Love One Another and the Cross

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Originally Posted by shazeep

I think it is Scripturally impossible to deny that the cross demonstrates God's love for us, while we were yet sinners, and that faith without works is dead. This is not the same as "salvation by works" nor is it an attempt to deny the cross. Denying the cross is saying you love Jesus and then being blinded to "love one another."

It is salvation by works if it is not based upon Christ's death as us and for us, as being the only means to obtain righteousness. Being made righteous is the all-important factor. Denying the cross is not accepting the fact that no number of good deeds or acts of love can make us righteous in the eyes of God. Before we get a chance to do one righteous deed, we are made righteous by God when He sees our faith that Christ's death "as us" remits our sins..

It's all about having sins remitted. No amount of good deeds or acts of love will remit our sins. That means we can love everybody all the time, but still remain in sins, and those sins make us unrighteous.

Salvation by works is saying we did not need Christ to die in our places to be made righteous by God, but we need to love one another to be righteous with God. Loving one another is INDICATION or fruits that we ARE ALREADY righteous. But they do not obtain that righteousness

It of course would not be right to say that Acts 2:38 believers are universally unloving, or any other adjective, since any large group is made up of different hearts; but a people become known by their fruits, and truthful cliches are developed as a witness.

Again, that's the cart before the horse. We are made righteous BY NO WORKS OF OUR OWN, but only by God's work in Christ's death as a proxy for our sins. You are effectively removing the death of Christ for our righteousness, and only retaining His demonstration of love by His death. If His death is no more than a demonstration of love, then any other means to salvation can only be by works, and that is salvation by works.

Grace is an ideal we are all still working toward, i believe; we still exhibit pretty much all of the characteristics of Law, imo; one of them might be developing a law by which others must be "saved," and, possibly, deeming those that Christ would advise one to "Go, and do likewise" as being "lost," somehow, as a result of that law.

I am not denying your argument, as far as it goes; but i am judging it by its fruit.

You need to judge it by the word. And my position as a believer can only be judged by my works. Not the argument itself.

"Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord."
This is a great confession; but it is meaningless if one does not have love to show they understand it; and we have several passages, more than one, that indicate that it is those who demonstrate Love one another that best reflect the cross--and several that indicate that the ones most loudly proclaiming a law are judged for lack of love.

And the question "If Acts 2:38 saves me, why not just wait until my deathbed to perform it?" becomes an answer, i think.

You keep focusing on the fruit and have already demonstrated with your words about muslims carrying the cross to be saved that you reject the truth that Christ's death in our steads demands faith in that work in order for God to deem us righteous. Such conclusions you present are based not upon obtaining the truth from the bible but seeing snippets of it and never having really gotten the point of the death of Christ for our righteousness.