No time now for editing this! Sorry for any typos! I'll come back later and edit stuff.
I understand he was already doing what was necessary to fulfill the covenant. My point is after believing he was REQUIRED to do SOMETHING in order for the covenant to come to pass.
He was required to breath, drink water, eat food, put clothes on and do whatever other things his life conisted of.
Your so called "requirement" is meaningless nonsense that renders the whole discussion moot.
In short, you're grasping at straws here - at best and flat out rationalizing at worst. If the text doesn't fit your doctrine, it isn't the text that needs massaging.
No, you don't.
You think adding your less than two cents worth of works in on the purchase price for your soul, which Christ paid in full at the cross, is required.
I do not place us back under the law of Moses.
Of course you do!
Want to see?
Tell me - What works of obedience do you think are required? List them for me.
Try to do so while avoiding the Ten Commanments or any of the other 600+ laws given by Moses. You will fail. (Gal. 3:21)
Yes, Christ has taken it out of the way and nailed it to the cross. Please consider my comment/question below.
Are you suggesting that with the law of Moses removed our sins are not counted against us?
That's the gospel T6!!!
Of course that's what I'm saying! That's the whole point of Paul's ministry! You are NOT saved by what you do but by believing and trusting in what Christ has done for you! That's it, that's all and there is nothing else! Your righteousness is Christ's and NOT YOUR OWN!!!
It is my understanding that they are not counted against us IF we continue to follow Christ after believing.
By "follow Christ" you mean to do right and avoid evil - right?
If so, then on what basis could you possibly say that you aren't saved by your own righteousness?
Becuase you can't be perfect and so God graces you out? That's Israel's program! You are function as a procelite Jew under a dispensation of law!
Paul does not teach this! He does not teach that you begin in Christ by faith but continue by being obedient! On the contrary! He makes an explicit point of saying that you are made perfect by the very same method by which you were saved in the first place. You were saved by faith alone, you walk by the exact same thing, by faith apart from works.
You want to make a big deal out of the phrase "... of the law" but there are no other kind by which people could ever be saved (Gal. 3:21).
Christians aught to do rightly and God has saved us "unto good works" but such works do not have anything to do with aquiring, continuing, maintaining or otherwise enhancing our relationship with God or our salvation. We have NO STANDING in and of ourselves before God. Our standing is in Christ and in Him ALONE - period. If you do good works, do them because you love God and your love your neighbor and you store up reward for yourself in Heaven but if you do them because of obligation or duty or whatever, you are exercising your flesh. All such works will be burned up on judgment day.
The gospel is grace correct? How does one obey the gospel?
2 Thess. 1:8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
Paul is speaking of unbelievers in that passage. If you read more than that one sentence it's super clear and obvious.
I don’t see how it is not. Now I’m not talking about the law of Moses but God’s law which is the law of Christ. There is a difference. Paul recognized he was not outside of God's law.
21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
Help me to see it from your point of view. For example, when Paul says “flee sexual immorality” and we choose to practice sexual immorality, isn’t this considered sin? Can we agree sin is missing the mark? So if you consider it sin, what is the mark?
So we are back to the "sin that grace may abound" idea.
Of course sexual immorality is sin!
Whether you commit it or not has NOTHING to do with whether you're saved, for all have sinned! Everyone! There is not one single human being alive, aside from Jesus Christ Himself, who has not sinned in a manner that disqualifies him for spending eternity in the presence of God. NOT ONE PERSON! So it doesn't matter whether you're talking about sexual immorality or murder or slapping your Mother or stealing a grape from the grocery store. The bottom line is that we are all doomed and without hope aside from God's grace.
The point here, however, is that it's God's grace, not ours or Paul's or Peter's. God alone gets to decide who He is going to apply His grace too and why. It's 100% His very own perogotive to decide who gets saved and under what conditions. From the time Abraham was circumcized until the stoning of Stephen, it was "trust and obey for there's no other way". Paul's gospel, on the other hand, is not "trust and obey" but rather "trust and rest". The Law kills but the Spirit (capital S) gives life. We have been executed by the law in Christ. The law, therefore, has nothing more to say to us. The law does not apply to dead men! But if we died in Him by faith, we were also raised in Him - BY FAITH! So that now we do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
You, however, want to resurrect your flesh and think you're required to do this and refrain from that. You are quick to point out the big sins like sexual immorality but it's the "little" sins that trip up your doctrine. That curse word you spout in your car at some annonymous driver who cut you off; the grumbling you do under your breath when annoyed by your wife or kids, that grape you "sample" at the grocery store without paying for it, or whatever other "small" sin that you care to name, would keep you out of heaven just a surely as murdering your neihbor and sleeping with his wife would. You want to think that Christian who commit adultery aren't saved but you're no better than they, not when compared to the absolute holy perfection of the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ who paid and infinite price for your soul and for which you have nothing of value to add.
I would suggest to you that the gospel of Christ began before Paul, Mk. 1:1. That Jesus preached the secret things before Paul, Matt. 13:35 This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:
“I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”
Contradictory.
That which was kept secret was not also prophesied.
Further, everything Jesus did was prophesied in and was a fulfillment of scripture. Every major event occured on a Jewish Feast Day. Jesus was born (Tabernacles), He died (Passover), was in the grave (Unlevened bread), rose from the death (First Fruit) gave the Holy Spirit (Weeks - Pentecost). The next feast would be Trumpets and had God not cut off Israel it too would have been fulfilled just as the other were. But He did cut off Israel and so all of that is put on hold.
Now how could it have been put on hold before Christ's death if the feasts of Israel were still being fulfilled on the very day of the feast through the Feast of Weeks?
Further, if Jesus was preaching "the secret things" that Paul refers to in Romans 16 then there would have been no need for Paul in the first place. Jesus already had Twelve fully trained, Spirit filled Apostles who had been given the "Great Commission". There would have been no need for a thirteenth Apostle who went to the entire world while the Twelve ministered to Israel (Gal. 2).
When you read the parable of the sower, does it describe the “earthly” kingdom you envision being offered to the Jews or what Paul was doing? If the parable of the sower is the “earthly” kingdom, please explain.
I don't have to think. It is not a matter of opinion. Jesus Himself explains the parable...
Matthew 13:18 “Therefore hear the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. 20 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. 22 Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. 23 But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”
Note the clear teaching that one can lose their salvation. This alone tells you that it cannot be the same gospel that Paul preached for we have been baught at a price and given the Spirit of God Himself as EARNEST against the promise our safe deliverence to the day of redemption. We cannot lose our savlation because God cannot be unfaithful to Himself. Even if we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. (2 Tim. 2:13)
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to ignore it. It looked more like a comment than an argument and I thought my other points would address this comment. Here’s my questions based on this comment. Is Jesus your Lord? If you do not strife to live your life according to His instructions after believing, is Jesus still your Lord?
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
Jesus is my Lord but not in the sense in which you mean it.
In fact, the sense in which you mean it implies that we, as believers, have not been crucified in Christ. Does a dead man have a lord?
It is no longer I who live but Christ lives His life through me. Is Christ the Lord of Himself? Yes, indeed He is.
The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for me. When the Father looks at me, He sees Christ. Not because I do good and refrain from evil but because I am hidden in Him! And that's the only reason! The fact is that I do not do good nor refrain from evil and neither do you, nor can we. Christ alone is righteous.
Romans 7:15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
Resting in Him,
Clete
