Dave Bercot, whose articles I have summarized on other blogs,
believes that the early Christians (who lived around 100AD-250AD), knew the
Bible better than we do, because it was their language, it was their culture,
and because they got answers for difficult issues from the apostles, or the disciples
of the apostles. Here is another article I’m summarizing that is based on a
misinterpretation that Luther made about a Scripture having to do with the role
of works vs faith in salvation.
Definitely an important subject!
Our problem is in Romans 3.
To get things in context: In the first 19 verses of Romans 3, Paul has
created an “Objector,” a fictional character, with whom he carries on a
dialogue. The character is an unbelieving
Jew, and the “questions” are partly about the Jews’ relationship to Moses’
Law that the Objector is “asking” that Paul “answers,” giving us a learning
experience about the Jews’ thinking at the time about salvation.
We begin with the Objector’s complaint in Romans 3:1-2:
What advantage then has the Jew, or
what is the profit of circumcision? 2 Much in
every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles
of God.
The Objector is frustrated, since Paul has said in
chapter 2 that in the New Covenant established by Jesus, salvation is not
connected to most of the Moses Law. The Objector thought that that Law was the gateway
to salvation, the advantage the Jews had over the Gentiles. Paul states the
advantage of the Jews was different—they received God’s inspired Word.
Paul had maintained in Romans 2 that in the New Covenant,
Jews and Gentiles are both saved on the same basis—and that basis
is NOT the Mosaic Law. See for yourself
below: deeds are necessary for heaven, but not the deeds in the Moses’ Law--and
see what earns hell, in Romans 2: 5b-11:
…you
are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of
the righteous judgment of God, 6 who “will render
to each one according to his deeds”: 7 eternal life
to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and
immortality; 8 but to those who are self-seeking
and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and
wrath, 9 tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who
does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile; 10 but
glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew
first and also to the Gentile. 11 For there is no
partiality with God
The Objector’s problem is, the way he sees it, the Jews and
the Gentiles are not really on the same basis because, according the
apostles, God is giving eternal life to the Gentiles, yet without requiring
them to submit to circumcision or coming under all the 613 commandments of the
Mosaic Law like the Jews did, or I should say, failed at doing. (That Law has the
Ten Commandments, dietary restrictions, clothing restrictions, many rules about
celebrating festivals, conviction verdicts for crime, rules about. the circumcision,
etc). The Jewish Objector wonders, “what was the point of all the (Mosaic) Law,
if it doesn’t save us from hell?” The fact is, God wanted to show that they
couldn’t do the Law’s requirements. The Jews
were an example for all of us to observe: to show that despite God’s
blessing them, man (not just the Jews) cannot obey a set of rules, so
therefore, obeying rules is not the way to get saved from hell. The Mosaic Law, instead, was to show us that
we are sinners. All this prelude comes to a head in 3:19-20, which confirms
what I’ve just said. Paul says:
Now we know
that whatever the (Mosaic)
Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be
stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the (Mosaic) Law no flesh will be
justified in His sight, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin.
You can see that I’ve added a few things that I will
explain. There is a problem with the word “Law” in the verses. It is rendered uncapitalized in our English
Bibles. But it should be capitalized, because Paul is speaking to the Jews. And
to the Jews, it means Law, the Mosaic Law. Thus I decided to capitalize Law where
he is speaking to the Jews. The early
Christians correctly understood—and commented in their notes that are still
available--that Paul, in speaking to the Jews, means that attempted obedience
to the Law of Moses will fall short, and not justify anyone before God.
Paul is saying, less here and more elsewhere (which I
will get to), that Jews, when they became Christians, were set free from the
dietary and rituals of these Laws of Moses when Christ established the New
Covenant. BUT he makes it clear that they were not free from the Law’s moral
commands leading to sanctified behavior (see Romans 2:6-7 above; it hints
at that). Later I will prove that
we Gentiles are under the same dictum.
This point is illustrated in I Corinthians 9:21, where Paul
is talking about how to explain salvation to the Gentiles—and he stresses that
we are to obey Christ’s law. Paul
says (NLT makes it plainer):
When I am with
the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish Law, I too live apart from that (Mosaic) Law so I can bring them to Christ.
But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.
In the last phrase, we use the uncapitalized “l,” since
he is speaking about the Gentiles as well as the Jews. The Jews that were saved were still under
God’s moral laws, as Paul was—same as the Gentiles, we will see shortly. Learning that they were no longer under the
extra burden of Jewish Laws regarding food, clothing, etc, the Jews sometimes had
a hard time accepting this, this freedom.
Now: How do we Gentiles enter this picture? Coming up.
Bercot next asserts, and I think with good reason, even
though it was a big claim, that Martin Luther has misapplied Romans 3. Luther’s theology is a totally different
twist that no major Christian theologian had before. For 1500 years before
Luther, the orthodoxy was settled— the part of Romans 3:20 that I quoted above spoke
to the Mosaic Law. Luther, however, mistakenly casts the Objector as a
Christian prospect, who thinks the way to salvation is by works, by obeying
rules, including God’s laws. And,
according to Luther, Paul sets the “Christian” Objector “straight” by saying, obedience
to God’s laws is not necessary for salvation. A Gospel-shaking and
disputable claim. I want you to think
like Luther, telling the prospect (which would be a huge mistake):
by the deeds of
the law (of God) no flesh will be justified in
His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin
You see how he is saying we are not under God’s laws for
justification, or salvation. You can see how Luther has changed the word “Law” (Laws
of Moses) to “law” (including God’s laws), that he supposedly thinks are not
necessary for getting saved. So Luther
ran with this twisted ball, and declared that, pursuant to how he thinks Paul
clarified the “law” in 3:20, that salvation was “faith only;” works are not
part of it. This tragically distorted
principle of demeaning “works” has been acceptable by almost all theologians
ever since. This was a gargantuan change from before; early Christians knew
that obedience to God’s laws was still a part of final salvation. (I will
prove this later). But Luther had that kind of sway. Didn’t he, after all, save us from the burden
of works of Catholicism?
Calvin doubled down on that a little later, and declared
that we are all so depraved that there is no way we can even do the “work” of figuring
out Jesus as salvation from sin—thus putting every one of us hell-bound. God must, he said, if he wants any heavenly
family, predestine for heaven a random group of people, and give them
regeneration. That regeneration means, for those chosen, He gave them the
eyes to see the wickedness of sin, and the redeeming work of Jesus, and His
real love—so they are saved. But only because His regeneration started them. All of the Calvinist belief system says that no
effort on our part had any part in salvation. God did it all, after He
predestined some of us at random. We have a blog on Calvin that will open up
your eyes about where this theology leads.
But today I am picking on Luther, and pointing out to
you how his “gospel” radically and sadly differs from the real Gospel as
outlined many times in Scripture. “Works,”
which we must do after faith in Jesus, as we shall prove, are still a
part of finally being saved. Works was never such a dirty word until Luther
made it that. His misapplication of the
Objector and of the word “law” did that--and the combination is disastrous.
Here’s what happens now: Most pastors who apply the teachings of
Luther and Calvin think and (only rarely) preach what they believe; that sanctification
(working toward holiness) is useful, but not necessary for salvation.
Presumably, knowing the lower priority of sanctification will make us secure that
our continual sinning are not a block to heaven, once we expressed faith in
Christ. Feeling secure, we can feel
loved, and we are presumably motivated to love Him and do good works. But the real truth is, because of our sin
nature, probably a large number of “saved” people will get slack about sin,
since they can “get to heaven upon first faith” without it.
This is easy-believism, truly bad news for pastors and
congregants, and will shock many of Jesus’ “disciples” when they will be denied
heaven on Judgment Day because they thought it was OK to “believe” in Jesus but
not change their lives. Here’s Matthew 7: 21:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter
the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will
of My Father in heaven.
Note how the words “does the will” indicate works—those
are works of sanctification. Only those
who follow past first faith and do those will be saved in the end. I am
here to proclaim (as many have before, I might add, so this is not new), that
“works” is part of salvation from hell. I will prove that here
with verses you’ve already seen above (Matthew 7:21,’does the will,’ Romans
2;7, ‘doing good’, Romans 2:10 ‘who works what is good’) but I
will prove it more next week. I want to start by re-emphasizing one of the main
themes from the book of James—faith without works is dead. (Luther hated the book of James, but that’s
his problem).
I want to clarify another thing also: Initial
salvation, putting our faith in Jesus as the only way of salvation from hell, is
our starting point. We don’t do the works, and then hope that God
approves us and sends us to heaven. We
express the faith in Jesus, then we are a new creation; then working with the
Holy Spirit, we abide in Christ and bring forth fruit. Perhaps the first worth after faith is
this: works of repentance, to move away
from our sin habits, and a work of baptism—for required public confession
(Romans 10:9,10), are good first steps toward sanctification. Then, Scripture
requires good fruit, to maintain that initial salvation.
My use of “maintain” is considered “radical;” our current
evangelistic theologians and pastors disclaim it. There are groups who still believe the same
as early Christians, and the same as I do, but they don’t get much theological coverage,
because their total is so small. The
pastors that everybody loves all preach the easy-believism—faith plus nothing
and you’re saved—and you’re secure in that the rest of your life. They actually believe that if you dare to
include works in thinking of salvation, you are likely on the way to
heresy, which could end up not saved. Scripture, as I will show, moves the
charge of heresy back on themselves.
I do want to say this, too: Suppose I give a
hypothetical example to a Calvinist pastor, that a guy was “saved,” that is,
expressed his faith in Jesus, went awhile in the narrow path, but then strayed
off into worldliness, and did not do anything the world would disapprove of the
rest of his life. What about him? The
pastor might answer that “he wasn’t saved to begin with; if he was, he would
have persevered and God would make sure he would have fruits.” So you’re saying, the guy only thought he was
saved, never had a serious warning at church when we went astray (or any other
time), but you can’t make a call on him until he is dead. Too late then, since he
didn’t pursue holiness or have fruit—but he hadn’t heard that lacking those, he
was in danger of hell.
Calvinist pastors that the seminaries turn out today hate
to preach on holiness. Since they think the lack of holiness won’t block you
from heaven, preaching hellfire and brimstone about holiness gets a lower
priority, especially since it drives people into negative thoughts and
ultimately drives people away. And there
go the offerings. So their easy-preaching
led the guy thinking he was still saved, though he slinked back into the world.
He was deceived by his pastor’s lack of warning. That is a very big
issue to me. It’s all a part of the Deception, the Offense, and the Apostasy
that Jesus talked about in the last days, Matthew 24, a terrible grief of many unsaved. It’s better for the pastor to give warnings
of falling back into worldliness than to stay silent and let people slide into
eternity with a huge ugly surprise at the end. Pastors are the shepherds; they
hopefully don’t want these people’s souls robbed by Satan in the end, or God
will judge the pastor for serious irresponsibility. Pastors must teach on sin,
in detail, so as to reduce the natural tendency of people who deliberately don’t
think of sin, they just do it, they’re living in it, thinking it’s OK. Teach them that God is the only loving anchor
in the storm of hell’s yawning vortex; that will reduce apostasy. And then they should preach on hell as
punishment, justly deserved by all without the Grace of our Almighty God.
So, you’d like some additional proofs of my radical point
that sanctification is necessary to maintaining salvation. Next week, OK?
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