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Love Is The Beginning

God is Love. Let this not be doubted or questioned. There are tons of people who simply cannot believe this, no matter how much God says it. That's a special pride, but I don't think it's the most common.

Much more common is presumption, as if God owes us salvation. "God is Love" is a slogan, and it covers anything; weakness is one thing; impunity is quite another.

In my experience, if I still call my faults sins if that's what they are, I don't worry, even if I have to drink from the fount of mercy a billion times. The worst place to be is at peace with sin; the person at peace with sin doesn't go to Confession, because his conscience isn't pricked.

The Reformers had a conflicted relationship with this bilateral relationship at best, so the position hardened to "faith alone" and imputed righteousness, because it had to. Anything less would be a concession that the Church was right, at the least in jurisdiction.

Let's cut the mess: the antinomian position is more logically consistent with imputed righteousness. This is why David Platt can hector people until he's blue in the face, and in the end, it won't matter. They'll mutter something about how he "lacks grace" or some such, and the argument begins again.

The only system where such an ethic makes sense is in the Catholic Church. Whether you tremble for no good reason, or you need to tremble, there's an app for that.
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Timothy R. Butler said…
Luther was moved to imputed righteousness by his reading (and teaching) of Romans, not an attempt to prove the church wrong. The church then declared him a heretic for it. At first, it appears, Luther expected the church to agree with him.
9:35 AM
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