Imputation from the Start

Everyone knows that there have been disputes about the proper interpretation of the words of Scripture ever since the start. Even before the canon of the Bible was completed there were schisms and other gospels that Jesus and his first disciples all encountered. When we read the New Testament we see this over and over. Such will always exist. Until Jesus comes again, there will always be varying levels of division. Having said this, reader, what are your "non-negotiables" in the Christian Faith? What are those things that you know that God in Scripture has so emphasized that you'd say without them the Faith of the apostles is so compromised that it's lost? If you say there are no such things, I think you're wrong. If you say there are a thousand such things I'd say you're wrong. There are of course a lot of subjects in the Bible, but not all of them, or even most of them thankfully, are things that Christians should divide over. As we practice love and longsuffering with each other through all the non-divisive disagreements we actually get to show that we fulfill the law of love in Christ in many ways as we forgive, bear with each other, and strive for peace.
One thing worth dividing with people over, however, is the nature of the grace of God in Christ. Justification, being by faith and faith alone, is an essential. Without it, the Cross is forfeit. Unmerited grace is essential to the Christian religion. God died. He doesn’t share the glory of the redemption thereby accomplished with us. Paul understood this. So, when Paul said to the Galatian believers: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" in Galatians 3:3, what's going on there? Why was this so important to faith of Paul? It's true that much of the letter was meant to correct erring brothers and sisters and "bring them back" to a better understanding. It was to instruct and edify. However, in that, it was also about dividing those who love and believe the truth from those who don't and who are outside the Faith by perverting the Gospel of grace. See Galatians 1:8-9 to gauge the clear severity of what Paul's dealing with in his love for the Gospel and for them all as well. What does it truly mean to fall for the idea that Jesus' death does not perfect? What does it mean to believe that you can be "perfected by the flesh" while you say you believe in Jesus? Perhaps you truly do believe in Jesus, but still, what correction has to take place in your heart if you think your works are why he saved, or how he will save you? Paul identifies the heart of the danger by saying things like, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain." Galatians 4:9-11.
The question I think God answers for us all here, and one that must be asked as we read all this from Paul goes something like this: in Christ, what exactly do we do with the Law? This letter helps us understand a huge part of the answer. We certainly don’t toss it out at all, but we must understand the Gospel. This question was understandably huge in their generation as the Gospel spread. In Galatia, we see the same problem that prompted the calling of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:1 where we're told plainly what the issue was. We're told how, "Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” This is contrary to the Cross as they all knew. By the Spirit himself guiding them, they considered the matter well and made their noble decisions. Paul was dealing with this same issue of some form of law-keeping in his letter to the Galatians. Paul teaches us all how this was a perversion of the New Covenant by a conflation of certain ideas from the Old Covenant. Those were not bad things, but they’re not what saves in Christ…as Jesus had made clear to them. Christ and Christ alone saves. That’s the work of his Cross! But what might this have to do with us today? I’ve not had anyone challenge me on whether or not circumcision saves me. I doubt you have either. Has anyone, except perhaps the old guard of the Adventist group, challenged you about Sabbath keeping as what saves? Maybe, but not likely these days. But how about whether or not water baptism saves you? Ever had someone toss up a misinterpretation of 1 Peter 3:21 at you? Or a clearly contradictory interpretation of James 2:24? That’s very likely. So, is it that Old Covenant works like circumcision and Sabbath-keeping are bad when you make them the litmus of being in Christ or not, but that a teaching that says New Covenant works like baptism or the Lords’ table as the litmus of whether or not you’re in Christ are good? That’s something we all must resolve. Can we say that our New Covenant works save us and not commit the same error against grace that Paul corrected in Galatia?
Sadly, I don’t think so. Others, following suit in this error today, especially since medieval times (the era not the awesome restaurant experience), commit the same perversion of the New Covenant by making legitimate parts of the New Covenant just as performative or determinative for salvation as some did with things from the Old Covenant. In this, they commit the same sin and show the heart of the problem going on with the Galatians. (For more on this I invite you to an audio message I recorded a handful of years ago here: https://biblecia.com/media/ph8j3gq/what-paul-actually-condemned-in-his-letter-to-the-galatians-57-min.) I say, if someone says "church membership saves you" it's the same error as saying "circumcision saves you." It's not bringing something from the Old into the New unlawfully, but it’s the same error of feeling one can be somehow "perfected by the flesh." Reader, nothing perfects us, in the sense of justification, outside of what Christ gives us of or from himself by faith. The following really really really means something in light of all this: "For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified." Hebrews 10:14. We're not fully sanctified. Amen. We need works to be sanctified, but the Cross is our justification. We who are in him are perfected already by Jesus. And this only makes sense in what’s now called the Protestant faith.
Several forms of what perhaps once was Christianity in an ancient form have devolved into a sort of new/old error of ritualism and/or even tribalism. The same stumbling stone of works or performance or even tribal membership errors committed by the Jewish believers at the time of Jesus (usually it was some combination of these things) is committed by others who today say they believe in Jesus. They do in fact believe in Jesus, but they don't believe in the Cross who do not lay down all their works and merits as their hope for peace with God. It's not that Christians shouldn't have works and deep devotion to God. No. It's just that those things have no part in what secures their peace or forgiveness. The Cross is not a self-help program of any sort. It is a rescue mission of God. He died for the helpless to demonstrate his love. Romans 5:6. It’s not “help yourself.” You and I were helpless without his grace and mercy. This New Covenant is God's plan enacted from before the world began (Revelation 13:8) to ransom a people to himself. He has done it and it's wonderful in our eyes. There is simply to be no boasting in the Christian Faith. And that’s easy once we get it. We have no share in cooperating with God to save us. None. But we have a Savior. This is not to induce laziness, it's to come to Calvary in faith.
And Christians have understood and marveled at this since the start. Doxology wasn’t just something for the apostles. Of course, the apostles all believed and taught what is today called "Protestant" ideas. That's a given when you study their inspired letters. They were given the revelation of Jesus and what he came to do, and Christians have them as their principle disciplers still. But ever since the days of Jesus, people have understood that what Christ did on their behalf was enough to save. Consider the following from the early-mid second century:

"He himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!" (Epistle to Diognetus, chap. 9, p. 28.)

This writer basks in that same glorious glow of calvary that Christians invite everyone to consider today. If Christ takes all of one's sin upon himself, if he did that on Calvary, then what he offers in exchange, reader, is his own perfect and perfecting (how could it be otherwise) righteousness. This is Romans 4! That gift of life will improve us over time, stretch us, call us to follow him all our days, but there is no improving upon the grace of it. We improve, but his justification does not. Come, welcome, rest in Christ. His yoke is easy. He offers life to the world. He offers life to you. Repent. Acknowledge your sin. Ask him to forgive you. And may the peace of God rule your heart in a salvation Sabbath as sure as the Resurrection that purchased it.