Have you heard of the velvet ant? It has a coat of tiny hairs that feel smooth and velvety. But it\u2019s all a disguise. It isn\u2019t an ant at all, but a wingless wasp with a nasty sting. After injecting its victims with a venom, it lays eggs in their incapacitated bodies. <\/p>\n
One of Paul\u2019s greatest concerns was that, after being saved by grace, the churches would go back to living under the Old Testament law. He constantly warned them about basing their salvation and their relationship with God on their own performance. \u2018I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of Gospel than the one you believed.\u2019<\/i> (2\u00a0Corinthians\u00a011:3\u20134\u00a0NLT<\/sup>) <\/p>\n Another Jesus! Another Spirit! Another Gospel! Again Paul warns, \u2018Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.\u2019<\/i> (2\u00a0Corinthians\u00a011:14\u00a0NLT<\/sup>) Yes, your work for God on earth determines your rewards in Heaven. But only by trusting in the finished work of Christ will you get to Heaven. No one in Heaven will say, \u2018Look what Jesus and I<\/i> did!\u2019 <\/p>\n Legalism will not only infect you, it will incapacitate you. Scottish minister Horatius Bonar wrote, \u2018Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another\u2019s life, another\u2019s death, I stake my whole eternity.\u2019 <\/p>\n How do you protect yourself against \u2018the sting\u2019 of legalism? By depending on God\u2019s grace alone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you heard of the velvet ant? It has a coat of tiny hairs that feel smooth and velvety. But it\u2019s all a disguise. It isn\u2019t an ant at all, but a wingless wasp with a nasty sting. After injecting its victims with a venom, it lays eggs in their incapacitated bodies. One of Paul\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}