Binding Yourself to Salvation with Jello Cords

Imagine a chain binding you to your salvation. 

The Strong Chain

One gospel  has one link in it: God's grace through faith. This link is infinitely stronger than titanium; it will never fail.

The Weakest Possible Chain

Another gospel, commonly found among "Christian" churches, has two links. The first link is, again, God's grace through faith. Some churches in this group primarily preach about the first link, so, whether or not members later become convinced that there's a second link, they are kept secure by that first, titanium link.

The second link, however, is human merit. This link requires completing the earning of salvation by doing good, avoiding certain evils, or perseverance through character and will-power. In other words, the second link is works and wages. 

This other gospel puts the two links together, the titanium link of God's grace with the mercurious link of human merit. If your conversion depended on the first link alone, you are secure. If your "gospel" required both, your religion has already caused you to stumble, for the second link has no power to save nor to keep. It is time to repent of this false gospel of self-righteousness and trust God alone.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, but please don't plagiarize like an SBC president.

The Righteous Will Be Judged

Answering a question on Quora:

Why will the righteous be judged?

The short answer is that, whereas the unrighteous are judged for punishment, the righteous are judged for reward.

The long answer requires starting by defining “the righteous.” The righteous are not people who never sin.

Now we know that whatever the Law [the Ten Commandments and associated commands] says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [ancient Israelites], so that every mouth may be closed and call the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh [no human] will be justified in His [God’s] sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God… — Romans 3:19–20, 23

The purpose of passages such as the Ten Commandments is not to show us how we can earn heaven. It is to show us that we cannot earn heaven. It drives us to seek a different way to have positive relationship with God.

Rather, the righteous are people who let go of self-righteousness and instead trust that God paid their penalty through Jesus’s sacrifice and then proved it by raising Jesus from the dead. Scriptures use accounting language to say that God credits their penalty to Jesus and imputes their faith to their account for righteousness. They become, not perfect or sinless, but declared righteous.

Being declared righteous does not automatically make their thoughts and actions righteous; that takes growth over the rest of their lives. Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you perfect, it makes you a student.

Here’s an important distinction: Being declared righteous does not mean you can do whatever you want. There are many reasons for this. First, believers do what they believe, so if they really believe God, then they’ll start learning to do God’s will.

Second, God takes steps to help them grow more holy in what they do. So their belief will produce evidence, that is, good behaviors. Good behavior is not a cause of God’s gift of forgiveness, it is a result. Every false system will reverse that by making good works into requirements for receiving the gift. But when you try to earn a gift, you insult the Giver and miss out on getting the gift.

Third, God tests and chastises His children to instill good behaviors. In extreme cases, chastisement can even lead to taking a severely disobedient believer home to heaven. So it’s laughable to say that being secure in God’s love and not having to persevere in good works means you can get away with anything. A “believer” who does whatever he wants and gets away with it demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Christian.

The judgment of the righteous is different from the judgment of those who reject or fail to accept God’s gift (let’s call them “the lost”). When the lost are judged, their moral crimes determine their degree of punishment. Since we sin against infinite God, even a “small” sin earns a very serious punishment.

The righteous, on the other hand, are not judged for punishment because their sins were already punished. (Remember, they were transferred to Christ.) Instead, their works are judged for reward. Many of their “good” works will be disqualified because they were mixed with error, bad methods, or wrong motives. Those works that survive the test will be rewarded. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.

Repetitive Sin and Losing Salvation

Answering a question on Quora:

Have I lost my salvation? I keep falling back into the same sin for 6 years deliberately after I repent but after the last time I feel as though I cant be forgiven. and if its not to late how can I get back to the lord and make him happy and proud?

First question: No, you have not lost your salvation. There are two possibilities. Your concern over your sin is good, in either case.

• Jesus spoke about people who received the message of God and fell away because of trouble, persecution, worries, or desires. The message bore no fruit in their lives. He spoke even more about people who heard the message and seemed to understand it intellectually, but never grasped it with humbled, needy hearts. Many of them fooled the world and even did mighty works in Jesus name. The message seemed to bear fruit, in their lives, but it was a false fruit. On Judgment Day, Jesus won’t say, “I knew you and then you fell away so I forgot you.” Jesus will say, “I never knew you.”
  
  In other words, you cannot lose what you never had. But if you decide that this is the case, your concern has placed you on the right path to correcting the situation.
  
  The application for you is to make sure you heard the message not just with your head, not just with your heart, and not a deficient version. Your concern may have brought you to the point where you are ready to correct a bad understanding of the gospel or some deficiency in the way you received it.
  
  
• God’s salvation brings many benefits. If you are saved, “regeneration” means that God has made your dead spirit alive. He has made you one of His sheep and put it in your heart to follow Him and no other. The Father holds you in His hand, the Son also holds you in His hand, and the Spirit indwells you. The Spirit, in fact, closes the lid and seals you with a seal that only Jesus can break. God even predestines you to be transformed into the (figurative) image of Christ, and the judgment of the Second Death, when the lost are cast into the Lake of Fire, has no power over you. He has birthed you into His family and adopted you as an heir with full adult privileges of the family business.
  
  In other words, you cannot “lose” what God has declared done or as good as done.
  
  There are many reasons why God does not give instant victory over sins. For example, He doesn’t want us to grow self-righteous or independent. He wants us to struggle to develop strength or to be able to have the wisdom or empathy to help others. Some other sins are a higher priority as He shapes you for the tasks He has ahead. I cannot read God’s mind, so I cannot tell you which of the hundreds of possibilities apply to you.

Second question: There are two possible reasons you feel as though you cannot be forgiven. You are receiving the Father’s chastisement or you don’t understand forgiveness.

• If you have been saved, then God’s relationship with you changed. Before, He was your Judge, but now, He is your Father. Before, your fate was wrath, but now, you are predestined to reward. In the meantime, we are stuck in these sinful bodies. Our natural hearts are deceitful and incurable until that day. God accepts us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way. He works in us “to will and to do according to His good pleasure.”
  
  God also chastises His children. That feeling of an unforgivable state reflects the interruption in fellowship that happens. This could be a second-level chastisement; you don’t want to find out what the third level is like. There’s even a chastisement to the point of calling us home to heaven for the most severe sins — and yet, the purpose of such extreme measures is preserving the soul.
  
  God presents us with a carrot and a stick. The carrot, the blessings of a restored relationship with God, and the stick, the knowledge that returning to sins will have increasingly severe consequences, should give you something to meditate on and to motivate you.
  
  
• Judicially, Jesus bore the sentence for our sins 1,967 years ago. All of our sins were “future” to Him. God does not forgive our sins just up to that point of our conversion or confession. All the sins of God’s children — past, present, and future — were nailed to the cross.
  
  Jesus Himself commanded the disciples to forgive a repentant brother an unlimited number of times; and Jesus would not issue such a command if the God did not do the same. Whether God already forgave, or God forgives every time does not matter. The result is the same.
  
  Parentally, God does not condemn His children, although He chastises them. Sin does break fellowship with God. It also alienates the Holy Spirit, depriving us of His comfort and power. But what Good Father would not receive a repentant child with open arms?
  
  So the weakness here is failing to trust that God, as Judge, has already forgiven; and as Father has already received you. The problem may be that you are usurping God’s parental privilege and chastising yourself.

Our feelings are not the source of our faith. The scriptures are. It’s tempting to give in to feelings, but we must understand first and then decide to act accordingly. The mind is powerful, and we can control our feelings better than we think.

Third question: You can can “get back to the lord and make him happy and proud” with three steps.

• Make sure you’ve understood the gospel. Technically, this might not be “getting back” to the Lord; it might be getting to Him for the first time.
  
  You feared having lost your salvation. That means that you believed that your salvation was conditional or incomplete. You may have believed that God saves, but salvation ultimately depends on ceremonies (such as baptism) or on your behaviors. The gospel you believe is like a chain with two links. One link represents God’s work, and the other represents your righteousness. Guess which link breaks every time? The biblical gospel has only one link in its chain.
  
  Scroll up to that paragraph that starts out, God’s salvation brings many benefits. Now read each benefit and explain how you can undo that benefit in order to lose your salvation. For example, are you stronger than the Holy Spirit who seals you? Predestination means that God will make something happen. Are you stronger than God? Moreover, if God has forgiven your sins by washing them away and casting them as far away as East is from West, can you filter your sins out of the blood or fetch them back from infinity? If God has erased your sins from the Books of Works, can you write them back in?
  
  Other common misunderstandings regards the meaning of repentance. Many churches ignore it. “Just ask Jesus into your heart,” they say. “Jesus wants to be your friend and make life wonderful for you.” But salvation starts with forgiveness of sins, and conversion starts with an awareness, not that there’s a hole in your life, but that our sins have condemned us.
  
  The other extreme about repentance requires cleaning up our lives in order to be saved. This is tied to the error of thinking you can lose salvation. Trying to earn the gift insults the Giver. Repentance is an attitude, not actions. It means seeing our sins the way God sees them. It does not include reforming yourself; and it cannot, because we cannot achieve the degree of righteousness that God would require. In fact, making reform a requirement for salvation is a form of self-righteousness, one of the sins we must repent from!
  
  Salvation does not result from reform; reform results from salvation. It is not a test for salvation; it tests whether salvation is genuine. Reform gives evidence of salvation; it is a product of salvation; it does not cause it.
  
  
• Assuming you had salvation, then, if you fear having lost it, then you are not trusting in God’s forgiveness. You are fearing that God has changed from Father back into Judge. This is an area where you can please God by expanding your trust in Him.
  
  
• Trust Him to keep you saved.
• Trust that He has already forgiven all your sins.
• Trust that God is now your Father instead of your Judge.
• Trust that your Father will never disown you.
• Thank Jesus, Son of God, for bearing your punishment.
• Thank your Father for His chastisement.
• Thank Him for the promise that one day, He will complete your transformation and free you from sin.
  
  
• Don’t stop repenting. Jesus commanded disciples to forgive every time a brother came in repentance. Trust that what God commands of us, He does.
  
  Bear this in mind: You are focused on one sin. If you think this sin is the only one, you have a problem of self-righteousness. Ironic, isn’t it? We can feel so guilty about one sin that we forget all the other sins we commit. We all commit so many sins, we don’t even recognize all of them. What makes this one sin so special that it costs your salvation while all the others don’t?
  
  Don’t get me wrong. Some sins are more detestable, and different sins cause different levels of damage or chastisement. But sin is sin, and the sacrifice of infinite God the Son was sufficient to cleanse us from any guilt.

I’ll conclude with some practical hints. Make sure you understand the gospel. You can only “get saved” once, but you can make sure of it as many times as you need. Copy Romans 3:28, Ephesians 2:8–9, Titus 3:5, and Romans 8:38–39 onto 3x5 note cards; then read and re-read them until you can recite them from memory. Repent from not trusting God. Increase your trust and make it a habit to thank God for securing you in His love — and even thank Him for His chastisement.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, and please give credit where credit is due.

Will God Forgive Bitterness?

From a question on Quora:

Will God still forgive those who hold bitterness in their hearts towards others?

Bitterness is wrong. It hurts others and it hurts you. It means that you have not seen yourself through God’s eyes because you see yourself as superior to the other person. You must know this, so I’ll keep the focus on God’s forgiveness.

There are two routes to heaven. If you depend on the first route, then, along with obeying numerous other commandments, you must forgive everyone who offends you in order to earn God’s forgiveness. If you have depended on the second route, God has already forgiven you as Judge, although He may chastise you as a loving Father.

The Jews of Jesus’s day, most people around the world, and many “Christian” denominations and offshoots pursue the first route. This route depends on human merit.

• The Jewish leaders, being descendants of Abraham, believed their heritage earned heaven for them. You will hear similar claims today, such as “My mother was a saint!” or “Grandpa was a Baptist preacher.”
• Many believed that the sacrifices made by their parents or ceremonies such as circumcision that their parents put them through brought them into a special relationship with God. When I was 18, I thought that because I was born an American and my parents had me “baptized” when I was little, I would see heaven.
• Others believed that if they kept the Ten Commandments, related commandments, traditions, and ceremonies; did acts of love and generosity; and kept themselves separate from things that would defile them (such as eating pork of shrimp), God would forgive them. Much of that continues today. The standard may be as simple as “Love one another” or may include performing sacraments, works of charity, refraining from offenses, or forgiving others.

Jesus often preached against depending on the first, heritage. He also preached that the second, what others do for you, was worthless unless you embrace the third in your heart. He did often preach the third, personal righteousness. But there’s a catch.

If you depend on personal righteousness, then the standard is perfection. The test is Pass/Fail, and any score less than 100% is Fail. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours (Matthew 6:15). Jesus implied that the personal righteousness standard was so high that, instead of saving people, it condemned them. All (except Jesus) have fallen short of God’s standard. Because of this, God cannot allow us to defile His presence. Even if we could, we could not bear to be in His presence.

Not everybody reaches sufficient humiliation to admit in frustration and self-condemnation, “I can’t.” For those who do give up on the futile self-merit route, God has created the second route.

The word grace means gift or unmerited favor. If something is a gift, you don’t insult the Giver by trying to earn it either before or after the fact. You don’t mix faith and works or mix grace and merit the way many churches do.

God’s grace is an attitude, not a money-like stuff that comes bit-by-bit. Someone made up an acronym to explain g-r-a-c-e: God Redeems At Christ’s Expense. Jesus, Son of God, like a Big Brother taking his little brother’s punishment, took God’s punishment for our sins. Jesus’s sacrifice was sufficient for all sins of all people; and God demonstrated His satisfaction by physically raising Jesus from the dead.

God applies that payment to those who trust God instead of themselves. That includes several points of faith such as our guilt and its consequences, Christ being God, Christ dying on a cross and rising from the dead, and God’s promise to save trusting people from being judged for their offenses.

When you have that kind of repentance and faith, God grants total forgiveness. That means you will never face God as Judge because He has changed your relationship. He births you into His family and adopts you as His heir. So now He’s your Father who will never leave or abandon you, even if you have not yet overcome bitterness in your heart.

Does that mean you can do anything you want — such as failing to forgive — without consequences? Absolutely not! God chastises His children when they will not turn from offensive ways. Sometimes, chastisement can be as severe as sickness or death. But your sin cannot change what you are.

So if you want to earn your way to heaven, go ahead: Hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. And when you fall flat on your face, go to God in humility. As Judge, God will forgive all your sins — and by all I mean all, including bitterness. And as Father, he will train you, using internal influence over your spirit, positive reinforcement, and chastisement. 

Copyright 2020 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, and please give credit where credit is due.

Bases of Atheistic Faith

From three questions in a conversation on Quora.

“what evidence does an Atheist base his belief on that God doesn’t exist?”

It depends on the Atheist. There’s a new book out by an Atheist about the seven types of Atheist. Each type is a rather broad category, and there seems to be overlap. The author criticizes five of the seven types.

According to current wisdom, the typical Atheist’s belief has two parallel bases. One is the motive, and the other is the intellectual side.

The thinking atheist claims that the evidence for God is inadequate and the universe does not need a God; but the jump from not needing God to actively judging or rejecting God requires blind faith.

The smarter Atheists know they cannot prove there is no God, so to escape having to prove a negative, they’ve begun equivocating by importing the definition of Agnosticism into what they claim Atheism is. They revert to an obsolete definition of Atheism which meant “You don’t believe in my god(s).” Then they claim they merely believe in one less god than monotheists, and monotheists are atheists, too because they don’t believe in all gods. They also claim (falsely) that they’d be open to proof.

The deception is revealed when they stop their ears to Theistic arguments and when they set ridiculously high levels of evidence that would be needed for them to move from Atheism to Theism. (And even if they received such evidence, they’d explain it away as delusion.)

The motive can be

1. negative experiences (such as mistreatment by “Christians”)
2. attachment to sins
3. defensiveness (taking offense at having their disbelief pointed out, having been reared without religious training or having later rejected God)

Negative experiences actually become an attachment to sins such as anger, bitterness, jealousy, and unforgiveness against “Christians” or daddy issues. Defensiveness also becomes an attachment to the sins of unbelief and “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.”

The foundation, the basis underlying the bases, is the “the Fall,” “sin nature” or “original sin.” We all start out in rebellion against God, and Atheism is just an expression of that rebellion.

That people may have gone through a religious phase does not mean they left the faith. They may have had a misunderstanding of The Faith, shallowness of understanding or faith, or priorities that made idols of “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” Man judges by the outward appearance, so they and we are easily fooled by counterfeit belief. They may seem to us to have lost salvation, but what they lost was superficial; it was counterfeit.

God is not so gullible. He sees the hearts, and He sees the future thoughts and actions that the hearts will produce. He’s not going to turn a goat into a sheep just to let the sheep turn himself back into a goat again. Either He will preserve that sheep, or He will never turn the goat into a sheep in the first place.

I’ve heard many stories of people who spent their lives in good churches but only late in life actually were converted. How much easier it would be for people to deceive themselves or others and then abandon their counterfeit faith.

“what is his experience or is it that he takes pride in his ability to reason?”

Both. His experience is a lack of encounters with the supernatural. He may have prayed without receiving the requested answer or seen a miracle that he later decided was a con job. By (flawed) reasoning, He then projects that lack of experience onto all of history and adds that to many other flawed arguments. Most then close their minds to protect their pride and to resist admitting to their underlying rebellion.

“….then his ability to reason doesn’t validate his faith (how does an atheist prove that his faith is true?)”

• In engineering and business, verification is a check that you did something correctly. Validation is a check that you did the right thing.

The Atheist thinks his ability to reason verifies his faith, but it is a false verification because a mixture of flawed information and reasoning can only produce wrong conclusions.

Validation happens when the end result meets the underlying needs. If the underlying needs are forgiveness, relationship with God, and everlasting life, and the Atheist’s faith blocks the way to fulfilling those needs, then his ability to reason and his faith are invalidated. The invalid nature of his assumption that he does not need forgiveness, God, or life meet there ultimate, tragic invalidation when he follows Richard Dawkins into hell.


Usual disclaimer for something I've already poste elsewhere: Please give credit where credit is due if you copy this.

Hebrews 6:6 -- Not About OSAS

Does Hebrews 6:4-8 mean that a person cannot come back to God and be saved if they once were with God and then fell away from God?

The simple answer is that the passage is not about salvation. Verses 4–8 describe the first century Jewish nation, not individual Christians.

(For simplicity of language, I’m going to use the Jewish author’s term “Jews” to refer to the first-century establishment Hebrews in Judea. It’s a lot easier to type, I do not intend any insult to “Jews” of today, and I assume the reader is intelligent and flexible enough to accept that.)

Two camps within Christianity have argued for centuries over the meaning of then have fallen away. One side (called Arminians, after Jacob Arminius) say that it means Christians can fall away and lose their salvation. The other side (Calvinists, after John Calvin) claim that the Arminian interpretation would contradict other less ambiguous statements in the Bible.

The New American Standard Bible translation is the most consistently accurate word-for-word translation, so I use that here. Here is the passage:

• For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

In the Greek, the structure of verses 4–6 is:

• For it is impossible, those who (identifying phrases), to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify, etc.

The meaning is ambiguous because the identifying phases can be interpreted to mean either Christians or the Jews. The following is a literal translation of the Greek identifying phrases without the adjustments needed to make the sentence fit together in English.

• those who, having once been enlightened
• having tasted of the heavenly gift
• having been made partakers of the Holy Spirit
• having tasted the good word of God
• having tasted... the powers of the age to come
• and having fallen away

Arminians interpret having fallen away to mean that a Christian can fall away. This is based on the King James Version’s mistaken translation, if they shall fall away. If and shall fall makes the phrase conditional and future.

But that interpretation is incorrect because it derives from an incorrect translation. If does not exist in the Greek text, and the verb to fall has the same past tense (called aorist) that all the other verbs have. Having fallen is not about a potential action that might happen in the future. It is about an actual action that had already happened at the time the author was writing.

The phrase does not describe hypothetical Christian individuals in the future. It describes an action that the Jewish establishment had already performed.

If you remove the identifying phrases, the sentence reads thus:

• For it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, seeing that they crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame

If you apply these phrases to Christians, it does not make much sense. Why can’t a straying Christian be restored? How would restoring a repentant Christian crucify Christ afresh and put Him to shame? If restoring a “fallen” Christian re-crucifies Christ, then isn’t Christ re-crucified every time a sinner repents?

In contrast, it becomes quite simple if applied to the Jewish establishment. If you outline Hebews, you will notice that it's all about contrasting the Jewish temple system against the superior system of Christ's gospel and church. Before Christ’s sacrifice, the temple system’s daily sacrifices pointed forward to redemption through His sacrifice. Afterwards, continuing the sacrifices implied that Christ’s sacrifice had not happened, or if it had happened, it was insufficient. (Roman Catholicism’s mass has similar problems.) This was analogous to hanging somebody in effigy. It was an insult.

Also note that the sentence does not say, if one renews them again to repentance, they will crucify to themselves the Son of God…. The meaning is, it is impossible because they crucify…. The temple sacrifices rejected Christ’s coming and sacrifice. The leaders had already been called to repentance and had rebuffed that call.

Hebrews 6:4-6 is ambiguous enough for a careless reading to lead to several possible interpretation. However, it is far more likely that the fallen refers to the Jewish system that rejected Christ, and the evidence that it is impossible to renew the Jews to repentance was that they insulted the person and work of Christ. If you continue on to verse 8, you will see a veiled threat to the Jews that their system was about to undergo God’s judgment.

This dovetails with what we know from history, namely, that God allowed waves of Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem and Judea starting in 67 AD. This was prophesied hundreds of years before (for instance, by Joel) and later by Jesus. So Hebrews 6:6–8 fits into a much larger picture.

Let's not stop at verse 8. Verses 9–12 contrast with the preceding verses. Whereas verses 4–8 describe people who were never saved, verses 9–12 describe people who have been saved.

There are “things” that accompany salvation such as love and ministry (verses 9–10). It does not say that love and ministry produce salvation, but rather, they are found in the person who already possesses salvation. Diligence in producing evidence of salvation produces not salvation, but assurance (verse 11).

Also note a contrast between verses 9 and 12. The beginning of the paragraph treats salvation as a present condition of the Christian whereas the ending of the paragraph treats inheritance, that is, reward, as something that comes at the end of a faithful, persevering life.

God saves through faith alone, but faith plus salvation results in fruits of the Spirit such as love, good works such as ministering to the needs of the church, and perseverance through doubts, temptations, and trials. Those results of salvation produce assurance and result in rewards. Be careful when people try to turn the results or evidences of salvation into causes of salvation.

Why is the Catholic faith so strict?

Why is the Catholic faith so strict?

The gentleman who asks the question clarifies that the strictness that concerns him regards types of sins. I will answer from a biblical perspective, which agrees with Catholicism about most points of morality. Where the biblical perspective differs is in the motive behind that strictness.

As a courtesy, I will quote from the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims translation; and where needed, I will include explanatory words or words from current translations in parentheses.

Defining Morality

God’s primary attribute is holiness. Because He is holy, He must be just and loving.

• God could be loving without being just or holy.
• God could be just without being loving or holy.
• If God were not just and loving, He could not be holy.

You can tell a lot about how biblical a church is by how well it balances holiness, justice, and love.

Holiness takes two forms. First, it means that all of God’s attributes and actions are right. This may sound circular because God’s holiness is the standard against which we judge “right.” However, we can refine that. God’s perfection before He created the universe is the standard, and he has neither changed away from that standard nor violated it.

Second, God’s holiness involves the concept of sacredness. To illustrate, the leftover Jesus-flesh and Jesus-blood is not to be used for ordinary purposes or disposed of like trash. The priests must protect the leftovers, but God’s holiness is self-protecting. God alone hath immortality, and inhabiteth (dwells in) light inaccessible (unapproachable), whom no man hath seen, nor can see… (1 Timothy 6:16). One day, in the resurrection, the unjustified will see Him. According to Revelation (“Apocalypse”) 20:11, I saw a great white throne, and one sitting upon it (God), from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was no place found for them.

The commandments, or morality in general, is a standard applicable to life on Earth, that reflects God’s character. God revealed the standard gradually. First, there were a few simple commands in the Garden of Eden. Our ancestors disobeyed. Then there were the Ten Commandments. The Ten were summarized in two: Love God first, and love your neighbor. That was in about 1250 BC. Over 600 more commands followed in the Old Testament to help apply the Two and the Ten in daily and religious life.

But it doesn’t end there. You can probably finish this: “Man looks at the outward appearance but God….” It’s in 1 Samuel 16:7.

God judges motives, intents, and emotions, not just actions. For example, Jesus said, whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28), and whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment…. And whosoever shall say, Thou Fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (Matthew 5:22).

We can state the prohibitions against sins positively.

• Sins insult God and hurt others, so abstaining from sins can be a way to love God and others.

If a church is strict in warning against the many sins that we can commit, then it is consistent with God’s own revelation of Himself. The “blame” if there be any, falls upon us for the many ways that we insult God and hurt others.

This can be a loving act on the part of the church. Warning: This is not a loving act when a church crosses into being “strict,” as in being judgmental, intolerant, or impatient. The approach must be balanced because the goal is to help people grow; it is not to turn them into slaves.

Motives for Morality

Because God is holy, souls bearing guilt cannot enter God’s presence. Even if God or the angels did not bar the way, guilty souls would flee — some in regret and fear, others in hatred. God presents two solutions so souls can live in His presence:

• Live so that no guilt ever accumulates
• Find forgiveness of guilt

World religions add:

• Earn your way out of guilt-debt

Catholicism adopts a hybrid:

• God lets us earn forgiveness from some guilt and enables us to work our way out of the remaining guilt

Going back to the Ten Commandments and the other 600+ commands: This is called The Law. Since God gave the Ten and the bulk of the 600 through Moses, it is also called the Mosaic Law. It is one united Law with many points. Break one point, and you’ve broken the whole.

Israel failed to keep the Mosaic Law. Their relationship with God was a roller-coaster ride. Eventually, God split Israel into two kingdoms. They continued their ups and downs — mostly downs — until God allowed other nations to destroyed one kingdom and then the other. After a time, God restored one of the two kingdoms, Judea, keeping it under the rule of other nations. The priests learned their lesson too well.

By the time of Jesus, Judaism had added thousands more commands, called “traditions,” to ensure that they kept the first 600+. Sadly, their efforts to earn righteousness led them, as Jesus said, to make void the word of God by your own tradition (Mark 7:13). They focused on microscopic details and left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith not done (Matthew 23:23).

The Jews had missed an important lesson of the Law. We are all become as one unclean, and all our justices as the rag of a menstruous woman: and we have all fallen as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away (Isaiah 64:6)

The main purpose of the law was to show us our inability to justify ourselves by showing us an impossible standard, God’s perfection. Because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him. For by the law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20).

Jesus stressed the lesson through irony. The religious leaders had their thousands of commands, yet Jesus said, unless your justice (righteousness) abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20).

So the lesson was not to rely on self-righteousness. Rather, as Paul wrote, the law was our pedagogue (teacher) in Christ, that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24).

The Jews of Jesus’s day tried to earn their way to heaven. Abstaining from sins and doing good deeds are good, but not as a way to heaven. The Apostles explicitly taught that works and faith, and wages and grace, were mutually exclusive pairs. For example:

• Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Galatians 2:16).
• If by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace (Romans 11:6).

Just as Judaism went off track with teaching self justification, the Church gradually went off track, mixing grace and self justification. Grace means “gift,” but the church redefined it as being like money, to be earned through ceremonies and deeds, here a little, there a little. And if you collected enough of this substance, you could buy your way out of Purgatory or Limbo sooner. This is a blasphemous insult to the Giver of grace.

The Church also came to teach that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was not enough. When He cried Tetelestai on the cross, it was a victory cry, “It is finished!” But the Church claims to continue that sacrifice in thousands of locations every day.

• We are sanctified by the oblation (offering) of the body of Jesus Christ once. And every (Jewish) priest indeed standeth daily ministering and often offering the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth on the right hand of God, From henceforth expecting until his enemies be made his footstool. (Hebrews 10:10–13)

Notice the contrasts. The Jewish sacrifice was continuous. Christ sacrificed Himself once. It had a definite ending. He does not now rise up and descend to Earth to continue His suffering thousands of times each day, but rather, sits, resting, waiting with the Father on God’s throne, making intercession for His followers. To teach that the one-time sacrifice of infinite God the Son was inadequate is blasphemous.

• For by one oblation (offering) he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified (believers) (Hebrews 10:14).

Not only was the sacrifice a complete act, but the redemption of those who place their faith in it is perfect (complete). Redemption is not bit by bit, but perfect. Implying that a complete redemption cannot be claimed blasphemously insults the Giver’s resources and generosity.

Now we can apply this to the original question. The biblical Christian has many reasons to recognize strict rules of morality.

• The rules are ways to love God.
• The rules are ways to love others.
• Love seeks the benefit of others
• In the eyes of others, our holiness qualifies us convey the gospel
• By obeying the rules, we love ourselves
• We emulate our Father
• We live at peace with God
• We enjoy peace with others
• We avoid our Father’s loving chastisement
• We earn rewards in heaven

The Roman Catholic recognizes some or many of the above benefits, but the primary reason to obey strict rules of morality is to earn “grace” and redeem oneself. Reliance on morality for justification before God has a name: self righteousness.

As Hebrews 6:1 says,

• Wherefore, leaving (moving on from) the word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on to things more perfect: not laying again the foundation of penance (repentance) from dead works and of faith towards God….

The writer framed the gospel for Jewish converts (and all of us) this way:

• Repent from the dead works of attempting to achieve self righteousness through ceremonies and deeds.
• Simply consent to the Giver who bestows the gift upon you.
• Trust the Giver to keep His promise.

Rightly Interpreting James 2:24

Someone invoked James 2:24 to rationalize that Catholicism is strict because good deeds are necessary for salvation. Here it is, out of context:

• Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only?

Now, here’s the context. There are three types of justification.

• Justification by God who paid for and forgave your sins — assuming you have received the gift as a gift, without insulting the Giver
• Justification before others
• Justification before yourself (1 John has a lot to say about self examination in order to gain assurance of the sincerity of your faith).

James chapter 2 is about justification before others. Look at how the passage begins in verse 18:

• But some man will say: Thou hast faith, and I have works. Shew me (a man) thy faith without works; and I (a man) will shew thee, by works, my faith. (Emphasis added.)

James refers to Abraham’s offering of Isaac as an argument, but acknowledges, by citing Genesis 15:6, that God had already justified Abraham roughly 25 years before, on the basis of faith alone. Abraham believed God, and it was reputed (accounted) to him to justice (righteousness).

Offering Isaac justified Abraham before men. And he was called (by men) the friend of God. Being justified before men is not salvation.

We agree, good deeds are necessary. You’re useless to anybody if you don’t do good. Jesus said,

• Jesus said, So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16).
• John the Baptist said, Bring forth therefore fruit (deeds) worthy of penance (repentance at the time of conversion) (Matthew 3:8).

Genuine faith produces good works.

• For it is God who worketh in you, both to will (desire) and to accomplish (act), according to his good will (Philippians 2:13).

But good deeds are worthless for redeeming yourself before God. This was addressed above but bears repeating.

• Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Galatians 2:16).
• We are all become as one unclean, and all our justices as the rag of a menstruous woman: and we have all fallen as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away (Isaiah 64:6)

People who cite James 2 to rationalize a requirement works for salvation violate an important rule for interpreting the Bible:

• Never use a vague, tangential, or ambiguous passage to contradict a clear, explicit, relevant passage.

Read Romans chapters 3–6. Chapter 4, in particular, puts James’s argument into context.

Two Ways to Heaven

There are two ways to heaven: the impossible and the possible.

1.  Be perfect throughout your entire life.

That makes you superior to the rest of us. In fact, it must make you God, since only God is perfect. 

Proud people think they can earn heaven, but the Ten Commandments (and the over 600 more) do not show a way to heaven for us real people. Instead, they show us that we are condemned before God.

• Have you had anything in your life that was more important than God? The scriptures call that idolatry.
• Have you had any incorrect idea of whom God is and what he's like? Have you prayed through a statue? That's idolatry, too.
• Have you worked on the Sabbath (Saturday)? That's putting other things ahead of God, so it's idolatry, too.
• Have you used the Lord's name in vain? That's a personal insult to God!
• Have you ever spread gossip that turned out to be untrue? That's lying and murdering somebody's reputation.
• Have you hated somebody without just cause? That's murder in your heart.
• Have you looked with sexual desire at somebody other than your spouse? That's adultery.
• Have you wanted something that belonged to somebody else? That's stealing in your heart.

And God looks on the hearts, not just the actions. 

Remember, the Law is One Law with many points. You don't have to break all the points. Break just one point, and you've broken the Law and lost your place in heaven. If you think you've never sinned, just wait. You will.

Satan said, "I will be like God." Adam and Eve said, "We will know good and evil like God." And the self-righteous says in his heart, "I will be perfect." 

Yes, Jesus said, "Be perfect," but He was using the Law to break people's pride, to show that earning heaven by your own merit is impossible. The point of His instruction was not, "Attempt the impossible." His message used irony to show that we are condemned. Salvation comes another way, and only to the humble. 

2. God prepared a gift

The gift that can save us if we accept it as a gift instead of as something we deserve.

The Creator of time and space entered into His creation as three Persons, each fulfilling a distinct role, yet united as One God in eternity.  One of those Persons, God the Son, added a human nature called Jesus to His own nature (without changing in His essence). 

Jesus lived a perfect life. If He had not, He would have died for His own sins, not for ours. But He was God, so He could live a perfect life. And because of that, when He gave Himself on the cross, God could credit our guilt to Jesus  (like a big brother taking the punishment for his little brother) and credit Jesus' righteousness to us. And to demonstrate His approval of what Jesus did, God raised Him from the dead.

God offers that gift to those who (a) recognize God the Son and (b) in desperate need and humility, receive the gift as what it is, a free gift.

Many cling to the impossible way by mixing it with God's provision. They mix faith and works, and corrupt grace (which means "gift") by turning it at least partly into wages. They seek credit for themselves instead of glorifying the Giver alone.

The mixture takes two forms. The first form says you have to do ceremonies, or good works, or clean up your life; and then you receive some or all of the gift. The second form says God gives you the gift, but then you have to earn the right to keep the gift through works or perseverance. Both of these insult God's generosity.

The second (you have to work to retain the gift) also recognizes only half the relationship. Salvation becomes yours, but also you become God's. You become God's child and Jesus' "sheep." (People often lie about the following part because they don't understand it.)

You can't do whatever you want for three reasons (at least!).

• When you became a Christian, you hated your sins because they were evil and they condemned you. Since you hated your sins, and as a new Christian, God begins changing you to free you from those sins, you will try not to repeat those sins.
• God will chastise you, even to the point of killing your body if that's what it takes to keep your soul safe.
• The "whatever you want" will change because God works within you, making you want to do what pleases Him.
• If you do "whatever you want" and get away with it, your conversion was not genuine. Beware false conversions due to.
• Pride in self merit
• Knowledge without heart conviction
• Being carried along by emotion with only partial understanding or with misunderstanding
• Knowledge and emotion, but without prioritizing conversion over everything else

In the gospels, Jesus says, "Be perfect."

The sinner says, "I cannot. I have sinned."

Jesus says, "Be perfect, or be condemned."

The sinner says, "Woe to me, for I am a sinner, condemned!"

Jesus says, "Now you are ready to receive the gift."

The self-righteous man says, "Let me do ceremonies, chant repetitious prayers, and do good works for the gift."

Jesus says, "Go away and do not insult me by trying to earn my gift."

The misled man says, "I receive the gift" but thinks "and I will do good works and persevere so that I don't lose it."

Jesus says, "Come back when you are ready to stop insulting my faithfulness."

The humble man says, "I deserve condemnation. I can do nothing to earn or to keep the gift. I surrender. I trust You to have mercy upon my sins and grace upon my need."

Jesus says, "I give you the gift. Now you are mine and I am yours, and I keep my promises. Welcome to my kingdom, little brother! Now, let's get to work!"

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler -- Permission granted for personal or non-profit, non-published use. Please give credit where credit is due.

I was forgiven. I need forgiveness. Contradiction?

The Bible teaches that salvation means you have been forgiven; yet it also teaches a continuous need for confession and forgiveness. Skeptics twist that into a contradiction. Arminians and Wesleyans twist it into "proof" that salvation is conditional and not secure. Both reflect a need for greater understanding. 

Forgiveness or being forgiven means either an action or a state. The word forgiven has more than one meaning.

• Past participle of the verb to forgive — You were forgiven, meaning, God forgave you.
• Adjective — You are forgiven, meaning, since you were declared forgiven, now you are in a state of forgiveness; it is one of your attributes.
• Present participle — You are forgiven, meaning, I forgive you.

I forgive

Before discussing forgiveness in the spiritual context, we need to recognize a practical context. Sin affects everybody.

• My sin affects me because it has consequences for me.
• It affects God because it desecrates His creation, it is an affront to His holiness, and it rebels against His sovereignty.
• Some sins directly hurts others.

So if somebody says, You are forgiven, they might mean that, assuming you have obeyed the gospel, God has forgiven you. However, they might mean that they forgive you for what you did to them.

God forgives

The state of forgiveness cannot be reversed. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1, NASB).

This is because Christ fulfilled the Law — the Old Testament commandments that condemned us. God God reckons Christ’s death and payment of the debt to our accounts, so in the new birth, we died to the Law of Condemnation and were born into a Law of love.

Romans 7:1–6 uses marriage as an analogy. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. When one spouse dies, the other is free from that first commitment and free to marry another. Similarly, when Christ’s death is imputed to us, it’s like we’ve died to the Law of Condemnation, and God places us under a new law, the Law of Love. So the passage concludes in verse 6,

• But now we have been released from the Law [of commandments that condemn], having died to that by which we were bound [the Law and our guilt], so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter [the Law].

Because God remakes us as His children, His role in relationship to one whom He remakes into His child changes from Judge to Father. Formerly, His end role was to pronounce guilt, hand down the sentence, and execute justice. Now, His role is to train us; and by being trained, we can bring more honor to Him, earn rewards, enjoy fellowship with Him, and become more of a blessing to those we encounter. His end role will be to judge our performance and give rewards rather than to condemn.

On the other hand…

All this means that sin cannot condemn us, but it does not mean that sin does not hurt is. Sin still

• brings embarrassment to God’s name
• wastes rewards
• interferes with our fellowship with God
• interferes with our fellowship with others
• makes us a hindrance to others instead of a blessing
• weighs us down with guilt

Even though we have been forgiven by our Judge so that no penalty of condemnation remains, we still seek forgiveness from our Father because a penalty of lost joy and usefulness weighs us down.

Whereas the book of Romans focused on judicial forgiveness, the book of 1 John focuses on daily life.

• [I]f we walk in the Light… we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin…. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7–9, NASB)

This passage would seem self contradictory. “He forgives us of all sins, yet we need continued forgiveness?” This is resolved if you recognize the difference between forgiveness by our Judge and forgiveness by our Father.

Again, judicial forgiveness cleanses us from all our sins — past, present, and future. But within that state of forgiveness, we still need that cleansing of conscience and restoration of fellowship with our Father.

That’s why we should, even though our sins are forgiven, live in a continual state of repentance, confession, and attempted reform.

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use. Please give credit where credit is due.