Independence Day

I have celebrated various Independence Days around the world and can conclude that there is nothing like the Fourth of July. Every other country celebrates independence from the end of a war or the signing of a treaty - Not America. A-stan celebrates at least three “Independence Days” each year (when the armies of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the Taliban withdrew). To fight for their independence from Spain, Costa Rica sent an army north to Mexico, unaware that the treaty granting independence had been signed two years earlier. Today they celebrate the treaty and have disbanded the army. T-stan celebrates it’s independence from the Soviet Union even though there is scarce historical evidence that anyone there actually wanted to be independent.

Everyone who recognizes the Fourth of July as US Independence Day participates in a clear statement of American faith. Our independence does not spring from the surrender of Cornwallis nor from the Treaty of Paris, our Declaration of Independence, previous to the battles, is what settled the matter in our minds. Nowhere else in the world are things done like this, because it rests on the intellectual pillar of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith apart from good works. That is what makes America so different.

According to the doctrine, salvation occurs prior to and apart from any good works. It starts when a person recognizes his own sin (sin being spiritual – not just the physical act of adultery, but the desire; not just the physical act of murder but the angry spirit). No one can control their own spirit so as to never BE a sinner, even apart from DOING anything. You should realize that Christ paid the penalty of sin (death) that justice demands from each one of us. He satisfies the just claims against us if we will accept a new start to life by faith. And the born again experience begins with a public declaration:

Rom 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Rom 10:10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. NASV

Then, the real war, your battle against sin, begins. Never, ever, does salvation depend on your succeeding in doing “good works”. Your ultimate goal - to live in a holy condition (be a “saint”) is secure though you fail and lose battles. The end victory is to be counted as already won - just as when they used to run the Continental Army off the field in the years after the Declaration was signed! It depends on the work Jesus did on the cross that each individual must claim in that momentous declaration of faith. This does not end, but rather begins your war against sin (the fighting of which will become your “good works”).

Then, you are ready for “life, liberty and the pursuit of holiness” as Jefferson wrote before Franklin edited.