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"Don't listen to Christ, He is unclear, and besides that 'fulfills the law' = 'salvation by works'" and, what, "Paul was talking about the Jews, and we Gentiles are the "uncircumcised" here, except we also have all the rules of salvation, but just ignore that part until i can explain it better."
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It
might be outright disingenuous to say we propose people ought not listen to Christ, since you may not have grasped our point. This overall issue is to hard to relate to people, as Paul indicted when he attempted to do so and predicted the hypothetical responses that would indicate inability to grasp the actual truth of it all. That's why he said, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!" Christ was indeed unclear in many things, but never so much that we should not pay attention to Him. lol. This is why He said he had many things to say but the disciples could not bear them. But he promised the Spirit of truth who would speak of Him, bring back remembrance His words, and lead us into all truth. Bringing back his words to our remembrance and leading us to all truth is far from "Don't listen to Christ, He is unclear."
Secondly, it is also a serious distortion of our words to say we are teaching, "'fulfills the law' = 'salvation by works.'" Again, I hope it's because you just aren't grasping our points.
To make the statement, "But if you can exegete yourself out of the implications of those two verses, i am open to hearing it?," is to assume you are correct about what you think about those verses' meanings, and none of us are correct since we disagree with you.
Fulfilling Law is not salvation by works. lol. It is fulfilling law. Let me say it again more clearly. Fulfilling the law is simply fulfilling the law. What does fulfill mean? It is to achieve. When a person says they cannot fulfill their promise to meet you at a certain date, that means they simply can't meet you on the date planned. To fulfill that, on the other hand, simply means they can meet you. So, to fulfill the law simply means a person can achieve what law was sent to accomplish.
Now the MEANS whereby we are able to actually fulfill the law is another question altogether, and one that I have addressed in response to you. But I fear you did not realize I was stressing the MEANS, which made you distort my intentions. I had only hoped you would ask for clarification rather than assume you got what I said before you made such outrageous conclusions about my views.
On another thread I am discussing how it is impossible to fulfill the law without Christianity. If you COULD fulfill it without Christianity, you would indeed not require Christ to die for your sins. You could save yourself by your good works. And salvation by works would have been possible had it not been for the sin that's in our flesh. But I hope you can see a contradiction in the terms save ourselves by good works. The implication in saving ourselves is that we have sin and need to be saved from it. And the paradox is that anyone with sin cannot save themselves from it. So, to say we can save ourselves by good works is an impossibility and really is an oxymoron.
So,
indirectly, the command to fulfill the law is salvation by works, which all of us could do if we had no sin in our flesh, since our consideration of the MEANS to fulfill the law is in question. But fulfilling the law, in and of itself, is just relating the thought of achieving what the law desired us to achieve.
I know you get all red in the face when I quote Paul in relation to these issues, but he explained what the law set out to achieve.
1Ti 1:5....Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:
Paul spoke of the END or the GOAL of the law. It is the achievement the Law was created to accomplish in us. In other words, the FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW accomplishes "this" in our hearts. "charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."
The argument about whether or not we can keep the law is another argument. But putting the phrase by itself, "fulfills the law," is simply saying "achieve what the law tried to instill within us."
Now, to put a proper light on all of this, Christianity is the only way the law can be fulfilled in us. Due to the impossibility of the natural life in us all to enable us to keep the law and adequately fulfill it, Christ saves us from sin by His death, and then empowers us to fulfill the law with His Spirit.
When Paul taught this issue to Timothy, he informed the elder that Law is by no means something to be cast away as if it were a useless body of rules. Paul had no desire for anyone to think Law was
not an obligation to keep. He only meant the
goal of the law, which is its "fulfillment", is to bring man to the very sort of character and lifestyle that the Gospel came to bring us to. It's just that the MEANS of the Law was a straightforward,"thou shalt not..." approach, which gave us no enablement to actually refrain in order to obey "thou shalt not," and our natural abilities could not fulifll the law.
So, Paul taught Christianity and new birth COMPLEMENT the Law by way of enabling us to keep and fulfill it. Law presented to us by itself is the mirror that only shows the filth on our faces. We cannot fulfill it without grace. Christianity is the water, soap and facecloth to remove the filth that the mirror of law showed us.
So it it the MEANS of fulfiling the law that is the issue whenever I refer to salvation by works. Fulfilling the law is simply achieving what it was created for us to achieve. That phrase alone is not promoting salvation by works. Under grace we can fulfill the law. Before grace we could not.
Your reference to "all the rules of salvation," is also a disingenuous phrase packed and loaded with distortion of our views. How you can put such a huge distortion in a mere few words, "Paul was talking about the Jews, and we Gentiles are the "uncircumcised" here, except we also have all the rules of salvation, but just ignore that part until i can explain it better", is impressive! But very disingenuous... UNLESS you genuinely missed our point. God knows they misunderstood Paul at every turn.
When Paul spoke of Jews boasting of Law, as I already said a million times, he was referring to the notion that people can save themselves by their own works. That's why he said Christ's cross is become void and nullified to these very sorts of people.
Gal 2:21....I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
Rules we keep apart and without any bother to realize righteousness can only be gained by grace through our faith are a UNIVERSE away from ":rules of salvation". If salvation is by grace through faith, then the RULES of salvation are as follows:
- We cannot think our good deeds can earn salvation.
- We cannot keep Law successfully without empowerment from the Spirit that comes in our salvation by grace through faith FIRST.
- We are NOT to think we can love each other as we want people to love us as the means of being saved from sin by those acts of love.
- We cannot disregard the death of Christ as our atonement for sin, purchasing us as God's property, in order to be saved.
If you want rules, then those are NEW COVENANT RULES. And none of them can be categorized with any RULES under Law, though. So, if Paul was talking about Rules of the Law in
Romans 2, the RULES of grace cannot apply to that lesson. The Jews boasting of and resting in the Law were nullifying the death of Christ in their boasting. The "rules" of Christianity that you seem to say should be lumped up in that lesson as well, disallow us from boasting and put all the glory onto Jesus. There is nothing for us to boast of if we keep the RULES of Christianity. And Paul is actually distracting these Jews from their boast in the rules of LAW toward RULES OF CHRISTIANITY in
Romans 2 with the very last verse!
Rom 2:28-29....For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: ..(29)....But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
If anyone wants to talk about circumcision, TRUE circumcision is being circumcised INSIDE of your heart. And how does that come about?
Col 2:11-12....In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: ..(12)....Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
And again it points to the CROSS OF JESUS!
When you're circumcised in HEART, the body of sins of the flesh has been removed from your heart. It's an UNVEILING.
2Co 3:15-17....But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. ..(16)....Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. ..(17)....Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
The Jews in the church in Rome were rendering Christ's death to have been done in vain with their boast of the law to vaunt themselves up. Had they heeded the rules of the new covenant, they would have properly placed the purpose of Law in their understanding as something they cannot use to vaunt themselves up. The rules of Christianity remove all opportunity for us to vaunt ourselves up. Nobody is able to brag about themselves if they truly realize that Christ's work is the only work that impresses God enough and EARNS salvation from sin.
Where is boasting in that? If I vaunt myself up from muslims or anybody else, because I understand and believe the cross of Christ is mankind's only hope of salvation, then I never grasped the cross and its message that nothing I can think or do earns my way to heaven. I never really understood the fullness of what it means to know that the cross is my only means of salvation. For me to think I am better in and of myself than a muslim because I KNOW something they did not know, is to think MY KNOWLEDGE saves me. For why else would I boast of KNOWLEDGE other than to think that saves me? If you can explain to me how knowledge makes us vaunt ourselves up above others, in a way aside from thinking that mere knowledge saves me, then please by all means tell me.
True understanding of the cross makes a person so incredibly humble because the cross teaches we were so depraved without grace that the only solution was to wipe our sorry carcasses out of existence, along with any thoughts we had of how great we personally are. And that's exactly the demands of the RULES OF THE CROSS. You have to DIE! We're all good for nothing other than DEATH as far as what we have to boast of is concerned. And faith in the cross demands just that. DEATH WITH CHRIST.
Here's a rule for you:
- We must believe this kind of ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED death directly points to how useless and utterly void of grounds to boast of we all are. And we have to accept that in order to be saved by the cross.
So, how in all of God's good universe is faith IN THAT type of rule puts me or anyone else in the category of
Romans 2 where people vaunting themselves up by what they KNOW about Old Covenant Law would be judged by those who didn't KNOW anything about that Law and yet successfully refrained from some things the law commanded Jews to refrain from?
). Anyway, here's for hoping!
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