How is this not Faith + Works?
You must believe, and you must obey His commands. So if you don't believe, or you don't obey His commands, you are not saved, isn't this what you are saying?
Much love!
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR ETERNAL LIFE ACCORDING TO JESUS
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You must believe, and you must obey His commands. So if you don't believe, or you don't obey His commands, you are not saved, isn't this what you are saying?
Much love!
We can't earn our salvation even as the result of having perfect obedience to the Law of God because it was never given as a way of earning our salvation. The content of a gift can be the experience of doing something, such as giving someone the opportunity to drive a Ferrari, where the gift intrinsically required them to do the work of driving it in order experience driving it, but where doing that work contributes nothing towards earning the opportunity to drive it. In Titus 2:11-13, the content of our gift of salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what I ungodly, so doing those works in obedience to the Law of God has nothing to do with trying to become saved as the result, but we are intrinsically required to be a doer of those works because God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of those works is part of the content of His gift of salvation. In Psalm 119:29-30, he wanted to put false ways far from him, for God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey His law, and he chose the way of faith by setting it before him, so this has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith.
I agree with you. How could a Christian who wants to bring people to Christ to be saved waste time talking about Shabbat when the word says we are part of a NEW COVENANT. The author of Hebrews wrote:
13By speaking of a new covenant, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
(Hebrews 8:13)
If it was just about to disappear back in the First Century would it not have COMPLETELY vanished after 2000 years?
Jesus saves us from our sin (Matthew 1:21) and sin is the transgression of the Law of God (1 John 3:4), so obeying the Law of God has nothing to do with helping Jesus to save us, but rather Jesus graciously teaching us to be a doer of the Law of God is intrinsically the way that he is giving us his gift of saving us from not being a doer of it.
I believe the greatest theological sleight of hand is to conflate "works" with the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians. When Paul was making a case for his life in front of King Agrippa, he declared that he preached repentance and works worthy of repentance.....So now because of a 16th century monk, we no longer think anything we do matters to God. Obedience = works. Administering to the poor of money, health and spirit = works. 1st Corinthians 13 = works. Galatians 5, fruits of the spirit = works. Taking up your cross and walking were and how Jesus walked = works. We have used this "works" into a Protestant fobia to placate our obligations to obedience = works.
In my opinion, we have constructed a new form of Christianity that relieves us of all responsibility to be anything but theoretical "believers" and condemning the discipleship who are cross bearing, servants, lovers, providers of mercy and sacrificial love because they are all "works." By the majority definition of works, reading the bible is a false effort to master scholarship is just evil "works." All you need to do is bow your head to a 60 second pulpit prayer and immediately get a golden ticket to heaven..pass the collection plate.
We want to define everything as works because we have not been born again and we reject the need to be born again as it is just a form or works based religion. We are ashamed those whose sacrifice like Jesus sacrificed for the love of God and the re-creation that comes from sacrifice as if our church pew makes us right with God. We have invented a "guiltless" Christianity where doing nothing but a minimal social expression of Chruch-eology is fully salvational. Jesus and the Apostles taught baptism for the remission of our sins...we say, no need. That is just works based salvation. Jesus say unless you repent you will perish and we say repentance is just works based theology. Jesus and the apostle taught that unless you repent you will perish and we say that is just works based theology, however like baptism it is optional but it has nothing to do with salvation. Every activity of 21 century Christianity is an attempt to flee to comfort, convince, pleasure and invisibility using the smoke screen of "works based" salvation. In my opinion a huge majority of 21st Century Christianity are vastly more devoted to a 16th century monk than to the God of the universe. When you define away dedication, suffering, service, loving, financial and emotional sacrifice and reject Jesus call for your life to be a bright light shining on a hill that all see and praise God all because of the excuse of "that is just works based salvation."
If your concept of Christianity is that Jesus was beaten, mocked and crucified so you do not have to anything but "believe in Him" without repentance, baptism, conversion, without radical change, without taking up you cross, without you lifting a finger because you "believe right" and are thus relieved of personal participation in God's mission, you may want to rethink that proposition.
In my opinion, we have constructed a new form of Christianity that relieves us of all responsibility to be anything but theoretical "believers" and condemning the discipleship who are cross bearing, servants, lovers, providers of mercy and sacrificial love because they are all "works." By the majority definition of works, reading the bible is a false effort to master scholarship is just evil "works." All you need to do is bow your head to a 60 second pulpit prayer and immediately get a golden ticket to heaven..pass the collection plate.
We want to define everything as works because we have not been born again and we reject the need to be born again as it is just a form or works based religion. We are ashamed those whose sacrifice like Jesus sacrificed for the love of God and the re-creation that comes from sacrifice as if our church pew makes us right with God. We have invented a "guiltless" Christianity where doing nothing but a minimal social expression of Chruch-eology is fully salvational. Jesus and the Apostles taught baptism for the remission of our sins...we say, no need. That is just works based salvation. Jesus say unless you repent you will perish and we say repentance is just works based theology. Jesus and the apostle taught that unless you repent you will perish and we say that is just works based theology, however like baptism it is optional but it has nothing to do with salvation. Every activity of 21 century Christianity is an attempt to flee to comfort, convince, pleasure and invisibility using the smoke screen of "works based" salvation. In my opinion a huge majority of 21st Century Christianity are vastly more devoted to a 16th century monk than to the God of the universe. When you define away dedication, suffering, service, loving, financial and emotional sacrifice and reject Jesus call for your life to be a bright light shining on a hill that all see and praise God all because of the excuse of "that is just works based salvation."
If your concept of Christianity is that Jesus was beaten, mocked and crucified so you do not have to anything but "believe in Him" without repentance, baptism, conversion, without radical change, without taking up you cross, without you lifting a finger because you "believe right" and are thus relieved of personal participation in God's mission, you may want to rethink that proposition.
Jesus spent his ministry teaching his followers to obey the Law by word and by example and the reason why he established the New Covenant was not in order to nullify anything that he spent his ministry teaching or so that we could continue to have the same lawlessness that caused the New Covenant to be needed in the first place, but rather the New Covenant still involves following the Law of God (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:10).
Love is one of the fruits of the Spirit and everything in the Law of God is in regard to how to love, so the works of the Spirit are not a different kind of work. Jesus saves us from our sin (Matthew 1:21) and sin is the transgression of the Law of God (1 John 3:4), so there is a direct connection between our salvation and being a doer of the Law of God and the key is to understand what that is and is not. The issue is that works can be done for many different reasons, such as in order to embody our love, in order to embody our faith, in order to look good, in order to earn a wage, in order to build godly character, in order to know God, in order to take revenge, in order to experience a gift, in order to repair the world, and so forth, so it is important to recognize that the Bible can speak against being required to be a doer of works for incorrect reasons while not speaking against being required to do works for correct reasons. We can't earn our salvation even as the result of having perfect obedience to the Law of God because it was never given as a way of earning our salvation in the first place, so that is not the connection. However, we can do works that embody our faith such as with James 2:18 saying that he would show his faith through his works, so everyone who is a doer of the same works as James believes in Jesus, and that is the connection between our salvation and being a doer of the Law of God.
what did Jesus say about the commandments? to keep them or not? can you answer this one, you know the answer I AM CERTAIN but i want you to write it in your answer.
Jesus said keep them, and believers do keep them as the demonstrative evidence of their love for Him but not as the basis or means by which we obtain salvation. Those who keep His commandments are already saved.
1 John 2:3 - By this we know that we have come to know Him, (already know Him, already saved, demonstrative evidence) if we "keep" (Greek word "tereo" - guard, observe, watch over) His commandments. 4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
The Bible does not list which laws are part of the ceremonial, civil, or moral law, and never even refers to those as being subcategories of law, so they are not derived from the Bible. We are free to create whatever subcategories of law that we want and to decide for ourselves which laws we think best fit into or subcategories if it helps us to better conceptualize them, but we should not interpret the Bible as if its authors has in mind a set of laws that we created. For example, I could categorize God's laws based on which part of the body is most commonly used to obey/disobey them, such as with the law against theft being a hand law, but just because I can do that does not establish that any of the authors of the Bible used the same categories or that they would agree with me that the law against theft best fits as a hand law. So if I were to interpret Jesus as rebuking the Pharisees for using hand laws to control people, then I would be making the same sort of error that you are making. Jesus set a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Law of God, so he was much more zealous for obedience to it than the Pharisees were.
The fact that something is considered to be a civil or ceremonial law does not mean that it is not also a moral law, such as in regard to marriage. Morality is in regard to what we ought to do and we ought to embody God's character traits, so all of God's laws are inherently moral laws. Legislators give laws in accordance with their understanding of what ought to be done, so for someone to claim that some of God's laws are not moral laws is to claim that God made a moral error when He gave those laws and is therefore to claim to have greater moral knowledge than God.
In Matthew 4, Jesus consistently preceded a quote from what was written by saying "it is written...", but in Matthew 5, he preceded a quote from what the people had heard being said by saying "you have heard that it was said...", so his emphasis on the different form of communication is important. Jesus was not sinning in violation of Deuteronomy 4:2 by making changes to what was written, but rather he was fulfilling the law by correcting what the people had heard being said and by teaching how to correctly obey it as it was originally intended. In Leviticus 19:17, it commands not to hate our brother, so Jesus was not raising the bar. Likewise, if we correctly understand what is being commanded by the 7th and 10th Commandments against committing adultery and coveting in our hearts, then we won't lust after a married woman in our hearts.
Some of God's laws appear to conflict with each other, such as when God commanded to rest on the Sabbath while also commanding priests to make offerings on the Sabbath (Numbers 28:9-10), however, it was not the case that priests were forced to sin by breaking the law no matter what they chose to do but that the lesser command was never intended to be understood as preventing the greater command from being obeyed. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 12:5-7 that priests who did their duties on the Sabbath were held innocent, why David and his men were held innocent, and why Jesus defended his disciples as being innocent.
I thought your post was regarding "obedience to the Law of God "? Did I misunderstand you? If I didn't, then my question is: which law(s) do you have in mind, how much obedience is required, how do you know when you've achieved it, and if you aren't obedient from the heart, does it still count?
Peter was not saying that only God's Word made flesh is our salvation is contrast with following his example of embodying God's Word, but rather following his example of embodying God's Word is the way that he is our salvation. Embodying God's Word is not adding works to God's Word made flesh, but rather him graciously teaching us to experience embodying God's Word is intrinsically the way that he is giving us his gift of saving us from not embodying it. God did not give His law as instructions for how to secure our salvation as the result of our self-effort. We can't earn our salvation even as the result of having perfect of obedience to the Law of God because it was never given as a way of working for our salvation in the first place.
I was speaking about the Law of God. If you are interested, then I can link you to a you to a video series that discusses each of the 613 laws. We can't earn our salvation even as the result of having perfect obedience to the Law of God, so obedience to it is not a matter of how much but a matter of faith. God has always disdained it when His people honored Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him (Isaiah 29:13).
Hmmm, okay. So, we should keep all 613 of them? Would they be law if there was no requirement to keep them, and keep them perfectly? Isn't that the whole purpose of law - to designate criteria which must be satisfied by those who are under the law?
I don't think anyone ever suggested that works are not the Christian lifestyle.
What you are witnessing is a very old discussion concerning how salvation is delivered to us by God.
Is salvation a free gift given to those who call on the name of the Lord?
Or is salvation a split between calling on the Lord and doing a legal work (sabbath)?
It is either by faith or faith plus works.
How do you see salvation as a free gift by grace through faith?
Or do you see salvation as a gift with obedience to some legal criteria?
You would do well to learn the meaning of “concise”… and to embody that.
Great post! Very true what you're saying and very appreciative and loving toward Lord Jesus. At the end of the day we gotta do right by Him and the things He wants us to do according to what He has inspired in the Bible. And ignore the shaming from the other side for obeying God and loving Him that way.
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No one has been required to keep all 613 of them and not even Jesus obeyed the laws in regard to giving birth or to having a period. There are many reasons that someone could have for keeping the Law of Moses, sone of which are correct while others are not, so the position that our salvation does not require us to be doer of the Mosaic Law in order to earn it as the result is not the position that our salvation does not require us to be doers of the Law of Moses. Speed limits are and example of a law that people do not have perfect obedience to, but little doesn’t mean that it is not a law.