Was Paul being legalistic when He pronounced a curse on those who do not "Love the Lord Jesus?" If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. I For 16:22
Not every theological discussion is a polemic on legalism vs Grace... As for your criticism of my quoting Jesus - when He quoted Deuteronomy ,"...all of the LAW", as if I was giving you another gospel, what about Paul in Romans 12?
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13:8-10
Was Paul preaching another gospel" Of course not, He knew (as I know) that we are not UNDER the Law, (of Moses), but he never denied the value of the Law.
I have not told anyone that self effort is what is needed to be saved, nor anything of the sort. Every one of the ten commandments is re-iterated in the New Testament except one. Do we Keep the law to be saved? of course not! But shouldn't we want to Love God supremely? (Not as a legalistic principle, but as a valid aspiration). I still stand by my article's premise that the best way to prepare for the trials ahead is to love and believe in God.
Pastor, I don’t assume anything except from what you say – obviously I don’t know you apart from your posts here. When you say, “I know that grace alone is why I am saved, but having said that, I Love God and want to Love God”, you are falling into the same trap Paul fought against as communicated to us in Galatians. “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3).
What did he mean by that? He was speaking to what has become traditional church doctrine - that having begun by being saved by grace we go on to perfection by keeping the law. Scripture curses such teaching TWICE (Gal. 1:7-9).
(Your reference to Paul’s closing in 1 Cor. 16:22 (basically talking about those not saved), does not reverse the doctrine of grace as taught mainly in Romans and Galatians, but also throughout the New Testament, especially epistles of Paul who had a revelation of grace that even Peter said was hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:15-16).)
As far as Jesus quoting Old Testament law, remember, until Christ was crucified, they were still under the Old Covenant of the law. Also remember who he was talking to – a Jewish scribe and lawyer, both of whom who loved the self-righteous profession of keeping the law. Jesus speaks in kind to a person’s heart. First, they have to see their utter inability to keep the law Jesus give them (Galatians 3:24).
As far as Paul “never denying the value of the law”, may I remind you that scripture buy the hand of Paul makes it clear that the law STRENTHENS sin and makes it worse (1 Cor 15:56, Rom. Chapt. 7). As far as “the value of the Law,” Paul wrote that “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). The whole purpose of the law was to show the self-righteous Jews (and later the Gentiles who adopted such self-righteousness) that they are utterly unable to keep the law and need Jesus, not to just be saved, but to live their lives every day.
As far as the premise of your article, politically, each one of us needs to turn our hearts from trusting in man and his government which gone way off the rails, and put our trust in God. But spiritually, the only way to scripturally do that is to “know and believe the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16) and in doing so, “we love him because he FIRST loved us” (vs. 19). By letting ourselves FIRST revive and believe the love God has for us, we effortlessly and basically unconsciously find ourselves loving God – not the self-effort of “aspiring to so” (thus mixing grace with the law -cursed by scripture). It happens BY GRACE, not the law.