Quote:
Originally Posted by Scribe
"In the day that God judges the secrets of men according to my gospel through Jesus Christ" Paul Romans 1:16.
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I was about to suggest you had really lost it. But I eventually found your verse; Romans
2:16. But what do you think that means? What translation are you using? That is an entirely different series of words than in all others I have found. For example, the NIV:
This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
First, your version seems to say that God judges "according to my gospel" whereas the NIV more clearly puts the judging in context of "through Jesus Christ" first, then Paul adds that it is consistent with the gospel he is preaching. He is not saying that God is acting according to Paul's gospel, but that Paul has correctly understood how God will judge and has included that in his gospel.
But your snippet is out of context. In context, excluding the parenthetical portion in verses 14 and 15, Paul says:
For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.... This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
So the whole of Paul's writing here can be summarized into the little phrase (which has already been misread in earlier posts) of being doers of the word and not hearers only. And while Paul says a lot of truly wonderful things, they are too often taken as substitutes for the gospel that Jesus spoke. I hate that some will take what I am going to say as an endorsement of a particular ministry that wants to ignore all of scripture outside of the 4 gospels, but here goes. The gospel is primarily found in the "gospels." You can find a lot of commentary in the other NT books, but the source is the gospels. When we read Paul and determine that there are a lot of "spiritual" things that have to be done to move through the various stages of spiritual growth, we are misreading Paul. He is not adding to the needs. He is explaining what is happening spiritually when you actually do and obey. But the doing and obeying is in relation to what Jesus says. What God has said.
Just like we need James to remind us that if we are not doing, the spiritual is just a farce, we need Paul to remind us that there are spiritual things that underpin the doing. Paul does not say to ignore doing and instead be spiritual. But that is what Nee taught, and what Lee taught. These are your "watchman" and your "witness" who lead you. Yes they lead you away from the "simplicity of the gospel." They lead you away from doing and into being spiritual. And whether they lead you to this "writing" thing I cannot say. But it would not be an unreasonable extension of their impractical, uber-spiritual worldview that requires no foundation of doing real life, through the Spirit, in a righteous manner.
Yes, sanctification, transformation, glorification, etc., are wonderful things. But they are not rungs of a ladder that we willfully climb. They are spiritual realities that occur as we deepen our love and our faith by living and doing according to that faith and love. This notion of writing, and all the LRC focus on uber-spiritual "activities" is a distraction from the real Christian job of living and obeying. To the extent that they have correctly understood and identified spiritual realities, they have cheapened them by thinking that they can pursue those realities without undertaking the activities of obedience and faith in their daily walk in the world.