Yahweh is merciful (Leviticus 26:44, Luke 6:36, Romans 5:8), not always immediately (2 Peter 3:8-9) treating people as they punitively deserve and allowing for the repentant to be restored to him after even grave sins (Numbers 5:5-8, 15:22-31, 2 Samuel 12:13, 1 John 1:9, and so on). Being ideologically committed to Judeo-Christianity does not mean that a person will not sin, though it is within everyone's power to never sin since this is logically possible, and the Bible does acknowledge this more than once (Deuteronomy 30:12-14, Job 1:1, Luke 1:5-6, Matthew 5:48). Logically, something cannot be morally required if it is impossible to achieve it, and there is no individual sin that cannot be avoided, if it is even a temptation for a given individual to begin with. However, the possibility of someone being saved without being totally or unflinchingly morally perfect from that point onward is one of the subjects on which Jesus and Paul share a more obvious overlap in their proposed theologies. This can be seen in Matthew 5 and 1 Corinthians 3:
Matthew 5:19--"'Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.'"
1 Corinthians 3:12-15--"If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved--even though only as one escaping through the flames."
Neither passage claims that people who fall short of moral perfection at any time are automatically excluded from salvation and the resulting eternal life once becoming a genuine Christian. Indeed, Matthew 5 strongly suggests that people who actively sinned for prolonged periods will be present in the kingdom of heaven, albeit with a lesser status of sorts. They will still live forever in the bliss described in Revelation 21:1-4. At the same time, they will have forfeited a degree of reward (". . . will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"), and Jesus does plainly say that people must be more righteous than the hypocritical, egoistic "righteousness" of the Pharisees (Matthew 15:1-20, 23:1-29) in order to enter the kingdom of heaven at all (Matthew 5:20). 1 Corinthians 3 even more explicitly conveys that a lack of extensive righteous works does not render someone soteriologically unsafe. They do nonetheless barely escape annihilation in the flames of hell (Matthew 10:28, Romans 6:23, Revelation 20:15).
Perhaps someone commits to Yahweh and/or Christ and dies shortly after, having little opportunity to intentionally cease all sin in their life before they join the unconscious dead waiting for resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, Job 3:11-19, 14:10-12, Daniel 12:2). Perhaps someone errs greatly but is otherwise consistently devoted to reason and morality. For example, King David's life is summarized in this way despite multiple grave sins (1 Kings 15:5). Such a man or woman is not unsaved by default because of this. Nothing about this contradicts Matthew 3, which says that every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Similarly, James says that there is not commitment to God without righteous deeds is dead (2:26), even as Jesus says that to truly love him is to obey his commands (John 14:15). Evil is still evil and by nature is what should not be done, and no one who is saved should continue sinning or mistake salvation for an excuse to sin for the sake of utilitarianism or sheer egoism (Romans 3:5-8, 6:1-2, 12-13). Moral perfection is what people were saved for according to Paul, just a single verse after his renowned declaration that people are saved by grace and not by their works (Ephesians 2:10).
Going above and beyond is still by logical necessity unnecessary, and also something the Bible goes out of its way to emphasize as optional at best (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32). The low quality materials purged in the fire of 1 Corinthians 3 are sins, therefore--they stand in for active wrongs or failures to do what is obligatory. Nothing else could possibly, on by Biblical standards or as dictated by what is logically possible to start with, be worthy of burning up. No one needs to worry about not having a plethora of constant, eager acts where they have gone above the mandates of righteous to do what is good but unnecessary. Do what is required, and if Christianity is true, what you "build" atop the foundation will survive the fire to that extent. While anyone who sins cannot know if they are among the saved according to the Bible with absolute certainty, this is not due to Calvinistic fatalism or because they have to push themself far past what is truly obligatory. It is rather still up to God to show mercy or not to those who persist in sin after repentance.
After all, just because sin does not universally disqualify someone from eternal life if they were already saved does not mean that a person can never forfeit salvation by their own stupidity and selfishness. Some passages imply or absolutely seem to say that salvation can be lost, though some of them perhaps address more of a premature ending to terrestrial life (for instance, see Ezekiel 33:12-16, John 15:5-8, Hebrews 6:4-8, 10:26-31). There is also the opportunity to repent as long as a person lives in that it is logically possible to do so, which includes while a person lives after the eschatological resurrection [1]. Lost salvation does not necessarily have to remain lost. Rewards during eternal life can be diminished by sinning after salvation as 1 Corinthians 3 states, which is loss enough in itself--though people should do what is obligatory because it should be done instead of only being motivated by the utilitarian benefit of reward. It could be true that salvation can be lost as well, though the only sure way to never be able to repent and potentially be restored to God (2 Peter 3:9) is to remain unrepentant until the very moment a person perishes, ceasing to consciously exist in the lake of fire (John 3:16, 2 Peter 2:6).
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