I sometimes ask myself why I even bother to engage in these exchanges concerning Peter and Paul and their messages and Israel and Jews and the body of Christ and the church and the dispensation of grace vs the makeover which turns it to the age of grace. And why do I do it here particularly in this forum? I wrote a book about 10 years ago which I never published, wishing to subject it to the most rigorous testing and proving. And so I have done, now for 10 years. I did not know that such a phenomenon as the Right Division movement even existed. At that time, I titled the book Who told you so? and its subtitle was Drawing Distinctions. It was based in Pauls admonition to Timothy, and Paul who trained as a teacher in the classical method under Gameliel, used a phrase highly related to the word for teacher in the Hebrew language, for a good teacher utilized comparison and contrast in his teaching. A few years ago I discovered the Right Division crowd, and while I found their use of Pauls words to be a distortion which largely ignored the context, nonetheless I was willing to overlook it, since it was my first interaction with people who seemed to know the difference between one thing and another. I was excited, for I reasoned that people who could tell the difference between the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel spread largely by Paul would be capable also of telling the difference between national Israels duty as Gods kingdom of priests, and a Jews individual responsibility before God. I also assumed that they would be able to tell the difference between many, many other details. My excitement was short lived. I found that possibly 50 to 75 percent of the distinctions I felt were critical went not only unrecognized, but in fact, were fought against furiously. And at times, vindictively. What really shocked me however, was the insistent and dogmatic claim that Israelites previously, and in the future, would be justified by faith PLUS WORKS. Not once in Scripture does it say that anyone was justified by faith plus works. Not once. Not a single time. No where! I began to point out that Paul utilized two distinct and separate terms, the first being justification in its various forms, and the second being salvation, as well as its variations. Some were curious and begin to look into something which could be key in the formation of doctrinal understanding, but many simply declared they covered slightly different aspects of the same idea, and as I attempted to show the separate usages, I came under attack by some. If you meet a man who prides himself on his physical strength, and his opinion of you is that you are skinny and under-developed, it is a bitter pill to swallow indeed when you defeat him in an arm-wrestling match. Many of the people we engage in Christendom are indeed ignorant to a degree which is appalling. It would be easy, I suppose, for a person who is aware of 50 or 60 biblical distinctions to conclude that he has a leg up on 99 percent of Christianitys doctrine, and perhaps he does, but his strength may in fact end up being his great weakness, for pride cometh before the fall, and we do not know as we ought to know. Would it not be a great shame for a group of believers to be so self-satisfied with their art of drawing distinctions, that they became unteachable by anyone seeming to come from an angle of questioning the RD system? I have seen a judgmental, hypocritical woman so self righteous in her abuse of another that when rebuked for her behavior, rather than denying the evil she was doing, she laid claim to it even more boldly, proudly declaring that she had done it, and this sort of bluster is something the human being may use to defend unacceptable thinking. For those who have a teachable heart, I beg you to learn the difference between national Israels duty, under the law, by which Israel will never be righteous, and the individual duty of the Israelite by which he will never be righteous. I appeal to those who speak of making distinctions or rightly dividing, as is commonly said, to learn the difference between justification and salvation. There is something terribly upsetting to my soul when I hear the claim that in this time men are justified by faith alone, true as that may be, but that Israelites in the past, and in the future, must be justified by FAITH PLUS WORKS. Do not quote to me the favorite verses which nearly everyone defaults to in order to prove that Israel must be justified by faith plus works. Rather, go and read these verses used to create the defensive bulwark of RD thinking, and find ONE, just ONE instance where a man is justified by faith PLUS WORKS. When you find it, this Scriptural statement that someone was justified by faithAND WORKS, or faith PLUS WORKS, or works PLUS FAITH, then paste the reference below in the comments and I will consider it to be a resolution and proof to what I say is a FALSE claim.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 17:33:14 +0000
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