friend:

As I read the words of Jesus as he talks about the afterlife or the “judgement day”, I do not think he got the memo of “Saved by Grace”. In the classical gospel representation, if you confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart that Jesus is lord, you will be saved. That “saved” is most often interpreted as “from the judgement”. All through the new testament it talks about having our sins washed away by the blood of Jesus, etc.

But Jesus in John 5:28 talks explicitly about those with good deeds being raised to life, and those with evil deeds to judgement. Matthew 25 gives the same criteria - how you lived, not what you believed. I would say that if you just read Jesus' words, you would never come away with a “his blood covers all my sins and makes me alright with God”. But I readily admit that the new testament authors did strongly imply this relationship - 1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9, Romans 10.

So what do we do with our assurances from John, Peter, and Paul that our sins are washed clean, but our message from Christ that “not so fast, your deeds will be judged”.

Honestly, the only way this makes sense to me is if “Salvation” is for right now and I have assurance that I can connect my heart and life to God NOW, having my conscience clean, starting over. But, at the final judgement, my works will be judged and everything I did not do for love will be consumed, but I myself will enter through His love.

Anyway - Romans man…why did Paul write Romans. I really think everything would be different without that book and it’s “Plan for sharing the good news of salvation by belief” . Of course the point of what Paul was saying was not saved by belief, but rather your lineage as a Jew was not the criteria, but your allegiance to Christ.

self:

In case we don’t get to it when you get here, I think you’re onto something.

I put it this way: We’re not saved by our good works, but only our good works will be saved.

Now, what it means that that which “I did not do for love will be consumed, but [that] I myself will enter through His love,” as you put it, is currently inconceivable for me. But just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

As for the plentiful talk in the New Testament about our being forgiven or washed of our sins, it is certainly true that He doesn’t count our sins against us. Maybe that’s another way of saying that we ourselves with enter through His love, and perhaps it’s through this idea that we can begin to conceive of how it can be true that our evildoing will be annihilated but we ourselves will not.

(In order for any of this to jibe with the New Testament talk of fire, the annihilation of our evildoing would have to terribly unpleasant.)

And at least in the minds of ancient Jews and, I think, Greco-Romans, blood sacrifice was required to elicit such favor from the gods. Hence all that talk.

As for Paul’s letter to the Romans, you are right about Paul’s point in the book as a whole. But moreover, read the second chapter of and tell me you don’t come away with the same impression as you do when you read Jesus: that everyone will be judged.

We inherit a “soterian” gospel from the Reformers that has, on balance, not been a good thing to have as Gospel.