They weren't debating mere faith and works with the Judaizers though. St. Paul, for example, is a main source for Protestant soteriology, but the big elephant in the room is that the bulk of his epistles were of an ethical focus. They're a treasure trove of all kinds of instruction for Christian living. Surely, you wouldn't deny that, right?
I don't know why I would deny that, straykat.
Protestants are portrayed from the outside as people fixating only on a belief in the person of Christ, and not on about practical issues. Rather, we stressed that all biblical and practical living must have a foundation, and this foundation is the relationship between the creature and his God. You cannot live the Christian life, unless you are a Christian period. And you're right, we focus on the apostle Paul a lot, because his epistles are the bulk of the New Testament document regarding faith and life. But, we recognize that Paul makes it clear repeatedly that ethical living must proceed from that positional and spiritual change of the sinner
first. The ordo salutis must be properly understood. How does a sinner reconcile with a holy God? If you get the wiring wrong, you cannot expect anything to function. Your standing before God is chief important to any and all things of the Christian life, everything must proceed from that.
He never diminished everyday types of morality. The specific "works" of Judaizers were those that separated Jews and Gentiles specifically (circumcision, diet, etc). Things that specifically got in the way of the new commonality and brotherhood through Christ.
I firmly believe that we are obligated to obey God, straykat, as do
Protestants. The issue with Judaizers was chiefly about justification, not just ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. Read Galatians 2:15-3:29, it is all about justification. His point isn't just Old Testament laws being obeyed for justification, but that
faith is what saves. "The righteous shall live by faith" (Gal. 3:11). This is one of the clearest passages:
"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it - the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." - Romans 3:21-26
Faith unites us to Christ, then fruit-bearing obedience follows:
"Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the [demands of the] law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the [demands of the] law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code." - Romans 7:4-6
It is clearly Paul's point, especially above, that your position and standing before God is before your living "ethically." You need to be right with God first, and there is only one way to do that. We stressed the order, and the particulars, because the apostles did the same.
And even then, some Torah laws remained. The first Council of Jerusalem loosened the issues of Jewish diet and circumcision, but drinking blood, forbidding idolatry, and forbidding fornication (which I'm going to assume is sexual sins of other types too) were all still binding. These are the highest laws in the church and still were not to be trifled with. They would surely lead to damnation. And Paul repeats the Council in his epistles. He teaches that sacrificing to idols is sacrificing to demons. Obviously you're damned if you invited the demonic into your life. Damned not only in the next life, but in this life too. And he even advised excommunication for a man who was sleeping with his stepmother. This is severe judgement for a sexual sin. The man was actually a Christian - not an outsider - and Paul still said to kick him out of the church. To think this guy was still saved is treating excommunication pretty lightly.
This is for another discussion, because I agree that moral equity of the Law of Moses is still applicable to the Christian. The rest, such as the ceremonial and civil laws strictly speaking, are done away with for other reasons than you are suggesting. It deals with covenants, something I hardly ever hear the Eastern Churches discuss, when they are the framework of Scriptures and redemptive history. But, again, this is for another discussion. I firmly believe the law still has a place in Scriptures, the Reformers held to this view. It is a more recent invention of what is called Dispensationalism that suggests otherwise.
Paul, of course, still wanted the man to be saved, but only through an ordeal at least. He makes the cryptic statement to turn him over to Satan for "the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord". Whatever this means exactly, he was going to need to repent to be in the good graces of the Lord again.
It isn't so cryptic as you make it, straykat. It does sound strange with a theology that conflates and confuses justification with sanctification. If you read the second letter, this man repented with tears. The excommunication was for the destruction of his flesh, so that he would would repent and remain saved for that day.