Not sure what this website is about. It just looks confusing.
The site is occupied with the matter of salvation: How are we saved? On what basis? What free agency, if any, does Man have in receiving salvation? How does God "elect" people for salvation? And so on. It offers a much more philosophically-robust and biblical accounting of salvation than the Reformed/Calvinist perspective offers.
David Middleton reads from the King James which is translated from the Textus Receptus. He does point out where the errors are in the King James. But the other versions are way worse.
Some are. Some are, in my view, better. My primary study Bible is the NASB. I memorize Scripture from the KJV, however.
You only listened to him for five minutes and already judged.
When one knows the truth well, one notices even small divergences from it.
Now, Jesus say’s “If you love me, keep my commandments".
John 14:15
Have you noticed that Jesus makes love the predicate to obedience? Obedience
reflects an already existing love; obedience doesn't
constitute love. Many Christians get this very confused, thinking that obedience is itself the love they have and express to God. They settle into the idea that so long as they are obedient to God's commands, they are loving Him - even if their hearts are far from Him, desiring all sorts of other things more than they do Him. In their lives, obedience comes to replace a genuine desire - love - for God.
This is a serious problem because, as the Pharisees demonstrated, one can be very obedient, following all the laws of God (or, at least, seeming to), and yet be in rebellion to God, full of pride and hypocrisy. Love and obedience aren't one and the same thing, then; and Christians can fall into the Pharisaical life of hypocritical law-keeping if they lose sight of this fact.
In the five minutes I listened, Middleton mentioned keeping the laws of God, being obedient, again and again, offering many reasons for doing so. But he never once mentioned that the law of God begins with the First and Great Commandment which is to love God with all of one's being. It is in the keeping of this law that all of the obedience to God's other laws arise. If one doesn't start with obeying God at the First and Great Commandment, all other obedience to God is for nothing. Paul the apostle made this very clear:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Jesus, too, spoke on this matter also, though in a less direct way:
Matthew 7:21-23
21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
22 "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'
23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'
If you were going to make a case for entrance into the kingdom of heaven on the basis of your obedience to God, as those in this story tried to do, wouldn't you begin with the commandment God said was the First and Greatest? I would. But in the story Jesus told, obedience to this commandment is never mentioned. Isn't this astonishing? Both in the Old and New Testaments, loving God with one's entire being is the ground for all other law-keeping. (
Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:36-38) But the people in Christ's story never claim to have lived in obedience to the First and Greatest Commandment, though they point to many other good deeds done in Christ's name. But these good deeds weren't enough. They did not arise from a heart of love for God, from a deep desire to know and walk with Christ. And so, those who had performed them were cast out.
When I listen to preachers urging obedience to God, I always listen very closely to the reason they give for why obedience is important and upon what it rests. If I don't hear, first and foremost, that the love-motive is the ground for all Christian obedience to God's laws, I know I am listening to a legalist.
If you asked your wife to do something and she didn’t do it, how would that make you feel? Is that “relationship”?
My relationship with my wife does not rest upon her doing what I want her to do. Our relationship rests upon a mutual deep desire to know and enjoy one another and to live to the increasing benefit of one another. Out of our love for one another, our service to one another arises. I first love my wife, I have a deep, over-riding desire for her, and THEN I act to show that I do in self-sacrificing service to her (and vice versa).
There are
many times when my wife does not act as I would prefer she act. Do I think she loves me less when this is so? No. And even if this is what it meant, I would love her still. I am committed to her well-being, to service to her, by God's grace, no matter what. And I love her this way in emulation of the love God has for me.
Or you gave her some really good advise and she said, “that’s nice” and didn’t do it. If she loved you or trusted your judgment, she would have done what you asked or advised. You and your wife are One flesh. Two different people but you both should be on the same page.
This is the ideal - sort of - but it is rarely the reality in any consistent way. Really, I don't want my wife conformed to
my views on things. I want us both to be more
like Christ. That's the important thing to which we ought to urge
each other. We are both of us subject to the same Higher Authority, our eyes fixed upon him, before and above anything else.
Even the apostles (the true church) did what Jesus asked. And led by the Spirit. Even to the death.
Why? From what fundamental motive? Those that Middleton pointed out? No. Paul stated what he was aimed at in following Christ:
Philippians 3:7-10
7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,
9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
10 that I may know Him...
Paul was not pursuing a righteous life, an obedient life, but a Person: Jesus Christ. Paul wanted to know Jesus, to walk with him in fellowship, not just relationship. A holy life made this possible, but a holy life was never an end in itself for Paul. It shouldn't be for us, either.
Let me ask you a question...What is legalism?
Legalism is the fruit of moralism which is the thinking that righteousness, obedience to God's laws, is an end in itself; it is the thinking that holy living is the chief goal of the Christian life.
Jesus is the Chief Goal, not righteousness.
But there are conditions like any covenant. With commandments. We obey God and he will bless us.
And God is the Exceeding Great Reward (
Genesis 15:1) of our obedience, not whatever other lesser blessings might derive from our obedience. We keep His commands because in so doing we come into greater, richer communion with Him.
1 John 1:3
3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.