The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart. 1 Timothy 1:5
Is it just me, or have we all been duped?
Eight years ago, I stumbled onto something that made me question my entire so-called “Protestant heritage”. I am not quite ready to venture into that story here (I have been re-reading and re-highlighting my Bible since then, like an infant who has discovered a new toy, and I’m still stuck in the novelty of it all), but one thing I can share is the experience of being a Christian outside the warm fuzziness of a global identity with its own superheroes and folktales of historical conquests. These conquests, so the stories go, have kept the household of God firmly from sliding into the hellish cauldron of heresy that is the unfortunate and inevitable fate of those who dare set foot outside the community walls – walls carefully and lovingly constructed by the family fathers and ideological forebears whose insights are the lights of the city behind them.
It’s a rather desolate (albeit breathtaking) landscape out here, I must admit, and the journey is solitary at times. Most pilgrims who have walked these roads have disappeared through other doors. Doors with their own walls. Walls enclosing their own communities. Communities circulating their own folktales. Folktales with their own heroes. Heroes carrying their own lights.
But there are pleasant surprises here. Whilst the paths of this landscape are narrow, they are void of the abominable heresies warned against behind those walls. The pitfalls are plentiful, that is true, but you will steer clear of them as long as you remain on the trails.
Also, the pilgrims one encounters here are remarkably easy to communicate with, as if the exquisite nature of this place has brought them to a blissful state of rest that has banished all need for religious propaganda or its insignia. Conversations are not umpired by ecclesiastical allegiances, credal checkboxes or big-name dropping.
All of this has made me think of something: What if we have misunderstood sin?
Yes, we have heard ad nauseam that sin is to “miss the mark”. But which mark? What if we, in our neurotic efforts to hit the mark and escape the fires of hell, have been aiming at the wrong target?
What if, and this is going to sound crazy, we find ourselves one day arriving at another door – one leading to the wedding feast of the Lamb – with a smile of expectancy on our faces and a lifetime of testimonies of hitting the bullseye again and again and again, only to hear a single sentence uttered by the guardian of that door:
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Huh? What the flowers? What’s love got to do with it?”
“Everything.”
“I’m sorry. I am justified by grace through faith.”
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Wait, this is annoying. I am saved by grace. I am a Protestant!”
“A what?”
“A Protestant! I protest against a works-based gospel!”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because works cannot save you. Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9: ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast!'”
“Have you read verse 10?”
“Verse 10?”
“Yes. ‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.'”
“Oh.”
“If you wanted to spend your life protesting, you should have protested against a works-free gospel, not a works-based gospel. Have you not read James?”
“I am a follower of Luther, and Luther did not like James. He called it a straw letter, because it suggests that we have to do works to be saved.”
“Luther was wrong. He missed the meaning of James’ letter.”
“Which is?”
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Oh no, here we go again. Are we speaking about the same James, the one who sounds like a legalist?”
“A what?”
“A legalist.”
“What is that?”
“One who keeps the law to get saved.”
“The James I speak about did not do that. He got saved to keep the law.”
“Ah. You see! He’s a legalist. Whether he kept the law to get saved or got saved to keep the law, he was still under the law. In any case, what has keeping the law got to do with loving adequately?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. James does not abolish the law. He speaks about the law in its fulfilled state. That is why he calls it the perfect law, the law of liberty, and the royal law, namely to love your neighbour as yourself. Breaking this law means your religion is worthless and your faith is no different from the faith of demons. The works James refers to are works of love.”
“Uhm, can’t we rather speak about Paul and his message of grace?”
“We can. Where would you like to start?”
“Romans, please.”
“Do you think Romans differ from James?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Yet Romans’ main point is exactly the same as James’.”
“No!”
“Yes. You have not loved adequately.”
“Where does it say that?”
“All over, but especially in Chapter 13. The entire law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” which means the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans’ charge that we are all lawbreakers is just another way of saying we have not loved adequately. To be freed from sin in Romans is to be freed from the inability to love. To not love is to remain in sin.”
“Let’s rather go to Corinthians.”
“Sure. That’s where we read that even if I have all faith and have not love, I am nothing. Correct?”
“Let’s skip Corinthians and go to Galatians.”
“Ah, the calling to freedom in order to serve one another through love and so fulfill the whole law as expressed through a single word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
“Uhm… Ephesians?”
“The letter that links Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith with being rooted and grounded in love?”
“Let’s forget about James and Paul and rather go to Jesus. He was all about grace and acceptance, wasn’t he?”
“The gospels? Would you like to start with Matthew, where we read that the Law and the Prophets can be summarised in the command to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and that those who did not do this will be called lawless and told to depart from Christ even if they prophesied and drove out demons and did many mighty works in his name? They did not love adequately, you see. Or should we start with the separation of the sheep and the goats on the Day of Judgment, where we see that the sheep are distinguished from the goats by their care for the hungry, the naked, the sick and those in prison? The goats… they did not love adequately. What about Jesus saying that all the Law and the Prophets hang on the two commandments to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbour as yourself? Or perhaps you want to go to Mark, where we read that to love one’s neighbour as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices? Or Luke, who spoke about a Samaritan who understood the aim of the law better than a priest and Levite combined. He loved adequately, they did not. Or John, where Jesus introduced a new commandment to his disciples, namely to love one another as he has loved them. Maybe Acts, where Jesus is quoted as having said it is more blessed to give than to receive?”
“Stop, please. I thought people get saved by grace.”
“They do, but grace that does not enter your heart and flow from it as love is grace that cannot save. You shall know true grace by its fruit, and its fruit is works of love. If grace is powerless to transform you, it is powerless to save you from death. Inadequate love simply means never having been saved to begin with.
“Why did no one tell me this?”
“Where you come from, they spoke so much about the forgiveness of sins that they had no time left to speak about what sin really is. They hit the mark, but the target… I’m sorry. It was the wrong one.”
Justice of God 
❤️
Liberating and refreshing – this is good news
Wow! That was fantastic! Thank you! What an awesome realigning reminder!
I have recently started thinking of things in this manner:
So this post fits well with that:
Wow. It sounds like you read through the Romans Visual Commentary on the Romansblog site. (pp.82-84, 90-97 and 258, if you want to have a look)
I loved those sections! Thanks for sharing. I downloaded the whole thing and hope to read through it soon.
The above was the revelation that the Holy Spirit gave me a few years ago as the culmination of me diving into what sexuality/gender was designed for. Note sure if it will paste here, but the slides from Week 2 of a class I put together last year take a deeper look into the design: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6jL9DWeVUh2vv5sqvdS6L-IEbynfdgf9J42rdj7QqI
After pondering this a bit more, I think we should be careful to not redefine requirements for salvation. I agree that the highest calling for us is to love like Jesus did, and that is what the outpouring of the rest of our life walking with Him should look like [and will look like by the power of the Holy Spirit in us], but to suggest that there will be a ‘love’ measuring stick at the doors of heaven for entrance seems to negate many ways salvation is depicted:
Ephesians 2:10 “created in Christ Jesus to do good works” is showing the new nature into which we are born again in Jesus, not the method by which it happens. It is not saying works are bad, just that they are the effect, rather than the cause of salvation – which is grace through faith.
1 Corinthians 3:11-15 indicates that our faith in Christ is the foundation, and that we lay works upon that (some lasting, some not), and that only the good works will survive on the Day of judgment, but that the person will be saved either way based on their foundation.
So ‘loving enough’ would seem to be a good measuring stick for us to grow/test the fullness of our faith, but should not replace the foundation itself, which is repentance unto faith in Christ.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
Thanks for the question, Phil. I understand your concern. The aim is not to question whether we are saved by grace through faith. This is indisputable. The aim is to ask, “What are we saved to?” This is also the point of the discussion over at Wayne’s podcast. Are we saved towards righteousness as a type of forensic “right standing” before God that brings about amnesty and acquittal, coupled with a self-focused striving towards piety and moral rectitude, or are we saved towards relational justice? The former does not necessarily include the latter, but the latter will always include the former.
This was the point of the prophets of Israel who condemned the bringing of sacrifices for the sake of having sins absolved whilst the worshipers were oblivious to the plight of the orphan, widow, alien and poverty-stricken. In Isaiah’s words, “Woe to those who acquit the wicked for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice.”
The New Testament book that best expresses this principle is James, which is why those who follow a Lutheran line, of righteousness as pardon and exoneration by faith, struggle with James (Luther called it a strawy epistle). James’ argument is that faith that does not lead to works of love cannot possibly be saving faith. As I wrote elsewhere, “James revisits the classical justice themes of the Old Testament, but from the vantage point of the royal law of love: The treatment of the widow and orphan (1:27), showing partiality to the poor (2:1–5), oppression by the rich (2:6–7), clothing and feeding the poor (2:15), selfish ambition (3:14), judging one’s brother and speaking evil of him (4:11), boasting about trading and profit (4:13–16), storing up riches whilst failing to pay workers their rightful wages (5:1–6), and so on. James’ entire letter is a focus on justice, and the implication is that the one who has received mercy (justification, if you wish) can now give it to others. Justness is the lived reality of God’s love and mercy that had been imparted to the believer to pass along to others. It is a relational and covenantal category in Hebrew thought, not a clinical legal statement.”
This was also the point of John the Baptist’s rebuke of people who happily lined up to be baptised whilst confessing that they had repented: “Hypocrites, who warned you to flee of the wrath to come?” Repentance motivated by the fear of punishment (Turn or burn) is selfish hypocrisy, according to this Baptist 🙂 (I remember my years as a Baptist pastor, when I had to submit annual statistics on conversions and baptisms in my congregation, all of which were printed and circulated at the national convention).
This obviously leaves a question. If I’m not repenting to receive a get-out-of-hell-free card, then what on earth is the reason for repentance (and, by implication, of the atonement)? John answers, ” Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise…” Thus, you are not fleeing God’s wrath but your own narcissism, and you are not turning towards a forensic status but a lifestyle of justness.
The fictional character in the post above is nothing but a 21st century version of one who repented selfishly to escape judgment, who sees the blood of Christ as a mere cover-up rather than a life-exchange, and who believes in God at an intellectual level no different to the faith of demons. Thus, he was never truly saved to begin with. He is the one confessing “Lord, Lord”, without doing what his Lord is saying.
As you know, there are many verses that state that we will be judged by our works. This does not mean that works can save us, but that true salvation is recognized by the works that it produces. All we are doing here is to ensure that we are talking about the right type of works.
Thanks, Phil, for an enlightening and important question. I hope this makes sense!
Fantastic – glad we are tracking on the same page, thank you, Tobie, for taking the time to clarify so well! It is exciting to know that we are not just ‘saved from’ but we are ‘saved unto’ and that one (thankfully) cannot separate the transformed life from the ‘saving’. It is far more compelling to share with people about the love of God and how He designed you to live out the fullness of that love than to tell them there is some moral code they weren’t fully aware of the severity of and that they’ve broken that code and God has a solution to set them legally right again.
Absolutely. Well said!
Tobie, thank you for sharing your discoveries with Wayne on the God Journey. Ever since I heard your discussions on the word “righteousness” my understanding of scripture has taken on new meaning. I have been reading through scripture “chronologically” recently and just got to the point of reading the Gospels. There is so much there that I seemed to miss with my previous understanding of scripture that is now an encouragement in furthering my relationship with Jesus Christ and his creation. I grew up in a “Christian” family, was a member of Church congregations for about 54 years of my life, was an ordained pastor and chaplain for 3 dozen years, and I always felt like something was missing from the Gospel I received and proclaimed. It seems to me that this is what I perceived was missing, and I rejoice in hearing and beginning to live out what has been missing for decades in my faith and relationships with God and God’s creation. Doug
Thank you for your comment, Doug. It is a blessing to read this. No words can ever described how the Bible opened up for me when I began to understand the true meaning of the word we have translated as righteousness. The gospel of love is not a New Testament invention, as many think, but has been there since the beginning, captured in the justness of love as revealed by the law and prophets, as a preamble to the ultimate fulfilment in Christ.