pablope;10890647:
I think he meant any works that are not being done as an act of faith.
I’m confused on the second part I didn’t say grace isn’t in man or anything like that so I’m kinda confused there.
So could you explain again how the verses about being saved by faith and justified by faith apart from works are interpreted? I’m struggling to follow along with your last post sorry.
There are still works.
It is quite long. I had to truncate the article. It explains the works of the Law…or how the Law of Moses was understood when this was written.
I suggest you read the link:
chnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/salvation.pdf
Another quote:
The point that Mosaic legal justice was a matter of works reappears in Romans 10:5, quoting from Leviticus 18:5, in contrast with the justice from faith. The same is said in Galatians 3:12 (“But the law is not from faith; rather the one who does those things will live in them”) and in Romans 2:13 (“It is not the hearers of the Law who have been justified before God but the doers of the Law will be justified,” i.e. will be declared just at the last judgment), and this is expounded at length in Romans 2: 23-27.
So, over against the justice of God, which is the justice of faith, there is a selfjustice which is of the Law and which is a justice of works. This latter would give men a basis for boasting (Rom. 4:2, Eph. 2:8-9), since works give one a strict right to be considered just: “To the man who has works, his salary is not counted as a favor but as something due,” (Rom. 4:4). Now, as a matter of practical fact, does anyone really have this self-justice of Law and works? Over and over again Paul answers in the negative (cf. Rom. 3:20;
9:31-32; Gal. 3:10, quoting Deuteronomy 27: 26 and the context indicates that the curse has indeed gone into effect).
To this day, the sad doctrine that our justification must be something merely declaratory has one of its most powerful roots in this fateful mistake: what St. Paul considered the paradigm experience of the Jew under the Law is confused with the paradigm experience of the Christian under the power of grace! And it is interesting to note that the revivalist wing of Protestantism tends to escape this mistake.
Encountering Christ in deep experiences of conversion, they taste the power of
His victory over sin in their own lives; having tasted it, they have not a doubt in
the world that they have been changed inwardly, that God has given them new hearts, and that the nightmare experience of Romans 7 is over for them. Of course, the Christian can fall back into that nightmare. This is the grain of truth
in St. Augustine’s later exegesis. In summary, then, what was wrong with the Jewish project to achieve righteousness from the Law is this: the project
prescinded from God’s grace. Taken in abstraction from grace, the Law was powerless; destined to be disobeyed at least inwardly, the Law served to provoke and
deepen sin.
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