- Oct 17, 2013
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You are correct here. In order to be justified, you have to love the Lord with all your heart, life and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Unless you do this, you will be condemned because it is a command of Christ.
But there is a catch...
We must love God to the standard in which Christ loves His Father, and we must love our neighbor to the standard in which Christ loves us. This is a perfect standard, In fact, it is not the other person who is our neighbor as such, but we are neighbors to every other person, including our enemies, and we are required to have a perfect, faultless love for them. We have no problem about loving ourselves, and we will ensure that we will never do ourselves harm if we can help it.
Unless we are able to do this to the standard of perfection that Jesus has, we will fall short and be condemned.
So, if anyone is teaching that we should love God with all our hearts, life, and strength, and love all others, including our enemies as we love ourselves, then go and do it, and do it perfectly yourself to prove it can be done to perfection.
We are commanded to continually STRIVE for perfection while we are on earth. If we do this, then after death, God's consuming fire will purge any and all our remaining imperfections from our souls. Then after our souls are perfected by this purging fire, we will be approved worthy to enter into eternal life and see God the Father.
1 John 2:1
I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; rsv
Luke 13:24
Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. rsv
Hebrews 4:11
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience. rsv
Matthew 7:11-14
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! 12 So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. 3 “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy,that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. rsv
1 Corinthians 3:11-17
For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are. rsv
Hebrews 12:22-29
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.
25 See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. 26 His voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; 29 for our God is a consuming fire.
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