CONFUSED BELIEVERS



If you read the Bible, you will find that the Bible is full of interesting stories about rewards, rewards, and more rewards. If we do this we will get rewarded; if we do that we will get rewarded; if we don’t do this we will be punished, but if we do that we will get rewarded, and so on. Reward and punishment for something that we do or do not do are always there.

Since the Apostle Paul came, however, everything has changed. We don’t have to do anything anymore to get a reward. Work is not required, because if we work we will “boast” about what we have achieved. That’s what I understood from reading his words. “Grace” replaces “work” according to Paul. Our salvation, according to Paul, is based on “grace” and not work. But according to what I had read, starting from Lucifer, Adam and Eve, Abraham, and all of their descendants had to work and do what God expects them to do or they will lose their eternal life, like Adam and Eve who lost their eternal life or lose their temporary life like those who died during the big flood during Noah’s time.

Jesus told a lawyer that he has to work if he wants to get eternal life. He will not receive grace from God before he does his work.

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What is your reading [of it]?" So he answered and said, "`You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and `your neighbor as yourself.'" And Jesus said to him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live." And He said to him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live." Luke 10:25-28.

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked [Him a question], testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which [is] the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "`You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' "This is [the] first and great commandment. "And [the] second [is] like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:34-40.

Jesus, our Commander in Chief furthermore said, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). We must work and be faithful to the end before we can receive God’s grace or salvation.


I credit the Apostle Paul for trying to change God’s reward system from reward based on work, the standard of salvation since God created Adam and Eve, to a reward system that is based on no work (“grace”). I don’t know where He got his idea from. Certainly not from Jesus, and not from God the Father. It is a jaw-dropping and incomprehensible idea. Was Paul not aware of what Jesus had said to the lawyer in Luke 10:25-28 and in Matthew 22:34-40? Or, was he just trying to test his theory? In 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Paul predicted, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, [because] they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn [their] ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” Was this the theory that he wanted to test? If the reason why he wrote 2 Timothy 4:3-4 was to test his theory that he will get millions or billions of followers, I have to say that he succeeded well. According to my research on the Internet, I have found there are more than 45,000 Christian denominations or groups globally. Each of them interprets Paul’s teachings differently. What do they have in common? One thing that they have in common, I believe, is confusion about what Paul wrote in the Bible. They are all confused about what Paul said! Is that God's plan to confuse His sheep?



Comments

Popular Posts

LEGAL OFFER FROM JESUS

PASTOR-ATTORNEY

CONFUSED?

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

JUDAISM vs. CHRISTIANITY

KNOW YOUR HACKERS

SABBATH

ALL ABOUT THE HEART

THE TRIAD OF SALVATION