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Justification vs Salvation Christ said nothing about justification; he talked about getting saved. Paul said nothing about getting saved; he talked about justification. The difference is that Paul and all corrupt persons have an overwhelming need to justify their corruption. Sin is a conflict with the universe, which means all truth, life, and other persons. The only way that conflict can be corrected is by redefining the character of the perpetrators. Perhaps the most significant thing about sin is that it defines the perpetrators. The specific acts are finite, but definitions are infinite. What that means is that the sin can only be expected to never end until the perpetrators redefine themselves. Until then, they have to be dealt with as perpetual and unlimited sources of sin. A very important question is how do corrupt persons redefine themselves. Repentance is too vague to say it is a redefinition. Redefining is making a commitment and showing significant evidence of change. Only then can the victims expect an alleviation of their problems. (The ancient holocausts may have been a commitment to overcome sin, but crucifying Christ was a commitment to perpetrate more sin.) But corrupt persons attempt to reverse the truth rather than redefine themselves. They never have succeeded, but they mindlessly spend a large part of their time trying. Their attitude is that if some persons can view the sin as virtue, so can everyone else. What they don't understand is that pretending that the sin is virtue changes nothing about it. It is still a threat to everyone. Paul, being obsessed by that pretense, tries to use Christian theology for reversing the truth about the definition that goes with the guilt of sin. He calls that obsession "justification." He says his elites are justified by faith rather than works. In the world, every corrupt person is trying to justify sin, and the standard way of doing it is through power. Power is virtue, and powerlessness is sin, in the subconscious minds of corrupt persons. The way the world says it is "might makes right." Compare the goal which Christ described with the goal which Paul described. Christ said the goal is eternal life (Mat 25:46). It requires a relationship to other persons (Mat 19:16-25). Paul described the goal as justification (Gal 2:16). It involves changing God, so he no longer looks upon the sin (Rom 5:9,10). Paul's version does nothing to correct relations with the victims of the sin. The victims are going to be miserable, if they have to get along with Paul's persecuting elites who were supposedly justified through Christ's crucifixion. Is eternity supposed to be one big conflict between perpetrators and victims of sin? Christ said otherwise, and he said he was speaking for God.
Paul said, "If justice is available through the law, then Christ died to no purpose!" (Gal 2:21). That's like robbing a bank and saying, "If robbing a bank isn't virtue, then we robbed this bank for no purpose." The purpose of Christ's crucifiction was to show the truth about sin, not to make sin a virtue. Paul |