The following is an excerpt from Steve Backlund’s regular blog. Steve and Wendy Backlund head up Igniting Hope Ministries which host a Lent ‘Negativity Fast and Positivity Feast’ go to ignitinghope.com for information.
Is it more important to preach about right living or right believing? The Old Testament answer was right living, but the New Testament answer is clearly right believing – and right believing actually creates right living: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). When we are focused on right living we are focused on our own efforts to “do” righteous. When we are focused on right believing, we place our trust in the finished work of Jesus that He has “made” us righteous.
Abraham, an Old Covenant person, is held up to us as the example of how to live in the New Covenant. “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression” (Romans 4:13-15).
Unfortunately, many in the New Covenant start in faith but go back to an Old Covenant mindset of focusing more on performance than on beliefs. “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? . . . Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3). We are living in the flesh (placing our trust in the flesh) if we are focused more on what we are doing than what we are believing.
Do you know what the opposite of faith is? It is not fear, it is works. There are two ways to approach God – faith and works. One “works” while the other does not. Those who would preach and emphasize holiness and good conduct apart from a heavy diet of emphasizing that we are righteous by faith will actually increase sin in the people they are trying to influence positively. “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).