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NASB | Romans 4:5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 4:5 But to the one who does not work [that is, the one who does not try to earn his salvation by doing good], but believes and completely trusts in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited to him as righteousness (right standing with God). |
Subject: confused |
Bible Note: "It's a method of interpretation. It is not always agreed upon, and certainly has detractors within Evangelical Christianity regarding some of its' tenets, specifically water baptism, and the start of the Church, and the nation of Israel vs. the Body of Christ." I am curious as what you consider to be the differences in water baptism. My church baptizes with water, too. Having grown up in a dispensational background, I will say directly that my biggest problem with dispensationalism is the "that's not for us" approach. We read the hard sayings of Jesus in the Gospels, and the dispensationalist often says, "He's preaching Law; not for us!" The Old Testament becomes nothing but distant history, because basically everything between Genesis 4 and Malachi is "for Israel." Law is falsely set against gospel, when there are elements of law AND gospel in both Testaments. Some (not all) will go so far as to insist that in the Old Testament people were saved by the Law, but now we are saved by faith in Christ. I can't even begin to list the passages in Scripture that contradict such a view. Furthermore, as I stated before, dispensationalism didn't even emerge until the 19th century, and even then under dubious circumstances. That does not automatically make it wrong, but one has to wonder how all of the excellent and spiritually-gifted teachers of God's word from the death of the apostles to Darby missed such a key understanding of Scripture. I think one has to seriously weigh anything novel that comes down the pike almost two thousand years after the church was established, because to accept it means that God allowed the church as a whole to be blinded to the truth for century upon century, to say that the greatest men of God, led by the Spirit for over 1800 years, didn't "get it." Seems very far-fetched.... There is a sense in which God has future plans for a partially-hardened Israel once He has completely grafted in the Gentiles He will regenerate (Romans 11 gives us an indication of this), but there are many passages which clearly show that the church is a breaking down of barriers between God's OT people and the Gentile believers (Ephesians 2:11-21; Galatians 3:28-29; Romans 11 with the image of believing Israelites and Gentile olive shoots partaking of one root system). To draw two completely separate tracks for Jews and Gentiles is to create many more contradictions than it seems to solve, in my opinion. --Joe! |