Two Thieves on Either Side of the Gospel

[banjo71]

The two thieves on either side of the Gospel are moralistic/legalistic people and hedonistic/relativistic people..



The moralistic understand Truth but not Grace.

The moralistics are like the modern day Pharisees who are well versed in the Scripture, often make calls on what's right and wrong, but don't accept the grace. Two things can result: a. The moralistic, unable to live up to his values, ends up hating himself, or b. The moralistic, able to live up to his values, prides in his own self-righteousness.



The hedonistic understands Grace but not Truth.

The hedonistic says God is love, they are very tolerant, accept every religion, say everybody gets to choose what is right or wrong, and that truth is relative, not absolute. Actually, these people end up in the moralistic realm of judgment too. They don't accept anyone who is not like they are to be speaking the right things.



The Gospel

Jesus Christ was said to be full of Grace AND Truth. The Gospel is understanding the truths of morality, of a total need for a Savior for the way we can't live up to the standard, AND grace, which is the total answer for our total need, ie grace thru Christ.



Where do you find yourself?



This post is for different people to see where they are with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.



Also, the Thievery going on is of inner security or fears: that Moralists are stealing the righteousness they think is theirs, by relying on self-righteousness to appease their insecurity and fear, and the Hedonists are stealing the security and peace they think is thiers by depending only on the presumption God doesn't punish sin, in order to appease their insecurity and fear. Both have or are rejecting Christ. (John 3:19 - And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.)



As a Christian we have the wonderful opportunity to repent and grow in grace and truth - the truth gives us reason to repent and the grace gives us the power to do that, thru Christ.

 

[aspen]

According to your dualistic framework, I am a hedonist.

I like to think of it differently, of course.

I believe that human beings were created by God to love - period.

Instead of sticking to what we were created to do; we decided to get into the business of determining the difference between good and evil - which is even more ridiculous than it sounds when you realize that A&E were placed in a perfect world and therefore had no need to identify evil.

Since the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil wasn't a magic tree, eating from it only bestowed a new responsibility onto A&E, not new skills. All A&E had to use was a primitive set of skills that divided the world into 'right' and 'wrong'. Instead of loving God and neighbor, A&E spent their time forming useless opinions about situations and people, compulsively. We have been futilely following their lead ever since.

It took Jesus coming to Earth, as our example, to teach us how to love again. Jesus told us not to judge - primarily because we do not have a clue how to do it; how could we? We are subject to time and space; we cannot see the future - therefore, we can only make guesses about what is good and evil and then, determine if we are correct in hindsight.

All we are required to do according to Jesus is to practice our sanctification - loving God and neighbor fully, until we regain our true humanity and purpose for living,

 

[banjo71]

According to your dualistic framework, I am a hedonist.

I like to think of it differently, of course.

I believe that human beings were created by God to love - period.

Instead of sticking to what we were created to do; we decided to get into the business of determining the difference between good and evil - which is even more ridiculous than it sounds when you realize that A&E were placed in a perfect world and therefore had no need to identify evil.

Since the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil wasn't a magic tree, eating from it only bestowed a new responsibility onto A&E, not new skills. All A&E had to use was a primitive set of skills that divided the world into 'right' and 'wrong'. Instead of loving God and neighbor, A&E spent their time forming useless opinions about situations and people, compulsively. We have been futilely following their lead ever since.

It took Jesus coming to Earth, as our example, to teach us how to love again. Jesus told us not to judge - primarily because we do not have a clue how to do it; how could we? We are subject to time and space; we cannot see the future - therefore, we can only make guesses about what is good and evil and then, determine if we are correct in hindsight.

All we are required to do according to Jesus is to practice our sanctification - loving God and neighbor fully, until we regain our true humanity and purpose for living,

Aspen,

I'm probably a moralist in the respect that I fear being called wrong, so I am anal about being right all the time - yet I burn with lust to be the hedonist!! Like the older son in the Prodigal Son parable. Jesus is working with me to learn how to trust again, and therefore learn how to love also (you're spot on - Jesus taught us how to love again - I'll just add this, by dissolving fear (Perfect love casts out all fear).