The past several decades, we have seen a dramatic decline in doctrinal and biblical preaching, and most significantly there has been an increase in motivational speaking instead of preaching.
In addition to this, many churches today have oriented themselves to a distorted understanding of the gospel by espousing a strange “super-grace” approach that trickles down to not only what they preach, this is most obvious by preachers who refuse to take a stand against sin and rarely if ever mention the need for repentance. This is nothing new. For centuries the body of Christ has wrestled with something called antinomianism (anti means “against,” nomos means “law”). This is the belief that the law of the Old Testament has been done away with and that, once we are in Christ, there is free grace in which we can almost live any way we want since we are not under the Law but under grace. Thus, according to this view, the Old Testament is not that important to read except for metaphors, types and symbols regarding the coming of Christ. Some even mistakenly say it is just a history book with no application for their lives. The New Testament is all about grace and does away with the Old Testament Law! Of course, Paul the apostle warned against this sort of thing in Romans 6:1-2 when he rhetorically asked, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? His response: God forbid! How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer in it?The first thing the apostle Jude says in his epistle (in the context of contending for the faith in verse 3) is that ungodly men amongst them were turning the grace of our God into a license to sin. Evidently these free-grace preachers were twisting the Scriptures by teaching that “we are no longer under the Law” means “we are no longer under any obligation to obey the law of God once we are saved.” This in spite of each of the Ten Commandments being directly cited or taught indirectly in the New Testament. Examples of exact citations are Ephesians 6:1-3, which quotes the fifth commandment; James 2:11, which quotes the sixth and seventh commandments (regarding murder and adultery) and says in verse 12 that believers will be judged according to the “law” of liberty; and Romans 7:7, where Paul quotes the 10th commandment regarding not to covet. Paul also says that we dishonor God when we disobey the (moral) law (Rom. 2:23). Obedience to the Ten Commandments (the moral law) is also taught indirectly, as in 1 John 5:21, which instructs believers to stay away from idols (from the second commandment, regarding not making a carved image to worship); and when Yeshua said that the greatest commandment in the Torah is to love God with all the heart, mind and soul (Matt. 22:37-38), which corresponds to the first commandment regarding having no other gods before Him. Paul makes it clear in Romans 7:12 that the law is holy, righteous and good and that the purpose of being filled with the Spirit of Christ is so the righteousness of the law would be fulfilled in us (Rom. 8:4). What these grace teachers teach is cheap grace and that we can just float around as spiritual beings without any standards for obedience and disobedience!
Although we cannot be saved through obedience to the Torah (because everyone is guilty of breaking the commands, Romans 3:19), God uses the Torah as the standard of righteousness in which to judge us of sin. Thus, the Torah does not save us, but it sanctifies us when we yield to the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, because through it we have the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20). The fact of the matter is, in the commands we offer our lives in service to the Lord God our Father in heaven. We establish Him on the throne of our hearts. The selfish person says he or she will live their lives in the way they seems right in their own eyes. For the preacher that teaches grace only without obedience, woe to that man on the day he stands before the Lord…
