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Soyeong said:

A righteous person is someone who does what is right in the same way that a Firefighter is someone who fights fires. You don't become righteous by doing what is right, but rather doing what is right is what righteous people are called to do. In Ephesians 2:8-10, Paul could have equivalently said that we are declared righteous by grace through faith, not by practicing righteousness, but that we are new creations in Christ for the purpose of practicing righteousness.

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1 John 3:10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

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God has given instructions for what it means to practice righteousness in His law, but the law did not instruct everything that is righteous, nor does it prohibit everything that is sinful for that matter. The law is spiritual and its instructions have spiritual principles behind them, so the righteous are those who are called to at least obey what God's law requires, if not those who go above and beyond that and obey the spiritual principles behind it by faith and the leading of the Spirit. If we abide in Christ, then we will bear much fruit in accordance with the good works that God has instructed in the law. And if we have the mind and character of Christ, then we will follow his perfect example and obey the law as he did.

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Jesus summarized the law as being about how to love God and how to love your neighbor. The law commands us to love and the essence of the law is love, so your statement is contradictory.

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Soyeong said:

The law gives us knowledge of what sin is and sin is transgression of the law, so if we are not to sin, then we need to obey what the law instructs about it. In contrast with not transgressing the law, Paul said we are to become obedient slaves to it (Romans 6:15-19), so the issue in Galatians 5 is not about whether or not we are slaves, but about what or who we are slaves to. Are we slaves to righteousness or are we slaves to legalism? The Galatians were already justified, but they had begun to listen to people who were telling them that they needed to keep the law in order to become justified, thus they perverted the holy, righteous, and good law into legalism and became slaves to someone other than God.

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muddleglum said:

Here again, you forget character. Look a little later and see what the fruit of the Spirit is. Doesn't it relate to our character? Those who are of the "new creation" have the character of God. They can be perfect just as the Father in heaven is perfect because they are free to love. Has your character been changed? Mine has and it continues to change as I continue to place my trust in Christ's provisions.

We have been given a righteous character IN Christ (and Christ in us) and from that comes good deeds.

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bugkiller said:

Eph 2:8-10 says no such thing. It says good works not practicing anything.This has nothing to do with the law. The righteous (Christians) aren't called to practice the OC law as it has no jurisdiction being replaced with a NC.

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Soyeong said:

Sorry, I don't see our definition of "right". I'll define "doing right" as acting in obedience to God by faith and the leading of the Spirit.



No, you're going backwards. Saying someone who is X does Y doesn't mean someone who does Y is X.



How so?



When we are declared righteous by God by grace through faith we are called to have a righteous conduct. Or to be someone whose character is expressed as righteous conduct if you'd prefer.



Doing good works is the same as practicing righteousness, so they are interchangeable.



By obeying God's instructions in the law by faith and the leading of the Spirit. The law instructs how to practice righteousness, so obedient children of God should act in accordance with it.

1 Peter 1:13-16 Therefore, preparing your minds for action,[a] and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Similarly, we are told to have a holy conduct, so if we want to know what it means to have a holy conduct, then we should look at the instructions for that in the law, starting with the context of where verse 16 is quoting from. Again, I'm not saying that we become holy by having a holy conduct, but that having a holy conduct is how those who are called holy act or is an expression of having a holy character.



We are required to obey to law, which is included in go above and beyond what the law requires. We could not obey the law because of our flesh, but the Spirit working through us is what causes us to meet its requirement of obedience:

Romans 8:3-4 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.



Another way of saying what I said.



Someone's character is made known by how they act. Jesus made his character known by acting in obedience to the law. If we are being transformed into having the character of Christ through sanctification, then we are being transformed into someone whose character is also expressed by obedience to the law.



You shouldn't focus just on Ephesians 2:8-9 and ignore verse 10. Doing good works is an important part of the Christian walk and it is what we were created in Christ to do. We do not do good works in order to become justified, but rather those who are justified are called to do good works. In other words, doing good works is an expression of the character of Christ. The fact that Jesus was sinless is a core Christian doctrine, which means he always obeyed the law.



Agreed. The good deeds that come from having a righteous character are in accordance with what God instructed in the law.

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Open Heart said:

Your difficulty is that you don't understand that all righteousness has to do with the keeping of some law, either the 613 for Jews, or the universal Law for Gentiles. While the universal laws are spelled out in detail in the NT, since the epistles are written for Gentile Christians, they do exist in spots in the Torah as well. Cain was punished for murder, thus we know that murder was forbidden, etc.

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muddleglum said:

Has your character been changed? Mine has and it continues to change as I continue to place my trust in Christ's provisions.

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bugkiller said:

You left out obedience to the law.

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Soyeong said:

Legalism refers to the manner in which the law is obeyed. The law was never intended to be kept legalistically, but was always intended to be kept by faith in a way that built a relationship between God and His people. When people don't keep the law out of faith and love for God, but because they legalistically expect justification in return, then they are perverting the law.



Going through cycles of ritual purity and impurity was a normal part of the Jewish life. For instance, if a group were eating a meal and someone choked on some food a died, everyone in the room would become ritually unclean through no fault of their own. This was not a sin, it just meant that they had purify themselves before they could do certain thing in regard to Temple worship. If you've even been to a funeral with a dead body, then you are currently unclean. If Jesus had entered the Temple after being touched by the woman and before purifying himself, then he would have sinned.



Sometimes one law comes into conflict with another and it needs to be decided which one has priority. For instance, God commanded not to work on the Sabbath, but He also commanded that a male baby should be circumcised on the 8th day, so what if that falls on a Sabbath? They ruled that circumcision on the 8th day had priority and that the command to keep the Sabbath was not intended to prevent that.

There were two major rabbinic schools at the time of Jesus: Hillel and Shammai. Hillel argued it was permitted to heal on the Sabbath while Shammai ruled that it wasn't, so the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus were likely from the school of Shammai. Jesus sided with Hillel that the command to rest on the Sabbath was not intended to prohibit the good of healing someone. So while Jesus certainly violated man-made rules for how they thought the Sabbath should be kept, he never violated the Sabbath itself.

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bugkiller said:

Your problem is not understanding salvation is a free gift period. Romans 6:23 and Eph 2:8-10.

bugkiller

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Soyeong said:

Legalism refers to the manner in which the law is obeyed.

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muddleglum said:

I see nothing sinful about keeping Yom Kippur, but to say we all must observe a day about it? No.

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Open Heart said:

Have you come around?

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bugkiller said:

I think the verse about being perfect needs a little study here. I think a much better word would be complete. With God we aren't complete and neither can we be (sic) perfect.

The emphasis the pro law people make is self righteousness. That is righteous by compliance to the law. Problem is no one is or can be according to the Bible.

bugkiller

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Open Heart said:

Oh trust me, I DO!!!!! I am saved by GRACE ALONE, by the atoning death of my Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. But I must respond to that salvation, because it is ongoing, a work of sanctification. This ONGOING salvation includes a working faith, a faithfulness that includes obedience and walking in his ways. Don't you agree?

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Open Heart said:

I observe Yom Kippur because I'm a Jew, and that's what Jews do. Make of that what you will, but remember it's what James did, what Peter did, what Paul did...

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Open Heart said:

I'm happy for you.

I must confess, my character has changed, but only by the grace of God, and only one day at a time. I constantly teeter on the brink of returning to my old ways -- I could seriously slip up at any time. This is why I look at all still enslaved by sin and think, "There but for the grace of God go I."

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bugkiller said:

I will never trust lawyers. But you live by the law, er well the amended law. That simply isn't living by faith.

bugkiller

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muddleglum said:

Like I said, I don't consider it a sin to observe it. Neither is it something we Gentiles need to think about. As long as both Jews and Gentiles remember that Christ is our atonement and proceed on that through our days on earth, then we are focused on the right thing.

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muddleglum said:

Yes, I can be that way too. However, let us focus on the great blessings we have in Christ Jesus. His grace changes us as we walk with Him. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Isn't it great to know that through Him we can truly love G-d?

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