The deepest problem with Reformed theology is not any one of its five points but the method beneath them: a Bible read flat, without rightly dividing the word. Sort the texts — Israel's national election from the Body's election in Christ, predestination from selection, sovereignty without the caricature — and the system dissolves, leaving a God mo…

Paul's words fallen from grace are taken as proof the saved can be lost. In their setting they mean almost the opposite of misbehavior: a fall toward law, not into sin. Rightly divided, the standing in grace cannot be lost — what falls is the walk, when a believer trades grace as his operating principle for the law.

Matthew 10:33 and 2 Timothy 2:12 sound like the same threat to a trembling believer, but rightly divided they stand worlds apart. The Lord's warning belongs to Israel under the kingdom program; Paul's word to the Body touches the believer's reward, the reigning with Christ, never his salvation, which rests on One who cannot deny Himself.

Why would God create man, knowing he would fall — and would it not have been kinder never to create at all? Answered on the only ground where it can be answered, the revelation given to Paul: God made the world to display the exceeding riches of His grace, and grace must have something to redeem. The fall was man's, not God's; the cross is God ente…

Did the Body of Christ and the dispensation of grace begin together, or did the administration start later with the prison epistles? Scripture's answer is that they began together at Acts nine, by the same revelation committed to Paul — the administration of grace cannot be dated apart from the people it governs.

Much of what Christendom calls prayer was given to Israel — kingdom petitions, conditional forgiveness, and an anxious checklist of unanswered prayer. Paul gives the Body of Christ its own doctrine of prayer, continual and thankful and interceding, asking chiefly for wisdom and the inner man, on the ground of a finished work.

For the believer, the judgment seat of Christ is no courtroom of condemnation but the place where a faithful Master rewards His servants. Rightly divided, it weighs our service, never our salvation, and the crown of righteousness it gives is our glorification in Christ, all of grace, to all who love His appearing.

Christendom pictures Christ as our Advocate, forever pleading our case before the Father. But Paul never once calls Him our Advocate, and the Body has a standing no accusation can touch. Here is why the Advocate of 1 John belongs to Israel's believing remnant, and why our settled completeness in Christ needs no pleader.