Paul's Passing Thoughts

Faith works; why? Because it’s alive…

Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

And the work of faith is love…

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

The dominate religion of our day, though it appears in many different forms and versions, is antinomianism. This is a religion that has an aversion to law which guides love…

If you love me, keep my commandments.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Because of the religion of antinomianism, love and the heart grows cold…

And because lawlessness [anomia] will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.

Protestantism is predicated on womb to the tomb substitution. Christ is not only a substitution for the penalty of sin, but must also be a substitution for our works. In other words, His loving works (plural) must be continually imputed to us.

Of course, this is illogical when set against the fact that our works will be evaluated…

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of the Messiah, so that each of us may receive what he deserves for what he has done in his body, whether good or worthless.

For God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers, as you still do.

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Every religion on earth can lay claim to some sort of good works, but when faith is separated from good works like a body is separated from the spirit, it is impossible for that religion to be earmarked by love. It is a dead body that looks good for a dead body—a body prepared for an open casket viewing.

It is a body of faithless, loveless, dead works. That’s Protestantism despite how well the dead body is adorned with spiritual sounding orthodoxy and dead works.

paul