***May God bless you Mark.***
He has and in more ways than I could possibly relate. One particular blessing is the opportunity to participate here on the RF and learn great religious lessons at the feet of my theological betters.
***It is clear, as it is in the Beatitudes and everything esle Jesus says in the Gospels, that what we do matters to God even though He died for all our sins. ***
Jesus laid it all out how people were to behave and why before He even revealed the upcoming Passion. The time after the Resurrection were mostly spent in instructing the Apostles and preparing them for Pentecost.
***Jesus preached works-based salvation. The NT preaches works-based salvation. It states in no uncertain terms that we will be judged for our deeds. And Matthew 25 tells us what that Judgment will be.***
Where our Reformed brethren don’t get it is that they claim that we work our own way into Heaven. As I posted previously, we must have God’s Grace to even get onto the Way. Without that, we have no possibility of salvation.
***But the Reformed will tell you that Paul says otherwise. Does Paul trump Christ?***
No, but as one delves further and further into Pauline verse, one may understand more deeply that Paul does what he does in order to cudgel the heretic churches into order. He had the toughest of the bunch to start out with - they were not Jews and didn’t think like Jews or have the basic understandings of Jews. They were pagan and had to have themselves corrected, sometimes rather seriously.
Paul really doesn’t contradict Jesus or Peter or James. The Church is plain - they are all Scripture and must all be accomodated. They are all correct, from a theological point of view.
Yes, that goes for all of us.
Where our Reformed brethren don’t get it is that they claim that we work our own way into Heaven. As I posted previously, we must have God’s Grace to even get onto the Way. Without that, we have no possibility of salvation
Yes, of course. Grace is the new life that was given as a gift from God to all who are baptized. What we do with that life becomes our responsability.
By no means are we assured our salvation. We can all fall away. Jesus makes it very clear that there are those who “believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away” (Luke 8:13). The Protestant argument that they never believed contradicts Christ.
Christ's sacrifice on the Cross makde that gift (of freedom) to all mankind: "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men" (Rom 5:18)
Paul really doesn’t contradict Jesus or Peter or James. The Church is plain - they are all Scripture and must all be accomodated. They are all correct, from a theological point of view
I realize that the Church must accommodate a lot of things. Part of the problem with that is that it is almost impossible to do so (especially with the OT), and I have not to this date read anything that does.
I mean you have Paul in Romans say that Christ justified all men and in other places he talks of the elect before the foundations of the world!