Introduction

Hello Readers!
My name is Savannah Brenyo and I have been invited to be a co-moderator with Daniel and Matthew. I am 16 years old and am the oldest of eight children. My dad is the pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church and has been since it started more than six years ago.
When I was very young I began imploring Christ for salvation. My parents taught me that the only worker in salvation is the Savior and this led to my fear of calling myself saved. I didn't want to say I was saved if I wasn't. However, God's grace was showered on me and when I was 11 I was able to say with all thankfulness that I was his child.
I've been raised in the reformed tradition my whole life. Being reformed means I believe in God's sovereignty over all things. I believe he's sovereign over where I live. I've moved fourteen times. I believe he is sovereign over the health of my family. Six of my seven siblings have had blood complications when they were born. One stayed in the hospital for seventeen days. I believe he's sovereign over my life. I was conceived with a twin. During the pregnancy my parents only knew about the other baby. That baby died and my mom was rushed into surgery. After the surgery my mom was told she might never have children. Six weeks later she felt sick. She called her doctor and went into the office and he told her she was pregnant. The next day my mom had an ultrasound and instead of finding a very little baby they found a fourteen-week old healthy baby (Me!). My life was preserved through the death of my sibling, through the surgery, and through the countless medications used during and after the procedure. I am a firm believer in and a defender of God's sovereignty and grace.
I met Matthew and Daniel about six years ago through church and am continually blessed by their godly example. I hope that you are as blessed by their friendship as I have been. My prayer for this blog is that we all grow in grace and glorify our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

Always in Christ,
Savannah Brenyo

Can Man Be Right with God by Obeying the Ten Commandments?

This is an apologetics speech I wrote for my NCFCA Christian speech and debate club I’m in. Apologetics speeches are limited preparation speeches that give you 2 minutes to prepare a 7 minute speech based on one of three random questions pertaining to the Christian faith. The question I got was "Can Man be right with God by obeying the Ten Commandments," and I gave this speech to my leader and group. After my speech, another student went up and gave his speech on the exact same topic, and pretty much contradicted everything I said. He said that God made the Commandments as “guidelines” that were not meant to be followed to the letter, and that Man is made right with God by “doing his best.” Jesus, our Savior, never came up ONCE in the entire speech! My speech, unwittingly, addressed every point he brought up, and I thought it was interesting, yet sad, that my apologetics speech was actually defending the faith against a fellow student.

Can Man be right with God by obeying the Ten Commandments?

Man has tried to invent ways to get closer to God, or even to become a god in some religions, since the beginning of time. Usually this entails moral requirements; you must do this and you cannot do that. God’s Law, the Ten Commandments, are God’s standards of perfection, and breaking any of these is deserving of God’s eternal punishment in Hell. Today’s question, “Can Man be right with God by obeying the Ten Commandments,” is important because the answer will determine if Man even needs Christ’s atoning work on the cross for our sin. First, we will look at Man’s innate, natural depravity, and second, why God’s Law is impossible to keep perfectly, and why we need Jesus Christ as our Savior.

Scripture is full of references to Man’s imperfection, and failure to keep God’s Law. Psalm 14:1-3 says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who is good, not even one.” Each and every one of us has broken God’s Law; Romans 3:22b-23 says, “For there is no distinction: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” because of this, we are deserving of God’s just and eternal punishment, and it is impossible to pay our sentence by our works. 2 Peter 2:9 says, “Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement.” This verse mentions the “godly,” but how are we sinners made godly, righteous, before God? This brings me to my second point: why we need Christ as our Lord and Savior.

God is omniscient; He knows all things. He knows all too well we are depraved lawbreakers. Although we justly deserve God’s wrath, He provided a holy representative for us, His only Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a holy, perfect, sinless life as a human being, fully God and fully man; He never once broke God’s Law. He laid down His life at the cross to be the unblemished Sacrifice, covering our innumerable sins with His own righteousness. This is why we cannot “work” our way to heaven by doing good things or keeping the Ten Commandments. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing: it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Even if a man was able to obey God’s Law the rest of his life and do enough good works for God, this would take Christ’s glory. Galatians 2:16 says, “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” The only way to be reconciled with God is by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ; as the above verse plainly states, He is the only way to be justified before God. This is why the answer to today’s question is No, Man cannot be right with God by simply obeying the Ten Commandments, and is why every person is in dire need of Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord of their lives.