Hopefully, God will bring clarity to some through God clarifying His truth for edification of the hearers.
Justified by Works
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If a clear Scripture doesn't convince someone, there's a limit to what anyone can do. But hopefully you fare better than I ever did. Hopefully God has mercy on the churches.
The Scriptures are NOT clear, though.
The Scriptures are impossible to reconcile with one another.
The problem comes when people try to make sense of them without prayer and they make a mess.
When you pray God may decide to help you understand.
Reading the Bible.
No human being can understand the Bible, it takes God's intervention.
The things the Bible says are irreconcilable. Without prayer it won't make sense.
I suppose I disagree. There are Scriptures that appear to contradict each other or cancel each other out. I just haven't found any examples that actually do, given context. Not that I couldn't be wrong. I just see contradictions as a me problem.
In truth, "righteousness" is one and the same as the revelation of God.
1 John 1
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life. 2And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.
3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write these things so that oura joy may be complete.
If unrighteousness suppresses the truth about God; righteousness, by definition, reveals the truth about God--this is why Paul asks "If by my lie, God's truth [ie, God's speech condemning my sin] abounds to His glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner?"
When those who know God reveal God, that is "righteousness", and its aim is to make people know, fellowship with, God (which is "eternal life" (Jn 17:3)).
Therefore, knowing the glory of God is the true means of righteousness, but none of that means that there are not acts involved, just that they do not reveal self, but God. How could you reveal God, be righteous, without God revealing Himself to you in the first place, by grace?
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This very thread touches on one of the most enigmatic problems in the Bible: how can Ro 3 definitively say that by the works of the Law no flesh can be justified, and, yet, Ro 2 (and really the entire New Testament) say only doers of the Law will be justified?
You, even, were grateful for the clarity that this thread brought to the conundrum you had had.
That's why faith is counted as righteousness--it is a testimony that "God is true" (Jn 3:33), thus it is a revelation of God, unto the glory of God, thus it is righteousness, not an instance of suppressing the truth about God (Ro 1:18).
Faith being counted as "righteousness" is not just an arbitrary decision that has no logic to it.
Im grateful on the clarity on works and righteousness but I think I focused more on that in the initial post.
As for the Romans 2 and 3 problem...my answer? I don't know.
My guess is that Romans 2 is meant to highlight that doing things according to the natural law of conscience is better than hearing the law of Moses and failing to do it.
Romans 3 is highlighing that the righteousness of God through faith is the only chance of being justified if you've already heard the law of Moses...
but Im just guessing. Thats a pretty good example.
I still think there are obvious truth claims from the Bible. But I don't know everything.
I already answered the conundrum.
"Works" corresponds to "a righteousness of my own", but when we walk in faith, that is a revelation of God's righteousness (Ro 1:17), thus it is, categorically, not "works"--when a believer walks in grace and faith, he fulfills the Law, but it is God's righteousness, not his own, thus, when he is justified by being a doer of the Law, the doing of the Law is being done by God in him ("yet not I but the grace with me"), thus it is not flesh being justified by the works of the Law.
Because we were all made to reveal God, the problem with the world is that we are giving false testimony about God.
Satan, first and foremost, was the father of false testimony about God--murder, not the Word of Life.
When we believe Jesus, we are, thereafter, committing to reveal the truth about God to the world. "This is how God is. This is how God treats people--how He treated me. It's how I'm treating you."
IHad to read it twice but I think I got it. If you answered the conundrum, are you saying there are others that can't be reconciled?
I never meant that there are ACTUALLY irreconcilable problems in the Scripture, I'm saying that it makes sense with God's help, but that the code that makes the Bible unintelligible is not breakable by a human--and, yes, there are many others.
I see. I definitely agree. Jesus had to help the disciples with Scripture understanding.
Also. there's Ro 8:1 "no condemnation for those in Christ", yet Ro 14:23 says the believer who sins by doing what he is not fully convinced is correct "is condemned": not all remain "in Christ" (1 Jn 2:28), where there is no condemnation, because remaining in Him is by obeying God's commands (1 Jn 3:23,24) (i. believe in the Name of God's Son, and ii. love one another), so when we sin, either by doubting the Gospel of God's righteousness (like the Galatians, who were "deserting God" (Gal 1:6), and "cut off from Christ" (Gal 5:4)), or by doing what we are not convinced by God's love is correct, we are not remaining in Christ where there is no condemnation.
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