Notice with Adam and Eve that God never offered them any reward if they did what he said? Did God say to Eve, “If you stay away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you get to live forever in this Paradise and never have any troubles again”? No, he didn’t. All [...]
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It’s not surprising, living in a culture that lives and breathes the idea that “Life is what you make it,” that religions live and breathe the idea that “Eternal life is what you make it,” too. Not only is it up to us to make this life happen, it’s up to us to make the [...]
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An updated version of “Rewarded according to our works” nowadays is “Life if what you make it.” And our culture feeds on that statement too. No wonder religion follows suit. But isn’t it true that life is what we make it? Surely if we work hard we’re more likely to succeed, right? Or if you [...]
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The staggering thing about being rewarded according to our works, is that we’re rewarded for believing Jesus did all our works for us! It’s in Romans 4:24-25. God raised Jesus for our justification, and when we believe that, that’s when the righteousness we need for our eternal reward is credited to us. All God needs, then, [...]
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It still stands that we are rewarded according to our works but, Romans 4:13, “It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.” God promised Abraham he would inherit the world. That was his reward. [...]
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God deals a crushing blow to the pride and hypocrisy that plagues all religions in Romans 3:21 - ”But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” That’s great news because it does away with all the rules, rituals and religious duties we create [...]
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The gospel was never about God rewarding us according to our works, or about God giving us eternal life based on our efforts and obedience, because we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23. It’s still true, though, that eternal life depends on good works, Romans 2:6-7 – no good [...]
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In Romans 2:7 God gives us eternal life for our “persistence in doing good.” But how do you square that with Romans 3:12 which says “there is no one who does good,” and in verse 23 that we all “fall short of the glory of God”? According to those last two verses, it doesn’t matter how [...]
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Rewarded according to our works is what drives religion, the idea being that our own human effort gains us a reward in the afterlife. And the more effort expended, the bigger the reward we’ve got coming to us. Or the more one denies oneself now, the more pleasure awaits us later. Or the stricter we [...]
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All religions, except Christianity, are based on the idea that the afterlife is within the grasp of human effort. We can do this afterlife stuff ourselves. How? By rewarding ourselves according to our works. Religions have this down to an art. They all have a system of rules, rituals and religious duties that, they claim, not only carry [...]
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