"That no flesh should glory in His presence."

[musterion]

1 Cor 1:29

"Glory" means "boast, exult proudly."

If you are believing a gospel that requires you to obey [meaning "do spiritual works of righteousness"] in order to get salvation, earn salvation, keep salvation or prove your salvation, then while you will never admit this, you're looking forward to glorying before God about what you did to get into Heaven. YOU'LL HAVE TO.

Think about it. You'll HAVE to be able to boast at least a little in His presence. You'll HAVE to boast to Him about all the good works you did, if you're right that God will decide your eternity based on whether you obeyed Him well enough.

Whatever forms your personal obedience take doesn't matter. If you believe you're going to be judged based on your works, you automatically are saying you HAVE to offer God a list of good things you did that will document your righteousness and holiness and justify you being in His presence for ever.

And if you do happen to "make it," you certainly would have room for (at the very least) a quiet sense of pride for all eternity, precisely because God will have deemed you worthy after having worked hard enough to "make it."

Conversely, to believe the Gospel of the grace of God is to be humbled into the dust with every possible saving work of righteousness being not only worthless and filthy to God but blasphemous when set next to the Cross as the reason He should accept you.

Christ either paid for ALL of our sins without one exception, or He did not.

To obey/work to prove you are saved, or worthy of saving, proves you don't believe He paid it all, and that God requires something more than faith from you.

It's also why you'll drop straight into Hell if you die five seconds after reading this.

Better change your mind while you have time and breath. Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again the third day for your justification.

Forgiveness...justification...it's all covered. Nothing left that you CAN do or NEED to do except believe that.

That way, no glory goes to your flesh. It all goes where it should, to the Son and the Father.

 

[oatmeal]

Good call

Your verse brings to mind Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace are ye saved through faith (believing); and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

We have no right to boast of our salvation as if we earned even the smallest part of it, for the entire package of salvation was the work Jesus Christ in obedience to his Father's will and plan.

However we believe to receive that gift, which must be distinguished from your theme here.

We did not believe to earn it, that is impossible for us to do, but we did believe to receive the gift.

Our believing is indeed one of the requirements of receiving salvation/righteousness.

Romans 10:9-10

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Our believing to receive is not an act worthy of anyone's boasting.

We were dead in trespasses and sins, without God and without hope in this world

Ephesians 2:1-3,12

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:



In that situation all we could do was cry to God for help and realize that the two precepts of Romans 10:9,10 are true.