The Cross of Christ Alone Can Save

[TheLegalist]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

What were the "works" he was addressing with the Jews? What about the Law did they think, if complied with, would save them? Was circumcision? Yes.

The audience question is only good to a point. Paul, here, is articulating his theology in rather clear terms. To suggest he's skipping the 'major stuff' in talking about Grace is exceptional.

actually.... living by faith was part of the law and IT DID SAVE THEM AS DID REPENTANCE which was ALSO part of the LAW.

Again WHO are these people.

[TheLegalist]

Rev 22:14 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.


Doing the commandments of God give you RIGHT by contract to the tree of life and that you can enter your eternal rest with the Lord. Thus he judges you faithful to obtain!

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by mfblume

Lutherans are like Calvinists. They believe in predestination and election the way Calvinists do, in my assessment. Correct me if I am wrong.

As Jeffery's anointed "sage" - (in this thread only!) I will agree with your assessment of Lutherans here, but only in the most general of terms.

Lutherans don't typically go with the "strong" Calvinism such as the "Five Points" of Calvin's "Evangelicalism." They do take their cues from Augustine's predestination which was also the source for the development of Calvinism.

It's probably fair from our Arminian/Wesleyan/Holiness tradition to lump them all together - but we should remember that what we have left at the end of the day is still rather "lumpy." Properly they are two different sorts of critters.

[Jeffrey]

Originally Posted by TheLegalist

Rev 22:14 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.


Doing the commandments of God give you RIGHT by contract to the tree of life and that you can enter your eternal rest with the Lord. Thus he judges you faithful to obtain!

I follow you to a certain extent, then I read something like this. That's not Grace, TL.

Grace isn't an earned wage. The only wage we've earned is death. He doesn't love us out of obligation, or because he "owes" us.

[Jeffrey]

I think what we lose in this conversation is the separation from good works and salvation. I will agree that "good works" does not equal "sacraments" or things we do when we are saved. The question is "when" are we saved. It's impossible to separate obedience from the two, and that naturally follows the believer. But Paul is emphatic about not being saved by doing, but by the free grace of God. Our response in faith is what regenerates us, justifies us and sanctifies us (the process has begun). None of this says "go be a sinner" or that "obedience is not important." It's "what saves us."

So to direct the conversation back -- it is clearly about when are we saved.

That said, the discussion today opened up several side topics that I feel are important. But I also wanted to clarify what I thought the post was originally about as well, to keep that alive in the thread.

[Jeffrey]

For anyone interested, attached is some other pages of the Augsburg Confession.

[Jeffrey]

Speaking of Lutheranism (since that came up), is anyone familiar with the big debate: Lutheranism vs. the New Perspective (Sanders, Wright, etc)?

[Jeffrey]

Origen: Commenting on Rom 3:26, Origen writes: “God allowed
all this so that afterward, that is to say in
our time, he might show forth his righteousness.
For at the end of the age, in the most recent
times, God has manifested his righteousness and
given Christ to be our redemption. He has made
him our propitiator. . .. For God is just, and therefore
he could not justify the unjust. Therefore he
required the intervention of a propitiator, so that by
having faith in him those who could not be justified
by their own works might be justified.”22


“For it is by faith in the revelation of Jesus Christ that the
gift long ago promised by God is acknowledged and
received.”24 And Chrysostom explains Rom 3:22 in
this way: “In order to stop anyone from asking:
How can we be saved without contributing anything
at all to our salvation? Paul shows that in fact we
do contribute a great deal toward it—we supply
our faith!”25

I am not the only one or the first to say that faith also justifies. Ambrose said it before me, and Augustine and many others; and if a man is going to read St. Paul and understand him, he will have to say the same thing and can say nothing else. . ..” Luther

[mfblume]

...and we supply repentance. Peter told the people to repent. John the Baptist and Jesus told people to repent. Their hearts were already pricked before Peter told them to repent, in Acts 2:37-38.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by mfblume

...and we supply repentance. Peter told the people to repent. John the Baptist and Jesus told people to repent. Their hearts were already pricked before Peter told them to repent, in Acts 2:37-38.

And so... if their "hearts were pricked" before they repented - did they really "supply" the repentance, or was repentance the result of something that God had "supplied?"

That's what Augustine really was getting at. In his last book - a collection of two treatises written to two different recipients but on the same theme - The Predestination of the Saints - Augustine makes much of Romans 11:35.

Romans 11:35 is a rhetorical question asked by Paul for which the obvious answer is "No one." Here's the context:

Romans 11:32-36

"For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?

Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen." - - - -

There is nothing that we have "given to Him" (God) that has caused Him to repay us with the gift of grace. God has concluded that we are all "in unbelief" and desperately lost. In this state of helplessness God finds us and He sends His Spirit to convict.

That was the condition of the hearers of Peter's sermon in Acts 2 (according to this view). They were guilty of having crucified the very One that God had made "both Lord and Christ." They were helpless not only in sin, but helpless in their inability to even do anything about that sin.

It is at this point that we read that they were "pricked in their hearts..." This was a sovereign act of a merciful God. God did not cause them to become "pricked in their hearts" in repayment for any "merit" they had earned nor anything that they had done. The only thing we are told that they all had even done was that they had crucified Jesus Christ!

Thus, grace comes to us - unmerited, undeserved and even unbidden!