dadof10
Member
Blessed new year, all.
To start out the new year, I would like to make a few statements concerning the word "works", the OT connotation and how it's used by Paul in relation to Faith.
1) Traditional Judaism teaches that God gave man the Law and rewards him according to how well he upholds this Law.
2) The Jews of Jesus' time believed if a person did what God told him to do, God basically OWED the person his reward (i.e. justification).
3) This is not the way it was supposed to be from the beginning. The OT prophets were continually chastising the Jewish leadership for promoting the false doctrine that simply performing these "works" was sufficient, without regard to the person's interior disposition.
4) This is what Jesus, and later Paul, was reacting to.
5) The word "works" in Paul's letters primarily, but not always, has the specific meaning "works of the Law".
6) If this were not the case, passages like James 2:24, "You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone" would contradict Eph. 2:8-9, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithâ€â€and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast."
7) Protestants give too broad of a meaning to the word "works". They almost always stretch it to mean everything done in faith, except the actual accepting of Jesus as Lord and Savior.
God Bless, Mark
To start out the new year, I would like to make a few statements concerning the word "works", the OT connotation and how it's used by Paul in relation to Faith.
1) Traditional Judaism teaches that God gave man the Law and rewards him according to how well he upholds this Law.
2) The Jews of Jesus' time believed if a person did what God told him to do, God basically OWED the person his reward (i.e. justification).
3) This is not the way it was supposed to be from the beginning. The OT prophets were continually chastising the Jewish leadership for promoting the false doctrine that simply performing these "works" was sufficient, without regard to the person's interior disposition.
4) This is what Jesus, and later Paul, was reacting to.
5) The word "works" in Paul's letters primarily, but not always, has the specific meaning "works of the Law".
6) If this were not the case, passages like James 2:24, "You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone" would contradict Eph. 2:8-9, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithâ€â€and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast."
7) Protestants give too broad of a meaning to the word "works". They almost always stretch it to mean everything done in faith, except the actual accepting of Jesus as Lord and Savior.
God Bless, Mark