The Paradoxical Relationship Between Works Righteousness & Salvific Repentance

  1. The Gospel comes to us as a command. (I John 3:23, Acts 17:30)
  2. In order to avoid sinning, you must obey God by exhaustively, meticulously, & perfectly loving Him first, then all others, then yourself in that order in order.
  3. Ergo, to obey the command to repent of your works righteousness at its root & believe (1) you must comply with (2) or else..
  4. You have sinned so that righteousness may abound (Romans 6:1)
  5. Sin is, by definition, Works Righteousness, insofar as it’s a never ending struggle to merit God’s grace & goodness (Romans 7)
  6. Ergo, if you don’t comply with 2 in order to repent of your rooted works righteousness, then you are refusing to lay down your works righteousness while trying to repent.
  7. That’s why regeneration precedes faith (Romans 8:5 - 11) 
  8. So when you put it all together, God must restrain us from failing to exhaustively, meticulously, & perfectly love Him first &tc when it comes to this issue or else we would never be able to exercise saving faith & repentance.   If not, we’d surely take it up again at its root.  

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