Bread or Poison?
Clay Curtis

Malachi 1:7: Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.

The next time you are baking a fresh loaf of homemade bread, mix in rat poison. Do you think you could obtain life by eating it? Why not, there will be good bread in each bite? The problem is that the whole loaf is contaminated by the poison. We would not even call such mixture bread, we would call it poison.

There is no doubt that the Pharisees used the good food of the scriptures. The Judaizers in Galatia even used that good name of Christ Jesus the Bread. They added many good ingredients of true doctrine. Yet, insisting there is something the sinner can do to make himself more holy than Christ does, they denied that God put away the sin of his people according to his holy justice; that he by himself justified each child whom he saves in the person of his Son; they sprinkled in the poison of man's free will contaminating the whole. The apostle Paul called it, "another gospel." The Lord called it, "the leaven of the Pharisees." Believers call it poison.

According to his word, a sinner can as soon expect life from eating rat poison as from eating such polluted bread. The Lord Jesus Christ saves in power, in righteousness and in truth or he does not save at all.