Replies

All interesting questions, and I appreciate the sense of genuine inquiry. It’s good every now and then to get past talking past each other.

However, I am at work, and tapping out answers on my droid is painfully slow, so I can only give the most cursory answers, for now. Perhaps more later.

1. Everyone who loves Jesus wants to do good. So Rev 22 seems applicable, especially in context of being descriptive rather than prescriptive. The chief commandments are love for God and neighbor. Will God hold us to account for not eating kosher or holding temple service, complete with sacrifice? That is not the focus of Rev 22. Personal morality, integrity, honesty, all are in view. But descriptively. What Protestants reject is not the need for personal holiness, but that we can take any credit for personal righteousness that follows our salvation, or that the final outcome is not under Gods control, but the fallible, fickle will of fallen sinners. He justifies us with no condition imposed other than faith, and that itself is gift from Him. Then He molds us into the righteous people He always planned for us to be. And if that true change of the inner man to love God and neighbor does not happen, that person has reason to fear the description of those lost souls found outside the gate on that final day.

2. The fire spoken of by Paul that consumes our wood, hay, and stubble is not literal suffering in the netherworld, as if the suffering of Christ was not enough, or could be added to. It is as much a metaphor as the wood and hay etc. I take it to mean the measuring if our deeds against the holiness of God. Whatever we have done inconsistent with that, though covered by the blood of Christ and so not due cause for purgatorial suffering, is nonetheless a loss to us, a failure to make the most of the opportunities to live well as God defines it. So the many warnings have multiple purposes, with much Scripture to describe it. But Paul is not wrong. We will not enter into the Gospel by the sealing of the Spirit, then finish by deeds of the flesh. Any view that fails to account for the completeness of the redemption provided in the death of Christ is a partial gospel at best.

3. I am not able to speak to the eternal state of someone like the pastor you described. Reformed folks like myself view OSAS in terms if the “perseverance of the saints,” that salvation is not some automatic effect of saying a ritual prayer, but a true heart conversion that fills one with the Holy Spirit and a keen desire to please Him in every way possible. Whether this pastor is genuinely saved but living a life of wood, hay, and stubble, or whether he is self-deceived and lost as can be, is above my pay grade. That’s between him and God. My advice to him would be to forsake every trace of sin in his life, returning to his first love, no matter the cost, thereby making his calling and election sure.

Out of time.

Peace,

I agree Rev 22 applies to all; it seems to focus intently on behavior both good and bad for example, Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Compare Peter with Paul; our faith is on trial and our works (of faith) are tested to prove our faith. That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
Assume his faith was as genuine as yours; he had fruit but after many years he and his wife became obese, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. He lost weight, divorced and remarried, and is still proclaiming the gospel of salvation by "Grace Alone" to this day with his second slimmer spouse.