Protestant about Good Works

wikey321 said:

I was curious and wondering for many years why did many Protestants condemn and disagree about good works especially done by other religions or same religion or
even with same Church of the Protestant Christian.

i.e. They may condemn over doing charity works to poor children or old folks but rather spend time gossiping.

Finally I guess I had found the answer. Most of them don't even know who is Martin Luther (The founder of Protestant) after half century in the Church

Indulgence - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I guess what Martin meant about the good works refer to the fraud certification of salvation and "not" about the pure charity good works. In other word, you can buy the certificate of salvation.

I did quite a volunteering job recently, it doesn't mean I m a good person but I learnt a lot thru them especially how to manage the crisis and difficult time where school never teach.

Agreed? Share your thoughts?


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You're going to get varying answers to your question. But some take a quote from the prophet Isaiah who said:

Isaiah 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags...

They read it as if it is some sort of bullet point from a checklist. But it isn't. It is Isaiah reflecting on the general condition of mankind at one particular point in time. He saw people doing great wrongs, but then doing acts of righteousness as a pretense. Because of their condition and because of their behavior their righteous acts were worthless. The problem you'll find is that too many people lift that out and use it alone to say that righteous acts are filthy rags so there's no need in doing them. That has never been the teaching of Christianity.

wikey321 said:

I was curious and wondering for many years why did many Protestants condemn and disagree about good works especially done by other religions or same religion or
even with same Church of the Protestant Christian.

i.e. They may condemn over doing charity works to poor children or old folks but rather spend time gossiping.

Finally I guess I had found the answer. Most of them don't even know who is Martin Luther (The founder of Protestant) after half century in the Church

Indulgence - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I guess what Martin meant about the good works refer to the fraud certification of salvation and "not" about the pure charity good works. In other word, you can buy the certificate of salvation.

I did quite a volunteering job recently, it doesn't mean I m a good person but I learnt a lot thru them especially how to manage the crisis and difficult time where school never teach.

Agreed? Share your thoughts?


View attachment 338986

Click to expand...

The Protestant view is that salvation can not be earned nor bought.

There is nothing wrong with good works to me except for three possibilities. The first you identified, works as in trying to earn your salvation. Related too are works to be seen by others, Pharisee types. The third is works that the world sees as good but are not ordained by God for your life. King Saul had those works. Human works without God are as filthy rags. They can be sincere and still end up as wood, hay and stubble. I imagine that your volunteering was true and God used that but only you can know. If it brought you closer to Christ that would be a good sign.

wikey321 said:

I was curious and wondering for many years why did many Protestants condemn and disagree about good works especially done by other religions or same religion or
even with same Church of the Protestant Christian.

i.e. They may condemn over doing charity works to poor children or old folks but rather spend time gossiping.

Click to expand...

Of course we should do good works, but good works don't save. Besides, you cannot please God without faith.

The perfect attonment of Christ alone saves. Either He took the punishemnt for your sins, paid the price for them, and reconciled you to God, or you will pay for your sins for eternity.

First is grace, second is just.
The reason it's called grace, because it is undeserved. If you reject that Jesus is the perfect substitute for your sins, if you want to add your deeds, God will judge you by your deeds, and if there is just one sin in your life, you going to hell.

Good works are the fruit of salvation, no saving power in them themselves.

Correct, Protestants disagree on some things that are called 'good works'.

The big picture is,

God's goal is to build an eternity we call Heaven where humans and angels will live with God happily forever. The three parties must be happy and satisfactory. The completely sin-incompatible God won't be happy to live with sins in such a forever realm.

Law is thus set up to identity who (both angels and humans alike) is qualified to enter Heaven to live with such a sin-incompatible God forever. Law is more or less like a promise saying that, "if you pass the Final Judgment of Law, God will bear with you in eternity no matter what." That's why God's Law is strict in order to stick with such a promise.

The nature of Law works like this. Given a pre-defined period of time, an entity of freewill must not break it. It's an assessment of one's ability to obey. Free will at the end means one is given the ability to oppose God. Law measures one's ability to be obedient without exercising the ability of opposing God, such that God, as well as angels and humans, can live together without an issue. By the hint given in the book of Revelation, 2/3 angels will pass the Final Judgment of Law to enter Heaven.

How about humans? Genesis says that the much more capable and intelligent angelic beings (i.e., the crafty snake) will tempt humans into breaking the Law. Adam and Eve fell due to, or the lack thereof, the two critical factors without which humans won't be able to live with a sin-compatible God in the forever realm. First is the lack of obedience, and second is the lack of faith in God and His words (i.e., the Word of God in a broader sense).

Ever since Adam and Eve sinned under the influence of Satan, Law requires that humans need to be driven out of God's current dwelling realm. Today's earth is outside the realm of God. While any place lying outside of God's dwelling realm will decay to a hell where the most powerful and the most evil will finally rule. This happens to be Satan. That's why Satan is referred to as the god of this world.

Satan turned Earth into a wilderness,
Isaiah 14:17: the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?


In such a wilderness virtually 'ruled' by Satan, humans have no hope to pass the Final Judgment of Law to enter Heaven. Satan and his angels (they are much more capable and intelligent than humans) will make sure that humans are captive and 'would not let his captives go home'. As a result, God either destroy earth as a whole (by Noah's flood), or there must be an alternative provided to get this resolved. Needless the say, the resolution is Jesus Christ. With Jesus' self-sacrifice at some point of humanity, it makes it possible that humans can 'dodge' the Final Judgment of Law. Humans now are provided a series of covenants as the alternative standard for the Final Judgment (of Covenant instead of Law) to come.

While Law is provide a pre-defined period of time for an entity of free will not to break it. a covenant works on a human through his life span, followed by a Final Judgment of Covenant subjective by a fair and just God (who is Jesus Christ our Lord, as God the Son). Under the New Covenant, your life span is for the assessment of your faith as demanded by the Final Judgment of Covenant carried out by Jesus Christ.

Again it's like promise saying that, "if you pass the Final Judgment of Covenant, the completely sin-incompatible God will bear with you in eternity, no matter what!"

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That being said. Humans have no ability to judge or to evaluation precisely where one's faith goes. Only God has the ability to judge one's faith precisely. We humans however can have a rough estimation by speculating one's good work. If good work doesn't show on you, we can tell that your faith is dead.

wikey321 said:

I was curious and wondering for many years why did many Protestants condemn and disagree about good works especially done by other religions or same religion or
even with same Church of the Protestant Christian.

i.e. They may condemn over doing charity works to poor children or old folks but rather spend time gossiping.

Finally I guess I had found the answer. Most of them don't even know who is Martin Luther (The founder of Protestant) after half century in the Church

Indulgence - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I guess what Martin meant about the good works refer to the fraud certification of salvation and "not" about the pure charity good works. In other word, you can buy the certificate of salvation.

I did quite a volunteering job recently, it doesn't mean I m a good person but I learnt a lot thru them especially how to manage the crisis and difficult time where school never teach.

Agreed? Share your thoughts?

Click to expand...

There is a world of difference between these to statements:

1.) Our salvation requires us to choose to be doers of God's law.

2.) Our salvation requires us to have first obeyed God's law in order to earn it as a wage

In Romans 2:13, only doers of the law will be justified, in Hebrews 5:9, Jesus has become a source of eternal salvation for those who obey him, in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so while there are many verses that deny #2, there are also many verses that support #1 and the problem is that people often assume that claiming #1 is claiming #2 and will argue against #1 by citing verses that deny #2.

In Psalms 119:29-30, he wanted to put false ways far from him, for God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey His law, and he chose the way of faith by setting it before him, so this has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith. The content of a gift can itself be the experience of doing something, such as giving someone the opportunity to experience driving a Ferrari for an hour, where the gift requires them to do the work of driving it in order to have that experience, but where doing that work has nothing to do with earning the opportunity to drive it as a wage. Similarly, the content of God's gift of eternal life is the experience of knowing Him and Jesus (John 17:3) and the gift of His law is His instructions for how to have that experience (Exodus 33:13, Matthew 7:23). The experience of obeying God's law is about Him giving the gift of salvation to us, not about us earning our salvation from God as a wage.

wikey321 said:

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That image is obviously slanted.