Paul's Passing Thoughts

Deuteronomy 6:4 – “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

If you will not use the law to love God and others, the law will condemn you. Most professing Christians do not know the difference between being under law and being under love. These are two different realities. Neo-Protestants clamor about their “scandalous gospel” that has a single perspective on the law. The real scandal is that we can, as Christians, put our best effort towards using the law of God to love Him and others with no fear of any condemnation. It’s really us doing the love. Regarding the use of the law to love God and others, the celebrity evangelist Ray Comfort claims in the documentary film, American Gospel, that “we can’t do that.” Indeed, we can’t do it perfectly, but if you are no longer under the law, that’s not the point; if we have been transformed from darkness to light, we fulfill the law through our best efforts at love as Deuteronomy plainly states. Proponents of justification by faith wail and decry such heresy, but this is only because their standard for justification is perfect law-keeping and not the new birth.

    Another proponent of justification by faith in this documentary shows their fatal misunderstanding of what the law is for. If you can use the law of God to love God and others, that’s like using a mirror to see something in your teeth, and then taking the mirror off the wall to pick your teeth. His point? We can’t use the law to make ourselves righteous. But, that is only the point if you are still under the law. Of course, if you are still under the law, faith working through love cannot fulfil the law. The law is not for righteousness; it’s for love. This is not to say that there are no consequences for failing to love, but that has to do with loving correction from our literal Father and has nothing to do with condemnation. Ray Comfort’s statement that no saved person can use the law for love is proof that justification by faith keeps all people under condemnation.

    Hence, our righteousness is only a “legal declaration” and not our state of being according to the false gospel of justification by faith. The only use of the law is for establishing righteousness, but therein, condemnation must also be present. A true born-again Christian shows their righteousness by faith working through love, not perfect law-keeping. And, Jesus didn’t come to keep the law perfectly in order to impute it to our Christian lives through church ritualism; there is no life in that use of the law. If the law can be used to impart life in any way, shape, or form, that makes the law another “seed,” but there is only one seed. That is the cardinal point of Galatians chapter 3.

    Justification by faith is a false gospel. We are righteous because we are reborn from above and have God’s seed in us; that’s what makes us righteous. Perfect law-keeping by anyone does not make us righteous. The false gospel of justification by faith does not transform us from being under the law of sin and death to the law of the Spirit of life. It does not transform us from being enslaved to sin to being enslaved to righteousness.

Presentation date to be announced.