts, in many instances, are coming to doctrinal positions for salvation rather than to Christ.

The purpose of the Scriptures is to bring us to Jesus, not to a mental belief. When we come to Jesus He forgives our sins and deposits a portion of eternal life in our mortal personality. The depositing of a portion of eternal life in our personality is not a figurative expression meaning we shall live forever (all spirits live forever!). Rather, it means an actual portion of Divine Life has been placed in our mortal personality.

From then on we are to abide in Christ each day of our discipleship so the Divine Life given to us may be nourished and strengthened. If our new life is nourished and strengthened it will, at the coming of Jesus, make alive our mortal body. But if we permit the cares and things of the present world to choke out the eternal life that has been given to us, then there will be no inner Divine Life, no "oil" to make alive our body in the Day of the Lord.

It is God's Spirit who dwells in us, not our doctrinal position, who will make alive our body in the Day of Christ (Romans 8:11).

To be continued.