The Gospel according to Jesus

[dakota190]

and i believe that pretty much covers it!!!! lets eat!! oops i let my old baptist roots show there.

seriously, i believe, Jesus, fulfilled the laws, with his death on the cross. that is what is meant by the age of grace, we received that by Jesus, dying on the cross. some say it was willingly, i won't disagree, but i am sure he would have just as soon not have had to suffer on the cross. however, we caused it and he still went, out of love for us and obedience to the father, who sent him out of love for us, and then sent the Holy Spirit to advise us and keep us from error. as for applicable laws that bind us, Matthew, 22; v-36-40, "teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. "this is the first and great commandment. "and the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. "on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." the basic tenants of the age of grace as i believe, is love and forgiveness, for our neighbors. as i stated above, Jesus fulfilled the laws, every jot and tittle. the old testament taught and prepared the way for salvation and Jesus, Jesus bought our salvation with his sacrifice. he left God's words with us, as God, and everything is now towards spreading the news of salvation to others, as many will accept it, and prepare for the second coming of the Lord Jesus, the Christ, the living son of the only living God. that covers it.

[Guest yod]

There is no reason to go any further than your first sentence, brother.

Ga 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified (reconciled to God for past sins) by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified (reconciled or forgiven for past sins) by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Absolutely the law, the Ten Commandments cannot justify or forgive anybody. As Paul says, they show us our condemnation and identify our sins. They have no mercy, it is not their job. They are to convict us of sin and drive us to Christ for justification, forgiveness, reconciliation with God for offending Him.)

Why do you assume that His blood can only cover "past" sins?

Are you of the opinion that Yeshua loved us while we were His enemies but that has suddenly becomes a works-based relationship at the point of faith?

And why do you only focus on the 10 Commandments when that is a post-biblical concept? The hebrews see ALL the law as the law. Why do you exclude any of it?

These ideas of yours seem to be the root of our disagreement so far....

I assume that I could find a lot more to disagree with if I read the rest of your post but I'm going to stop there until I get an understanding of why you think only "past" sins are covered by His blood.

Over?

[Guest yod]

OK...so I couldn't resist and read the rest of it. I'll be kinda busy later and might not get back to this so let me go ahead with the rest of it.

'I'd like to point out that the verses you quoted speak specifically of the House of Israel and the House of Judah. The nations (gentiles) are neither.'

As you know the faithful of the house of Israel and Judah received the Messiah. The Apostles were the faithful of Israel. The Church of Christ is the faithful Jewish people.

I

[Christ's Free Servant]

Dennis,

I'm with you. I totally get your point. What you are sharing is the real gospel, but we're not hearing that much these days. Another gospel is being preached, and it is a gospel of convenience, of creating our own gods in our own image, of a white-washed version of the real gospel, of putting a bandaid over people's sins, etc. And, God is calling his church to repent, to return to their first love, to abide in him, to walk in the light, to walk in the Spirit, to have daily fellowship with him, etc., but few want to hear the gospel that you have shared here, because it causes us to have to change; it causes us to have to die to ourselves and our own plans and desires. People plan God around their lives rather than plan their lives around God. People "do" stuff for God instead of obeying what God tells them to do. It is easier that way. Then, we don't have to worry about being rejected or made uncomfortable, because we can create our own god that fits into our world and we feel good about our lives because we "believe" and we have our ticket into heaven. So many people believe that all one has to do is pray a prayer of "faith" and they have their ticket into heaven no matter what their lives show after that. God's word is so opposed to this thinking. What you are sharing is so true. So, keep sharing it. God says to speak his words, whether they listen or they don't listen.

[Christ's Free Servant]

Pilgrim, if I am understanding you correctly, you are dangerously mixing the Law and the Gospel. The good news of Christ is not all of the things we are required to do that you have noted. These are law. The simple message of the gospel is that sinners are freely justified before God because of the death and merits of Christ. That is indeed good news.

The gospel as you are presenting it is not really good news at all. In fact its very bad news because it requires more work from us than we are capable of performing to please God.

SW

He believes in a "gospel" that requires mandatory Sabbath observance. That is why it appears so "law based."

Just a bunch of false teaching.

Shiloh,

I don't see this from what I have read of what he has said so far. I'm not sure of all his teaching, as you seem to have understanding, but at least the first two of his posts here seem to be right on. This is not false teaching, at least not the parts I have understood of what he is saying. I believe we are no longer under law but are under grace, but I think so many take grace to the extreme and they ignore so many of the teachings of scripture on holy living and the need to be crucified with Christ and to obey Christ. So many say "obedience" is adding works to grace, but actually obedience=faith. If we say we believe something but we don't follow the beliefs we say we believe, then we have not really believed. There are many verses that say that if there is not evidence of a changed life that the belief is dead, basically. So, on one side you have works based faith and on the other side you have grace free from true faith. It is really in between.

[Christ's Free Servant]

Dennis,

I'm with you. I totally get your point. What you are sharing is the real gospel, but we're not hearing that much these days. Another gospel is being preached, and it is a gospel of convenience, of creating our own gods in our own image, of a white-washed version of the real gospel, of putting a bandaid over people's sins, etc. And, God is calling his church to repent, to return to their first love, to abide in him, to walk in the light, to walk in the Spirit, to have daily fellowship with him, etc., but few want to hear the gospel that you have shared here, because it causes us to have to change; it causes us to have to die to ourselves and our own plans and desires. People plan God around their lives rather than plan their lives around God. People "do" stuff for God instead of obeying what God tells them to do. It is easier that way. Then, we don't have to worry about being rejected or made uncomfortable, because we can create our own god that fits into our world and we feel good about our lives because we "believe" and we have our ticket into heaven. So many people believe that all one has to do is pray a prayer of "faith" and they have their ticket into heaven no matter what their lives show after that. God's word is so opposed to this thinking. What you are sharing is so true. So, keep sharing it. God says to speak his words, whether they listen or they don't listen.

OK. I just skim read through the other responses and I see this is a debate about Seventh Day Adventist, so I'm not going to enter into that. I took Dennis's first two posts at face value based upon the scriptures and I commented purely on those scriptures, at least I believe I read all of them, though I may have missed an underlying message. So, when I said "what you are sharing is the real gospel," I was in no way aligning myself with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. I was commenting on the scriptures alone. I just wanted to clarify that.

[Guest shiloh357]

Pilgrim, if I am understanding you correctly, you are dangerously mixing the Law and the Gospel. The good news of Christ is not all of the things we are required to do that you have noted. These are law. The simple message of the gospel is that sinners are freely justified before God because of the death and merits of Christ. That is indeed good news.

The gospel as you are presenting it is not really good news at all. In fact its very bad news because it requires more work from us than we are capable of performing to please God.

SW

He believes in a "gospel" that requires mandatory Sabbath observance. That is why it appears so "law based."

Just a bunch of false teaching.

Shiloh,

I don't see this from what I have read of what he has said so far. I'm not sure of all his teaching, as you seem to have understanding, but at least the first two of his posts here seem to be right on. This is not false teaching, at least not the parts I have understood of what he is saying. I believe we are no longer under law but are under grace, but I think so many take grace to the extreme and they ignore so many of the teachings of scripture on holy living and the need to be crucified with Christ and to obey Christ. So many say "obedience" is adding works to grace, but actually obedience=faith. If we say we believe something but we don't follow the beliefs we say we believe, then we have not really believed. There are many verses that say that if there is not evidence of a changed life that the belief is dead, basically. So, on one side you have works based faith and on the other side you have grace free from true faith. It is really in between.

Sue, if you go back through his other posts since he has been on this board, he always tries to find a "back door" to bringing up the Sabbath over and over again. If you don't keep the seventh day Sabbath, then you are in disobedience according to him. What he is trying to do is to get people to get on board with him about obeying the "Ten commandments" (when the only commandment he is really interested in at this point, is the Sabbath). He has done this before. It starts off with "the Ten Commandments," but eventually he pares it down to what the issue he REALLY is aiming at, namely that seventh day Sabbath observence is mandatory for the Christian. If you ask him direct questions as I have done repeatedly in the past, he ignores them because it destorys his true agenda, which is to spread a works based, false gospel.

[Guest shiloh357]

Ga 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified (reconciled to God for past sins) by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified (reconciled or forgiven for past sins) by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Absolutely the law, the Ten Commandments cannot justify or forgive anybody. As Paul says, they show us our condemnation and identify our sins. They have no mercy, it is not their job. They are to convict us of sin and drive us to Christ for justification, forgiveness, reconciliation with God for offending Him.)

2:17 But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners (in sin again), is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.

2:18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

2:19 For I through the law am dead to the law (crucified with Christ), that I might live unto God.

2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (as Lord and Master and He will not lead me into sin. If I willfully sin, then I decide not to follow Him and become a transgressor again.): and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God (trusting Him and allowing Him to live His life in and through me and not choosing to sin.), who loved me, and gave himself for me.

2:21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (You see, I was't forgiven by the law, and I wasn't crucified with the Law, and the law doesn't write itself in my heart, Jesus does all this by faith. Its tough to make a case for known sin if Jesus, the living law is dwelling within my heart as Lord and Master by faith)

First of all, it is interesting how you keep inserting YOUR understanding into the Scriptures you quote. You don't quote the pure Scriptures, you pencil in YOUR meaning to verses and then proceed as if your subjective, inserted interpretation is equivalent to the Scripture itself.

It is clear that you don't even know what Justification means. Justification is not "reconciled to God for past sins." First of all, Justification and reconciliation are two completely different terms, and cannot be used interchangibly. Reconcilation occurred one time, and it occured on the cross. The Bible says in 2Cor. 5, that "God was in Christ reconiciling the world unto Himself." Reconciliation means to make peace. God made peace with Himself on man's behalf. It is like being convicted of murder, and judge sentences himself to death.

Justification (diakanoo) from the Greek is a legal term. It means,"to be declared right." It has nothing to do with reconciliation. Justification is declared righteousness. It is not infused righteousness. We are not made righteous at this point. Paul tells us in Romans 4 that righteousness by is imputed to us the same way it was imputed to Abraham, by faith. Imputed means "Credited to our account." We will one day realize the fullness of being the righteousness of God in Christ, but for now, it is simply declared and credited to us. It is a one time declaration.

Furthermore, it is not "time-based." Justification has nothing to do with "past sins." Justification is not about "SINS." Justification is about "SIN." Justification deals with what you are, not what you have done. It is the blood of Jesus that deals with the sins we have committed. Justification deals with the sin in which we were enslaved. Justification is the declaration that because of your profession of faith in Jesus Christ you are now set in rightstanding with God.

If Justification spoke to the things we do, we would never be justified. If God's plan of salvation were based upon our merits or deeds, it would be the biggest failure in human history. Salvation is, from beginning to end a work of God, a work of grace, a finished work upon the cross.

[apothanein kerdos]

So, if my works affect my salvation...what seperates Christianity from any other religion?

[a7chris]

Galatians 5vs4 warns against justification by law as been a sign of falling away. Ephesians 2vs8 gives us more light concerning our freedom. BY GRACE are ye saved thru faith. And that, NOT of URSELF.