What you call the "gospel of grace" is just a renamed version of the Calvinist/Reformed belief of Sola Gratia, which is only half of what Paul taught about salvation.
Sola gratia
During the Reformation, Lutheran and Reformed theologians generally believed the Roman Catholic view of the means of salvation to be a mixture of reliance upon the grace of God, and confidence in the merits of one's own works performed in love, pejoratively called Legalism. These Reformers posited that salvation is entirely comprehended in God's gifts (that is, God's act of free grace), dispensed by the Holy Spirit according to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ alone.
Consequently, they argued that a sinner is not accepted by God on account of the change wrought in the believer by God's grace, and indeed, that the believer is accepted without any regard for the merit of his works—for no one deserves salvation, a concept that some take to the extreme of Antinomianism, a doctrine that argues that if someone is saved, he/she has no need to live a holy life, given that salvation is already "in the bag".
It is also linked to the five points of Calvinism. |
So what? What does someone else's doctrinal errors have to do with my theology?
Until you quoted it, I wouldn't have even been able to tell you what "Sola Gatia" meant without looking it up.
My beliefs have NOTHING whatsoever to do with Calvinism.
Further, let's say that you are right, for the sake of argument....
I believe as do the Calvinists that God created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in them is six days. I and the Calvinists also believe that God became a man and was named Jesus and died and rose from the dead.
Does my sharing these beliefs with the Calvinist make them not so?
A guilt by association fallacy is considered a fallacy for this exact reason. Saying that my theology is similar to someone else's does nothing to either refute or establish it.
We can discuss why the "Reformation, Lutheran and Reformed theologians" as well as the Roman Catholics where all wrong on this point - all of them. If you're interested.
If God does not find you worthy of being in His kingdom, you will not be in it.
Romans 4:4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,
Galatians 2:16 knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
17 “But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. 19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”
Galatians 3:2 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
Please actually read those passages. I could just as easily quote Paul's entire collection of books. Such is the theme of his ministry.
No, you do not enter the kingdom merely because Jesus is worthy and you are claiming His actions as your own.
This doesn't even make any sense and I think it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel of grace.
I do not claim Christ's actions as my own. How would that even work?
The wages of sin is death. If/when we sin, we incur a debt that is owed to God because of justice.
God loves us very much and when sin entered the world it created a problem for God. God is uncompromisingly just and as such, He is not willing that rebelion against Him be overlook or forgiven by fiat or arbitrarily. Thus there were two options; He could destroy mankind and satisfy the demands of justice that way, or He could accept a propiciatory sacrifice instead. But where to find a sacrifice of such worth that it can pay such an enormous debt? There were none found save One. God the Son became a human being, lived a sinless life and offered that matchlessly holy and eternal life to the Father as payment of the sin debt of the whole world. The Father has accepted that offering as having met the demands of justice and He can therefore justly offer us salvation as a result.
When I accept that offer, my sinfullness, my guilt is wiped out of existence. The same offense cannot justly be punished twice. If God has accepted Christ's death on my behalf then for me to also die (spiritually) would be unjust. Thus I am declared righteous, not because Christ's actions were added to me but because His actions cancelled mine out, which only works because Christ was holy and perfectly righteous. Thus it is rightly stated that we are saved not because of our righteousness but because of His! His righteousness has thus been imputed to me by the One Who gets to judge who is and who is not righteous.
Romans 4:22 And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
23 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, 24 but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.
It is about both what you do and what you believe.
Without both, you can't enter into the kingdom.
You probably are not going to believe me but I understand FULLY why you believe this and likewise I fully understand where you've made an error. The difficulty is going to be in getting you to see it and to accept it once you do see it. It is a significant paradigm shift and so will not be easy to accept.
In a sentence, you have mixed two different programs for two different sets of believers. Two gospels, if you will. You are, in effect, a functioning Messianic Jew. Now, don't react too strongly to my using that term. I'm quite certain that you'd never refer to yourself in those terms and I know that there is a whole group of modern believers that go by that title. I'm not referring to them nor attempting to associate you with them. I merely mean is simply that you have, almost certainly without realizing it, mixed Paul's Gospel with Peter's. They aren't the same and they aren't compatible.
One says that we are saved without works (Romans 4) the other says the opposite (James 2). The gospel of Grace, Paul's Gospel is only found in Paul's epistles and nowhere else in the Bible. If you fail to recognize that Paul's ministry was unique and quite seperate from that of The Twelve, the inevitable result will be...
"It is about both what you do and what you believe. Without both, you can't enter into the kingdom."
Your statement is James chapter 2 in two sentences but it openly and directly contradicts not only Romans 4 but Paul's entire ministry.
A Christian must do good works because that is his duty to his Lord, Jesus Christ.
A Christian who expects Jesus to do it all for him is called a wicked servant by Jesus (Luke 19:22).
I have a prediction for you....
All of the texts that you can use to prove your position will be from anywhere in the Bible except the Pauline epistles.
Now, my having said that will naturally cause you to start looking for something somewhere between Romans 1 and the book of Philemon for something that seems to support your case. So I have to add that if you find anything at all, it'll be out of context or in some other way made to mean the something other than what it seems to say.
I can make that prediction not because I'm super smart or anything like that. It's just that its what nearly every single Christian in existence does! They do it the way you're doing it or they do the opposite of what you're doing. Either way, it's two sides of the same coin. That is to say that they read the Bible and have one or the other of two sets of proof texts for their particular doctrinal position. One group's proof texts are the other groups problem texts. The proof texts (whichever set one happens to have) are taken to mean what they seem to say while the problem texts are interpreted to mean something other than what the plain reading would seem to say (sometimes the problem texts are just ignored altogether). And the dividing line between these two groups of texts is almost always the Apostle Paul. Once set will be in his epistles while the other set comes from everywhere else throughout the New Testament and the whole bible.
So, just to give a quick example of what I mean. Let's look at the issue of forgiveness. Group 1 says that we have to forgive to be forgiven, group two says we've already been forgiven....
Group 1:
Step 1: If you forgive (present tense). (Matthew 6:12; Mark 11:25-26
Step 2: You will be forgiven (future tense). Matthew 6:14-15; 18:32-35
Group 2:
Step 1: God has forgiven you (past tense). Col. 3:13; 2:13; Eph. 4:32
Step 2: So you forgive me (present tense). Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13
The two teachings couldn't hardly be more different and so people on one side or the other are forced to take one set of texts to mean what they say (proof texts) while the other set (problem texts) is interpreted in a manner that allows the two teaching to agree with eachother.
That is unless you accept Paul's ministry as distinct from and different than the ministry of the Twelve. Then you get to read both sets of passages and take them both to mean precisely what they seem to mean. Not only that but both sets become proof texts!
This works with nearly any doctrinal debate you can think of. Everything from whether or not works are required for salvation to when the rapture will occur to whether one can lose their salvation to wether you're supposed to eat catfish or not to almost you name it. It all hinges on Paul.
Resting in Him,
Clete
P.S. I really doubt that I need to say this to you but, just in case, please do not read any sort of "tone" into what I say in these posts. I don't know what it is about how I type these things up but I somehow seem to convey to people that I'm being aggressive or angry or mean or condiscending or whatever. No such emotion is intended, no offense of any kind is intended for that matter. This is, without exception, my absolute favorite topic to discuss. I will always allow it to take over any of my threads and I'm happy to discuss it ad nauseam with anyone who is both willing and substantively responsive.
