As he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified, and answered, “Go your way for this time, and when it is convenient for me, I will summon you.” (Acts 24:25)
Shortly after I was saved in 1982, I learned the Evangelism Explosion (1970, D. James Kennedy) method of evangelism as well as its outline of the Gospel. I used it throughout the 1980s and was taught a Southern Baptist version of it, “Continuing Witness Training,” in 1988.
Suffice it to say that neither of these training programs would ever lead to reasoning about “righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come” with a lost person. In fact, if someone had asked about the judgment to come, we would have told them that believing in Jesus would exempt them from it.
The Faith Once Delivered
The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints was delivered to a specific set of saints, to those who lived in apostolic times and were told to preserve and never change it.
The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it … Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these … For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it. (Irenaeus, c. 185, Against Heresies, Bk. I, ch. 10, par. 2)
The man who wrote this in the late second century and those who came before him are maligned today as legalists. This is mostly because until recently almost everyone knew nothing about the “early church fathers.” It is also because, like the apostle Paul, they did reason about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment.
I will first show you what Irenaeus said all churches believed about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment, and then outline Galatians so that you can see that Paul taught the same thing.
Righteousness, Self-Control, and the Judgment
Right before telling us that the Church, scattered throughout the world, carefully preserves one faith, he told us what that faith was. One of the things he included was:
… and that he should execute just judgment towards all; that he may send spiritual wickednesses and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of his grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept his commandments, and have persevered in his love. (Irenaeus, c. 185, Against Heresies, Bk. I, ch. 10, par. 1)
If this is not stated clearly or strongly enough, I have compiled some quotes from Irenaeus’ predecessors and peers at https://www.christian-history.org/judgment-quotes.html.
I did not copy those quotes from a list somewhere. I read 5 volumes of a 10-volume collection of Christian writings, everything from Rome’s letter to Corinth towards the end of the first century to Cyprian’s letters and treatises in the 250s. I then went back and read them again. It took 5 years reading one hour per day because I both took notes and wrote quotes onto 3×5 cards. In the early 1990s, the average person could not get on the internet, much less copy and paste from it.
In 1990, I was aware of the conflict between eternal security and those who believed a Christian could lose his salvation. I had been listing faith and works verses in the back of my Bible for years. The last page and the inside back cover were covered in references I was puzzling over.
Bible Conflicts: Saved by Faith? Or by Works?
The most well-known faith-and-works conflict is between Romans 3:28 and James 2:24. Martin Luther famously challenged anyone to reconcile “justified by faith apart from the works of the law” and “justified by works and not faith only.”
The conflict that most puzzled me, though, was more local: Ephesians 2:8-9 and Ephesians 5:5.
… for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)
Know this for sure, that no sexually immoral person, nor unclean person, nor covetous man (who is an idolater), has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. (Eph. 5:5)
Are we saved apart from works? If we are, then how can our immorality, uncleanness, and greed (covetousness) keep us out of God’s kingdom?
When I found the following in an early second-century letter from the bishop of Smyrna to the Philippians, I was thrilled!
… our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death, whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave. In whom, though now ye see him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; into which joy many desire to enter, knowing that by grace ye are saved, not of works,”but by the will of God through Jesus Christ.
Polycarp quoted both Peter and Paul in describing the glory and joy of being saved by grace through faith. But then, 3 sentences and 90 words later, he added:
But he who raised him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do his will, and walk in his commandments, and love what he loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing …
These seemingly contradictory quotes from Polycarp are even closer together than Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 5. These passages in Polycarp’s letter don’t explain the conflict between Ephesians 2 and 5, but the fact that Polycarp didn’t explain why he could write both passages any more than Paul did. They do, however, indicate that Polycarp understood why Paul could say we are saved apart from works but can be banned from the kingdom by doing evil.
Not only that, but the Philippians must have understood as well because Polycarp felt no need to explain it to them.
Resolving the Conflict: Righteousness, Self-Control, and the Judgment to Come
It was another 2 years, on my second read of the anonymous letter to Diognetus, which falls right before Polycarp’s letter in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series, that I found:
… being convicted in the past time [in Old Testament times] by our own deeds as unworthy of life, we might now be made deserving by the goodness of God, and having made clear our inability to enter into the kingdom of God of ourselves, might be enabled by the ability of God. (ch. 9)
This may not leap off the page at you, by the time I read this, I had read 3,000 pages of fine-print writings from second and third century Christians. To this day I cannot understand how I missed the obvious explanation for the Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 5 conflict. I cannot understand how I missed it in the Bible, which I had read at least 10 times by then, nor how missed it after reading through thousands of pages of early Christian teaching and testimony.
When I read this the second time, though, that I had missed what it means to be saved by faith. “Saved” in Ephesians 2 does not mean “going to heaven.” Neither “going to heaven” nor “inheriting God’s kingdom” is mentioned in Ephesians 2. In Ephesians 2, saved means being transformed from being a sinner, dead in my trespasses and sins (v. 1), to being “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (v. 10).
Such a transformation is truly “so great a salvation,” and we are warned not to neglect it (Heb. 2:3).
Rather than saved, at least in Ephesians 2, meaning we are guaranteed heaven, it means that we were “enabled by the ability of God” to “enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Everything Clicks into Place
In Ephesians 2, Paul tells us that we were changed from sinners, dead in our sins, to God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. This enables us to …
put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. (Eph. 4:22-24)
According to Paul, this is what we should believe “if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21).
If we “don’t put away the old man,” but instead are immoral, unclean, or greedy, living like the sons of disobedience, then we will receive the wrath of God with them because “it is because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6).
That same verse tells us not to be led astray about this.
In fact, Paul tells us 3 times not to be deceived into thinking that those who live unrighteously, or by the flesh, will inherit God’s kingdom: here, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and in Galatians 5:19-21.
Excursus: What the Judgment by Works Is and Is Not
If you have never heard that Christians who have not lived like Christians will be condemned at the judgment and denied an inheritance in the eternal kingdom, you need to know several things before I outline Galatians 5-6 to show those chapters mimic the early Christian teaching on faith and works:
- Now that you have heard that Christians might be condemned at the judgment, you are going to see it all over the New Testament (e.g., Revelation 2-3).
- Calvinists have it wrong. God requires a pattern of good works, not sinless perfection (Rom. 2:5-8, which is not “hypothetical”; 1 Jn. 3:7, which also tells us not to be deceived).
- The primary purpose of Jesus’ death (and grace) was righteous living (Titus 2:11-14; Acts 3:26; Rom. 14:9; 2 Cor. 5:15; 1 Pet. 2:24). Notice that the first reference, Titus 2:11-14, is followed in verse 15 by an exhortation to Titus to teach this with authority.
- The Greek word translated “forgiveness” throughout Paul’s letters is aphesis, and it primarily means release. According to Luke 4:18, Jesus came to preach aphesis to the brokenhearted and the captives. Neither group needs forgiveness; they need release, one from pain and grief and the other from captivity.
- That same word, aphesis, is used to translate Jubilee (Lev. 25) and the 7-year “release” from slavery and debt (Deut. 15) in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures). There is no way that the apostle Paul, who often quoted the Septuagint, did not know this.
- Thus, Ephesians 1:7, a description of the atonement repeated in Colossians 1:14, says, “In him we have our ransom through his blood, the release/jubilee of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” In other words, when we read “forgiveness of sins” we should be thinking forgiveness and release from both the debt of sin and the slavery to sin.
An Outline of Galatians 5-6:
I will proceed as though Ephesians 2 & 5 and the consensus of those who received the faith once for all delivered by the apostles were not enough. I know that, by teaching the above, I am refuting a very popular and very entrenched theological system.
Galatians 5:16-18: There is a war with the flesh that we can win because we have the Holy Spirit and are not under the law. (Note that “the flesh” is “the body,” not “sinful nature.” “Sin in the flesh” is condemned (Rom. 8:3) and “done away with”—Rom. 6:6).
Galatians 5:19-21: Paul lists examples of works of the flesh and tells us that those why practice those things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:22-23: Paul lists examples of the fruit of living in the Spirit. He points out there is no law against these fruit, I assume to establish that the Spirit will fulfill the righteousness of the law without or having to keep the law, something expressly said in Romans 8:3-4.
Galatians 5:24: Paul tells us that to be Christian is to be overcoming the flesh. This, too, is said in Romans (8:13). In Romans 8:12-13 we are told that not to do this is to “die.” In Galatians 6:7, which we are about to outline, Paul says not to overcome the flesh is to “reap corruption.”
Galatians 6:1-6: Paul gives direction that overcoming the flesh, even when we have the Holy Spirit, requires helping one another to do so. If he wrote Hebrews, then he said it even more clearly in Hebrews 3:13 and 10:24-25.
Galatians 6:7-8: To think that we can proceed in the Christian life without “working out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Php. 2:12-13) is to mock God and to be deceived. If we neglect so great a salvation as is described in Ephesians 2:1-10 and Titus 2:11-14, and walk in the flesh instead, we will reap corruption rather than eternal life, which is rewarded to those who walk in the Spirit.
Galatians 6:9: Paul does not leave us wondering about the application of “sowing to the Spirit.” We must not grow weary in “doing good” if we want to reap eternal life.
Thus we see that the book most known for denying that works are necessary for receiving eternal life and inheriting the eternal kingdom actually teaches that they are necessary, just as the other books Martin Luther loved (Romans, Ephesians) do.
In another post, I addressed the fact that the apostle John uses “eternal life” more than any other apostle and uses it differently than the other apostles. I have written a short book that covers all these things called Rebuilding the Foundations.
The Rest of the Old, Old Story 