There are three salvation paths in Christianity, which are:
1. Strictly follow the Law of Moses to the last word. (Ex: Jewish Christians)
2. Accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, have blind faith in him and receive salvation by doing good deeds. (Ex: Catholics, Protestants, Mormons etc)
3. Abandon the Law, put your old self to death and live your new life in Christ and receive salvation through his grace and not by doing works of the Law. (Ex: Valentinian Christians)
The latter Christians (Valentinian) are preordained to be saved and the former two category of Christians will be judged according to the works of the Law and Faith respectively. So in the end all three category of Christians who have succeeded in their respective paths will receive the salvation in the end with the only difference being some will receive a higher salvation than others while others will receive a lower one. (Excerpt of Theodotus).
What many Christians, irrespective of the sect they belong to are not realizing is that irrespective of which ever salvation path you take the basic message is simply you cannot sin as a Christian.
Just because you have abandon the Law and have become free from all bondage and death it doesn't necessarily mean that you can start sinning now as much as you want, believing that Christ is going to forgive all your sins anyway as he has promised us having no responsibility on your shoulders what so ever. No, The Gospel of Philip is quite clear that,
Those who think that they will die first and then raise are in error if they do not receive the resurrection while they live when they die they receive nothing.- Gospel of Philip
The third salvation path preached by the great doctor of the church Saint Paul of Tarsus is not an easy path and his letters were not definitely written to be read by every nut job in the world. Saint Paul wrote his letters to matured Christians who were already sincere followers of Christ and he wanted to raise them to a all new higher level by preaching the good news of his Gospel. Not understanding this, atheists and many of his detractors seeing the contradictions between his teachings and the teachings of Jesus Christ start yelling to the world that Saint Paul was a false apostle and start doubting him.
Jesus Christ gave different teachings to different people according to the measure of faith one possessed with in himself. Atheists and unstable men not understanding this come to the stubborn conclusion that scriptures are contradictory and declare that Saint Paul was a false apostle. They cannot see beyond those contradictions the beautiful harmony of the truth that both Paul's teachings and Jesus teachings convey the same message since they lack wisdom which was warned by Simon Peter long time ago.
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
- II Peter 3:15-16
Saint Paul won out against Simon Peter and Jesus's brother, James because Gentile Christians were quickly able to grasp his message and soon his version of Christianity spread out like wild fire and conquered the whole world. If Jewish Christians and atheists are jealous of it and can not tolerate the success of Saint Paul and if you want to detract him by saying the worst things about him, you can go ahead and do it by all means and I'll leave the judgement to Christ.
The third path which is salvation through grace compels one to give up all forms of boasting and lead a simple life in Christ. It sounds easy but implementing it is hard and it is one of the reasons why such a character has to come by nature and not by doing good deeds i.e. one needs to have a pure heart by nature to be above sin and lead a sinless existence. Experience shows that the other two paths are far more easier to follow than this one and it is definitely not for everyone.
So whichever category you fall into as a Christian there can be no excuse for your sins and there is no free lunch for receiving redemption, anyone who is believing otherwise is basically destroying himself.
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