{"id":2042,"date":"2012-08-14T16:11:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T00:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/?p=2042"},"modified":"2012-08-14T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T00:11:59","slug":"everything-in-religion-depends-on-the-nature-of-the-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2012\/08\/14\/everything-in-religion-depends-on-the-nature-of-the-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything in religion depends on the nature of the start"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cEverything in religion depends on the nature of the start. You may start <i>\u2018out of faith\u2019<\/i>, from an utter abandonment to God, and an entire dependence on Him, and in this case a righteousness is possible which you will recognize as <i>\u2018righteousness of God\u2019<\/i>, God\u2019s own gift and work in you; or you may start <i>\u2018out of works\u2019<\/i>, which really means in independence of God, and try to work out, without coming under obligation to God, a righteousness of your own, for which you may claim His approval, and in this case, like the Jews, all your efforts will be baffled. Your starting point is unreal, impossible; it is not truly <i>\u2018out of works\u2019<\/i>, but only <i>\u2018as out of works\u2019<\/i>; it is an idea of your own, not a truth on which life can be carried out, that you are in any sense independent of God. Such an idea, however, rooted in the mind, may effectually pervert and wreck the soul, by making the Divine way of attaining righteousness and life offensive to it; and this is what happened to the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>James Denney, \u201cSt. Paul\u2019s Epistle to the Romans,\u201d in <i>The Expositor\u2019s Greek Testament<\/i>, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 668. Phrases like this, <i>\u2018in italics\u2019<\/i> represent my translation from the Greek.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"don_sig2\" border=\"0\" alt=\"don_sig2\" src=\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/don_sig21.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"50\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEverything in religion depends on the nature of the start. You may start \u2018out of faith\u2019, from an utter abandonment to God, and an entire dependence on Him, and in this case a righteousness is possible which you will recognize as \u2018righteousness of God\u2019, God\u2019s own gift and work in you; or you may start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[131,69],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-wW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2043,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions\/2043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}