LOVE ONLY GOD COMMAND the shema in an evangelical context
Many evangelicals teach that Christ’s doctrine of exclusive love for God implies
that salvation is by faith alone, “Everything we do is sinful because we cannot
love God alone. Only God’s grace can enable us to and we cannot have it unless
we accept the payment Jesus made to God to atone for our sins and earn salvation
for us. This tells us that unless we see that we can do nothing to be saved and
that faith that saves is a gift from God and that Jesus deserved salvation for
us we cannot be saved. We have to understand how sinful we are before we can
sincerely come to Jesus for the free salvation he offers. Roman Catholics
believe that venial sin does not stop you from being right with God and destined
for Heaven so this theology blocks you from properly accepting the salvation won
by Jesus.”
And “There can be no salvation for anybody that does not believe in God or in
the commandments of Jesus Christ.”
And “When we accept Jesus as saviour and ask him to help us do good works and to
save us from sin we are not really doing this unless we understand that the
Bible is the literal word of God and commands that we love God alone in the
strict sense and that is why everything we do is sinful and no good deed can
earn any reward from God. These truths are necessary for the faith that is
necessary for salvation.”
And “Anybody who does not believe in the Bible, in loving God alone, that people
are useless when it comes to genuine good and that Jesus earned salvation
vicariously for us is an enemy of right and wrong and cannot be saved for they
cannot see what they have to be saved from.”
And “Right and wrong cannot be based on human philosophy. The Roman Catholic
Church and any other Church that employs moral philosophy is doing great harm to
the faith by implying that we can know what is right and wrong without God. If
God who is goodness itself commands us never to kill babies that means we
believe goodness itself that cannot be changed makes this command. But if we
judge for ourselves without God that it is wrong to kill babies this is just our
opinion. If somebody says that the more babies you kill the better for it curbs
world population then you have nothing credible to say in reply. Nobody deserves
praise for doing what they think is right for thinking is dangerous and could go
one way or another. If we judge for ourselves we believe that it was unjust for
Jesus to pay the price for our sins for he was innocent. If we judge for
ourselves we will believe that nothing justifies hurting a child which insults
the Lord who has made fatal viruses that children are not immune to. We need to
have faith that God is looking after the world and in him to really believe in
being righteous. Only the good works of the true Christian deserve praise.
Unless you believe that loving God alone counts, and unless you believe you
cannot fulfil this law to any degree, and unless you realise that the only
solution is for Jesus to love God for you in your place you cannot be saved and
you do not have anything that deserves to be called morality. Christianity, when
expressed through evangelical (faith alone) theology, alone is true morality. To
pray for the success of other faiths, to give them money is to promote evil and
hypocrisy. Good is not good unless you really and truly believe in it and you
cannot do that without the true gospel of Jesus the Christ.”
The reason we need to think about what they are saying is that the commandment
does imply that faith alone salvation is true. This means that since you can be
saved once and for all because it is the only way for you always sin you can
commit murder and still go to Heaven even if you die unrepentant. What this
leads to is not morality but evil. No matter what evangelicals say about Jesus
paying for our sins and bearing their punishment this is still in practice
rewarding the sinner for sinning. It is evil to embrace such a faith for
anything that disrespects the human right to life is to be condemned.