While claiming to be "Christians", Conservatives give lip service to Jesus, and then quietly replace Jesus' teaching about Faith expressed in one's works" with Paul's teaching about Faith rather than works: |
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" The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. |
For Jesus, Faith or Belief in Him, wasn't an end in itself, it was the means whereby people came to trust the message of salvation that he had to offer. |
" The next day (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" |
" Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." . . . 9 Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. |
As the preceding texts show, faith was important to Jesus, but not in isolation from works! On the one hand, those whose deeds are good recognize Jesus and "come to the light (i.e. believe in him), so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." And on the other, those who have faith in Jesus, do what he teaches them to do. |
"( John the Baptist said of Jesus : ) He must increase, but I must decrease." (Paul did very much the opposite). The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God's wrath. "The Father, who without pariality judges according to each one's work." |
Some people claim the problem isn't so much Paul's teaching as the fairly recent Lutheran and evangelical interpretation of that teaching. But who was James arguing with, if not Paul, when he wrote his very forceful and clear repudiation of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, without works on man's part? "You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what christ wants you to. So watch what you do and what you think; for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy. But if you have been merciful, then God's mercy toward you will win out over his judgment against you. Dear brothers, what's the use of saying that you have faith and are christians if you aren't proving it by helping others? will that kind of faith save anyone?
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One of the most famous of Paul's admirers - I'm tempted to say "worshippers" - was the great reformer, Martin Luther, whose impact on Protestantism is incalculable. But Martin Luther made it clear that he would have preferred aNew Testament without the Epistle of James and that the only Gospel that he considered important was John's. In Wittenberg, 1522 and in Laws, James p.1 he wrote: "In sum, St. John's Gospel and his first epistle, (all of) St. Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians and Ephesians, and St. Peter's first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine. . .
In comparison with these the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical. And Luther concludes: Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here in this world we have to sin. This life is not a dwelling place of righteousness. But no sin will separate us from the lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day." (which Lutheran and Catholic admirers of Paul actually did in the German concentration camps) We now know that the author of the Epistle of James was probably the brother of Jesus, who headed the church of Jerusalem and published his epistle about 17 years after Jesus' death. On the other hand, we don't know who the author of the Gospel of John was, but that this was one of the last books of the bible to be written, some 60 years after Jesus died. When Martin Luther feared losing the support of the big political players of his time for his brand new church, the reformer turned his back on the peasants, and with his inflammatory address to the German nobility unleashed wholesale carnage against the peasantry: "choke, stab and kill, and if you die, take comfort, you do the work of God." And when in 1541 he supervised in person the drowning of a five year old "devils child" in the Zwickauer Mulde, a river in Saxony, Luther may really have thought of it as a high point in his lifelong wrestling match with the devil. |
John the Baptist's message was to repent of past sins, to be cleansed through baptism, and to perform good works instead of evil ones in the future:
In reply he said to them, "whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. his winnowing fork is in his hand, (to separate those destined for reward from those destined for punishment) to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people." (also recorded in Matthew 3: 9-12 & Mark) |
John's Book of Revelation puts these words in the mouth of the Judge of mankind :
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According to the Book of Revelation there can be no doubt that God judges people on the basis of their works:
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The idea of salvation by faith alone, with grace on god's part replacing works on man's part, may appear to make Jesus more deserving of praise, love, admiration and appreciation. But Jesus Christ didn't teach it; and for good reason. (It was either Martin Luther or John Calvin who deliberately "improved" Paul's words "the just shall live by faith" by adding the word "alone." ) This theory makes Christ out to be like the pilot of the air plane to heaven. All you have to do is "believe", i.e. trust him, and climb aboard, and he will do the rest. You might as well go to sleep and "leave the flying to Jesus"; because you are saved the minute you "believe", and you are guaranteed a seat not just for the trip but for an eternity in heaven as well. According to this theory, Jesus has paid for your ticket with his own blood. Although Jesus is the only man who has ever lived a blameless life, God has allowed this one sinless person to suffer the punishment for everybody else's sins. Those who have held with Pauls view that it is faith and not works that lead to salvation have found it necessary to denigrate the value of Jesus teaching. They claim that since Jesus teachings about moral action are impossible for anyone (other than Jesus) to comply with perfectly, that His teachings are nothing more than an example meant to show us how imperfect we all are and how salvation for such imperfect beings is impossible except through the saving grace of faith. "Fellowship with God is not achieved through ethical performance. From an ethical standpoint, it is a derogation of the idea of the good to seek its realization by imitating Jesus. The teaching about the ideal.... only serves to make plain the reprehensibility of the human condition... The meaning of the moral demand is not that it gives us the power for the good but rather that it shows us our impotence for the good." Not even a disastrous civil war was able to move the hard hearts of so-called "Bible belt Christians" to stop persecuting their former slaves. They simply invented new ways to oppress their former victims, through the enthusiastic public practices of segregation and the only slightly less public practices of the lynch-mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, where all kinds of "respectable" gentlemen and even "clergy" hid beneath white sheets to kill, maim and terrify black people. There's some evidence that Paul himself wouldn't agree with the view that seems to be expressed in many excerpts of Paul that play down the importance of "works" and which are constantly quoted by Fundamentalists. Here's is what he wrote, for example in "Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one's deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. "All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil." There are a lot more problems with Paul's teaching than just the matter of faith vs. works. While Jesus of Nazareth preached and modelled by his behavior love, understanding, respect for all kinds of people, much - though not all - of Paul's teaching is very different, as you can read in his own words at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PaulvsAll.html. |
According to Paul, the world has |
*1 Scholarly Reflections on Paul vs. Jesus :
In Albert Schweitzer's view,
Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)
According to Will Durant (Historian of Philosophy),
Or as Thomas Jefferson himself put it,
According to the brilliant astronomer Carl Sagan,
Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar) In order to make room for his own unique teaching, in which GRACE trumps everything, Paul claims that "the Jews" were all wrong for making to big a deal of "the law". Now I have problems with this tactic of Paul's on several grounds. Keep in mind that although Paul's epistles appear in our bible AFTER the Gospels, they were written BEFORE the Gospels. So 1) Did these "Jews" with whom Paul disagree include Jesus? 2) Jesus never criticized Judaism as a whole, but only a few "right-wing" fundamentalist types who abused the Judaic faith (which he made it clear was His faith). 3) Jesus criticized these abuses of the faith for promoting their own "traditions" instead of "the law". ( R. D.) |
Here's an interesting take on the famous verse:
{ John 3:16 }
[author unknown] |
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