(27-01-2025, 07:33 AM)Ali Imran Wrote: Hey man. Good morning.
Even if we do good deeds 24/7, it does not merit salvation. Our salvation is purely from the mercy of God. I do good in life because I want God to like me.
The weighing of good and bad deeds is all about justice. Even if God doesn't like you, God will still be fair to you. God is most-just. Wallahu 'alam.
As for the crucifixion, I would like you to know that in the early days immediately after Jesus's ascension, many of his followers strongly denied he was crucified. How do we know that? By the writings of the early church fathers who criticized the Christians who didn't believe the Messiah was killed on the cross. Those early Christians held on to the words of Jesus saying that he is the Messiah and believed the Messiah cannot be killed.
If you believe Jesus was killed on the cross, that also means you're denying he is the Messiah because you're saying that he died before he was anointed ergo he didn't get to be the Messiah. Please ponder on that.
At the risk of being repetitive, I must remind you that our noblest efforts at self-reformation fall short of what God's holiness demands. "No flesh shall be justified by the works of the law" (Rom 3:20). The Bible says there's a sense in which man cannot do what he's required to do. Man has a mind and a will, but in order to exercise that mind and will to obedience, he'd have to have some kind of inner disposition or inclination toward God.
Simply speaking, He'd need to have a "desire" to please God. So, when the NT says man can't keep the law of God, it isn't because he lacks a will or a mind and can't understand what God requires, but rather because man doesn't have a proper disposition toward God. Man, in his fallenness, is in a state of enmity and estrangement from God.
The scriptures tell us that the desires of man's heart are wicked continually and acknowledges that man has a will, but that will is under the power of sin and in bondage to sin. If by nature I'm in bondage to sin and my will is morally unable to obey God, how can I still be held responsible? Keep in mind that the law requires perfection, yet none of us is perfect. How can God require perfection from imperfect creatures? This is why there are no morally perfect societies or even societies where half of the people are perfect.
The number of things one would have to do to keep the law is staggering. None of us can do it successfully. No one keeps the great commandment -
which is loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. What if God consider the breaking of that law as the great transgression? What if we're judged ultimately by the law? For sure we'll all perish.
The crux of the gospel message is that people can't achieve righteousness by keeping a set of rules. God has written off the rules. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Rom 10:4). But Christ isn't the end of the law as the law relates to the Word of God or Israel's culture and history or as a revelation of the wisdom of God. Yet Christ is the end of the law in relation to righteousness.
The secret of the cross is that Jesus removed the law as a requirement for achieving righteousness with God. Thank you, Lord! Our faith is counted to us as righteousness. As long as we believe in the One who gave Jesus to die for our offences and who raised Him from the dead for our justification, we're considered righteous. I feel an inner sigh of relief every time I think about this truth. I thank God that I don't have to keep all sorts of silly rules. Don't get me wrong - there's a place for rules. Every church is entitled to make its own rules by which its members must abide. You have an obligation to observe the rules of your particular church. But we don't achieve righteousness with God by observing any set of rules. Thank God for the cross! If it weren't for the cross, we'd be slaves forever. The cross is our way to freedom. My posts can be repetitious if you keep blabbing on the same old issues.