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That sounds like putting the cart before the horse, as the saying goes. How can we love Someone if we don't believe/have faith in/trust Him?
How can one believe, have faith or trust without loving first? We are called to be humble as children as only these will enter the Kingdom of God. We can love many things in this world without the three pillars stated above. Why not our Creator? This is true Agape Love. Love comes first because the pillars rest upon it.
We are saved unto good works. What are good works, love the Lord God with all thine heart and love thy neighbor. Any good act possible can fall into these categories. This is the Law summed up by Jesus. The purpose of our salvation is so we would love, aka keep the law. Also, all these things you mentioned, believe, faith and trust are they not required daily? It's not a one time deal so we can look back and say, this came first or that. We must hold onto our faith and not have sin harden our heart or we could lose faith. If anything, grace comes first, no? then love. My take on it.
I do not think God is alienated from us because of Adam and Eve’s sin, but because we sinned, so prior to our sin we do not need to be “saved”, but are in a safe condition lacking fulfillment of our earthly objective.We’re alienated from God to begin with, and that alienation is the essence of the state sometimes called "original sin". It’s a state of injustice in itself because man was made for communion with God, and subjugation to Him as all of creation is meant for, and is lost, disordered, “dead” if apart from Him. That’s why reconciliation is crucial. We must be reborn. That’s why Jesus came. We can similarly turn back away from Him and die all over again. Then a change of heart would be required, and repentance. But I didn't know you left Him to begin with, BTW.
To obtain that love we come to know His love first of all, and so to love in return. As we enter His family and become His children we begin to increasingly become as He is, His seed now planted within us. This begins with faith, acknowledging His existence, His goodness, mercy, and love -and of our need for Him.
His Love comes before our Love. Our faith (the same God given, kind of faith all people have access to) can allow us to humbly accept God's Love (charity/grace/mercy/forgiveness) as pure undeserved charity, but how to we get this Love for ourselves?
Can we really call, “Loving God and others a ‘work’”?
Thank you. The objective is eternal, but begins in the here and now. And that objective-our purpose- is salvation. Alienation from God is the state we're born into. Adam and Eve walked with God, while we don't know Him from birth. The purpose of our faith is to give or initiate us into that knowledge.
I'm increasingly convinced (and some notable theologians in the past have agreed), that the knowledge of good and evil is just that, the literal knowledge, the experience, of both. That's what all humans have inherited since the Fall. And the Hebrew word used indicates just that kind of direct experiential knowledge.
It's not a learning issue, but it is a growing one. Charity/Agape is a gift from God, as are faith and hope. Here, by knowing good and evil, we learn that something is missing, in us, in our lives. Like prodigals who've experienced life in the pigsty, we experience life in a godless world, where man's will reigns and sin so often prevails along with the inexorable mutability/finiteness / corruption/death that are inherent aspects of this world. We get to see for ourselves if freedom from God and His authority is all Adam assumed it was cracked up to be. Man might then be all the better prepared to finally value God and His love when its shown to us, in a world that so often tramples upon and dismisses it in favor of all our other values: ego, money, possessions, pleasure. So, we may learn to value love, and so to accept and return it when it's given us-and to grow in it as we cooperate in that work of God's, of transforming us into His own image.
“Salvation” is not something we “work, cause or do stuff to obtain”, so what can the nonbeliever do with such an objective?
Experience and knowledge are the same word in the Hebrew as I remember. All mature adults today do stuff which hurts others, so until they harden their hearts this hurting of others (sin) burdens them, which is good.
Here is the only way I have seen it working and see it as the only way it can work:
Yes, they are works according to the Mosaic Law. You can also say "meritorious" works.
God is also Holy, Holy, Holy. Does the bible ever say He is Love, Love, Love. I'm curious what you think that might indicate.
Oh, they can participate, they can pick up their cross daily and follow-or not. They can come to want what God wants. And like a good Parent that's exactly what He's prompting us to do. Salvation is a result of being freely justified, and justification means more that a declared state of righteousness but it's a new state, as we become new creations, now children of God, given the gift of righteousness which is spoken of all through the letter to the Romans and elsewhere, now able to be obedient as we're translated from slaves to sin to slaves to righteousness. And do so they must:
But how can you love somebody if you don't first believe in them? Somebody who doesn't believe in God can't love God. The agape love is the love Jesus refers to in the following verse:
This kind of love, agape, is on a Spiritual level. What we tend to overlooked is the fact that He is our Creator and there is a connection between the Creator and His creation no matter what. Some choose to recognize Him and some choose not to. We can say that one needs all the information first but in reality, it is this kind of unconditional love He is looking for from His creation.
This is an interesting sort of conversation. I think that Jesus, as we encounter Him, impresses us in many ways. He exudes love, for one thing, and trustworthiness, truth, mercy, etc. Do we believe in Him first, or hope in Him first, or love Him first? While we try to neatly separate out these virtues from each other, certainly the elements of all three are there to one degree or another at the beginning. "We love Him because He first loved us." I assume that's already been quoted in this thread. Either way, it's all based on knowledge first of all, of who He is. And the rest should follow from there, and grow. I do think that faith is the foundation of our salvation, but without hope and love that would be incomplete, failing to make us true children of God by itself. Just some thoughts.
The OT Law does define work and it is something you cannot do on the Sabbath, so how can Loving be a work?
