ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
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Thursday, September 6, 2012
We Are in Christ by Faith, And He Is in Us
When we are in the matter of justification, there is no time or place to speak of the law: but the question is, what Christ is, and what benefit He hath brought unto us. Christ is not the law; He is not my work, or the work of the law; He is not my charity, my obedience, my poverty; but He is the Lord of life and death, a Mediator, a Savior, a Redeemer of those that are under the law and sin. In Him we are by faith, and He in us.
Martin Luther, Kregel, Galatians 2:15-16, p. 73.
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A. Berean has left a new comment on your post "We Are in Christ by Faith, And He Is in Us":
"That at that time ye were WITHOUT Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now IN Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."
Ephesians 2:12, 13
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GJ - The latest mantra, I hear, is to say the entire world is righteous IN CHRIST, which is nonsense, since only believers are in Christ.
The same tactic is used when UOJ Advocates say, "We are saved BY GRACE." Connecting justification to faith is the norm for the Scriptures and the Confessions. This BY GRACE business is used by the mainline denominations to promote universal salvation.
Long ago I heard liberals say, "You cannot make salvation contingent upon faith!" What about Paul, saying "If we believe...?" in Romans 4:24 - the missing verse of UOJ. What about the Lutheran Reformation, which turned on justification by faith versus justification by works. And, wrote Luther, if not by faith, then it is by works. That puts UOJ solidly in the works camp while taking shelter under their bizarre concept of grace.
But there is a fake-grace dividend. Universal righteousness makes unionism possible, mandatory, God-pleasing and just plain fun. Universal righteousness, which we find in Schleiermacher and Barth, simply negates any doctrinal or liturgical distinctions. All are righteous. All are forgiven. All are saved. When DP Jon Buchholz distinguishes the WELS heresy from the Evangelicals, he fails to note that he is one with ELCA, all the mainline churches, the Universalists, and various oddball sects.
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Galatians Commentary