Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
That Protestants do good works does not surprise me, but exhortations from a Protestant pulpit to do good works make no sense had the pastor himself believed his Faith Alone drivel. If works followed automatically from faith without involvement of the free will, there would be no more need to exhort people to charity than there is a need to exhort people to eat when they are hungry.
It's like "neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision: but faith that worketh by charity", so eating or not eating anything is not in itself good or bad. It is good when the Church encourages it and bad if she is not. Same with eating pork.
What council or pope have the chutzpah to override the decisions of those early church fathers?
I don't know, but to rule in matters of Church discipline (what and when to eat, how to serve the Liturgy, what saints to celebrate when, whether priests should be celibate -- is the undisputed prerogative of the Church (Matthew 16:19, 18:18)
The Law specifically forbade the eating of blood. Jesus, who had to perfectly fulfill the Law to be the spotless sacrificial lamb, could not have eaten blood at the Last Supper
Jesus is One Who gave the Law, including the Old Testament Law and he said "this is my blood". You are correct that the notion of eating His flesh and drinking His blood was terrifying to the Jews, see John 6 on that.
Depends on the nature of the purported sin. Eating pork or not circumcising boys were sins till the Church abolished these restrictions (Acts 15).
Ceremonial and disciplinary law is the prerogative of the Church. Laws of faith, nature and ethics are different, -- the Church may clarify them but she will not fundamentally change them.
I understand why you do them, but given the often stated belief that good works are a product of faith and not conducive to salvation I don't understand why the pastor would urge the works. He should be urging faith. Isn't his task to lead you to salvation?
I am not sure but I know for certain that I am free to eat blood sausage or any similar dish. I am not aware of any absolute restriction on diet today in the Church.
That would be late Renaissance; certaily Michelangelo had that streak.
On the other hand, Catholic art indeed must be understood as a consequence of the Incarnation: God condescends to our flesh and sanctifies it. It is therefore a proper object of art. The iconclasts disagreed.
“Depends on the nature of the purported sin. Eating pork or not circumcising boys were sins till the Church abolished these restrictions (Acts 15)”
Uhhh... No. The decision was made by God and He so informed the church of His decision. The Law had been fulfilled in Christ and thus was no longer binding upon anyone.
Ten Commandments are works of charity. Love God, love your neighbor, love your parents, etc. If one obeys the Ten Commandments as law then he perhaps avoids condemnation of the law, but he does not advance his salvation. If, on the other hand, he obeys the Ten Commandments because he loves God and the neighbor, then he is doing works of love and advances his salvation greatly. He doesn't even need to know what is in them.
It is sometimes said that we obey the Ten Commandments not because they are in the Old Testament (so is a lot of stuff we do not intend to obey) but because a reasoning loving person would not wish to break them. Note that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus expands them but He does not repeat the prohibition on making of images -- which has nothignn to do with love, -- and makes the other commandments sort of fuzzy around the edges. You can have a law against murder. You cannot have a law against getting angry (see Mt 5:22).
Good question, and often asked.
I don't know them by name but the Bible describes them as those who have received grace through faith. Works of faith never hurt anything. They are acts of obedience and show a love for God. They just don't earn anyone anything that gets them closer to Heaven.
Second, the self-denial is to not follow yourself as a measure but what Christ did, but imitating him. Imitation implies works of some kind, whether mental or physical works, it doesn't matter. It is an effort, a struggle (Slavonic podvig) to conform to Christ in faith and in everything else.
That is all well and good and obedient as part of sanctification, but it doesn't save. Jesus said so Himself:
Jesus says that even someone who had kept all the Commandments all of his life (for the sake of argument) still had not done enough to earn his way in. In fact He says it is impossible. Perfection is impossible. And He doesn't say there needs to be some correct mix of works of faith, no, He goes on to say:
No mention of works there as contributing to their being in Heaven.
Those who rely, indeed excuse everything they do, on Christ's righteousness simply because they call on his name, are actually relying on their own and not his. They only use his name as an excuse for their doing whatever they want to do.
I couldn't agree more. However, I have to say that I have never seen an example of such a person on FR of any faith.
But that is not the same as "faith alone". To have faith in Christ must include believing in what he tells you to DO. Sanctity, for example, is what you do. You read "your faith saved you" and you understand "so faith without works saved me". You understand wrong.
If you haven't already, I'd say that article about Chrysostom's explanation that Kolo linked to the other day is worth a read. :) I was good with most of what he said about the issues of role and nature, etc. I believe he covered the point you raise above.
Either it's true or he was deceiving the man. He is telling him to give up everything he had and come follow him. How many people do you know who did that? I know none.
Matt. 19:28 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. No mention of works there as contributing to their being in Heaven.
He was obviously speaking only to and of the 12 disciples. Their "works" seem to be in that they followed him, physically.
There is a reason why the Law in Lev. 17 said the soul of every sort of creature was in the blood and treated the blood as the life or soul just as our language does in speaking of taking a life as “shedding blood”.
That the blood was/is viewed by God as something special, as meaning life is Paul’s words in Hebrews 9:14 and chapter 10 about Christ’s shed blood.
God’s view has not changed about the blood of animals and humans since He guided the decision at Jerusalem.
This goes with my recent post to Kolo about the Chrysostom article. MY existence was caused by God, so how can the existence of any of the Trinity said to be caused? To say "caused" means there was a time of non-existence.
Sure, but Jesus was obviously not splitting His "hypostatic union" (if I am using that correctly) and speaking in His "Divine-only" capacity. Just a few verses earlier He says:
This doesn't match a stand alone "the Father is greater than I"
So why did it take theherarchichal clergy to figure out the puzzle (and still don't agree fully on it)?
I don't think God abdicated and left it up to anyone to figure out. It seems logical to me that if God was going to take such great care in inspiring His word to be exactly what He wanted it to be then He would also take similar care in having it assembled into one book. And while you are surely right that even today not everyone agrees on its composition, I still find it remarkable that there is agreement to the degree there is given the amount of theological disagreement between Christians on so many other issues.
FK: You're right that it didn't happen overnight, but we can be confident today that what we have contains the essence of what God wants us to know.
Unless you are Jewish or Mormon or Muslim, or Hindu...
I would think it axiomatic among Christians that the Bible wasn't assembled for the whole world but for Christians only (including future Christians).
What exactly did [the Bereans] check? To find risen Christ (the only one Paul supposedly got to know) in the Old testament? Give me a break.
The entirety of the OT points directly to Christ, so there would have been plenty to check. :) Jesus said:
FK: That's right, before any scripture was written down its truth was transmitted orally
Oh yeah? How, exactly, word for word, the same words every time? How do you know that?
I don't know if it was word for word before it was written down, but I do know it was idea for idea because what was taught was what was believed and that is what was written down and then later accepted and canonized. I would think that the writings that introduced new info from left field (and not written by a heavyweight) were the ones that were thrown out.
FK: The Apostles taught orally with authority from Christ
Who says?
Jesus did in His Great Commission.
Judaism never believed in the devil.
Daniel1212 pointed out that Moses was also an "observant Jew" (as Jesus approved of Moses' testimony about Him). If Moses testified about the correct Jesus then he testified about a Jesus who believed in the existence of satan. Therefore, the faiths of the OT righteous included knowledge of satan.
Sorry for not making that part clearer, which the below changes should do. Thanks for speaking up.
“The gospel preaching in the book of Acts called souls to repentance, but it was a basic repentance of faith, recognizing Jesus is Lord and trusting in Him for salvation, out of which transformed lives result.
But it is the gospel of least resistance (and which is the least difficult to preach), and which does not work to convict men of sin, righteousness and judgment - and which [conviction] brings them to appreciate mercy - that marks the latter days we are in.”
“I don’t understand why the pastor would urge the works. He should be urging faith. Isn’t his task to lead you to salvation?”
1. You continue to present a view of SS type churches as simply trying to get souls past the gate. As noted before, this is far from the whole, and while it has its share, Catholicism has its equivalent, and she effectually, if not officially, fosters a faith in which her power and some good deeds will get the most nominal Catholic into glory, Ted Kennedy being just one.
2. To disassociate works with faith is no more valid than separating love with acts thereof (and multitude surveys show evangelicals far more fruits thereof). What a person does reveals what they ultimately believer, regardless as to whether it conforms to their profession. And the faithful preacher exhorts works in the same order as the Bible doctrinally does, after establishing the means to salvation and the state the believer has as a result, and with the motive to glorify God.
This entire piece is worth reading, especially sec. 7 where he has a great discussion of the patristics of the Trinity. It was written by the Dean of the Theology School at the University of Athens. Here's a link:
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/voulgaris_trinity.html
Apples/Oranges. We know from Scripture that faith comes from hearing. We also know that Scripture exhorts us to do good works. Since our sermons are based on Scripture it should come as no surprise to anyone, well most anyone, that if we are to hear all of Scripture will hear exhortations to do good works as part of out new status as sons/daughters of the King.
If works followed automatically from faith without involvement of the free will, there would be no more need to exhort people to charity than there is a need to exhort people to eat when they are hungry.
Why is that? Hind brain dominant activities have NOTHING at all to do with spiritual life of the elect. Your caricature of Sovereign Grace is, as usual, incorrect. As I pointed out above no one claims that good works automatically follows faith. It comes from good Biblical expository preaching, the kind that doesn't mix apples and oranges. Just like Scripture teaches.
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