Truth or Honesty?

This is in reply to a poll post on youtube. the question we were to vote on was "salvation can NEVER be bought by our obedience. 

This is a christian channel

My reply follows:

 I could say the right words (after all I CAN read, you know), and the right words  are  indeed as the question puts, that  obedience can NEVER buy salvation.

OR 

I could speak honestly.

WHICH DO YOU WANT???

For it can't be both, for I am not spiritual enough to believe true doctrine honestly and show  it by living by it in love liberty and peace

BTW i am not the only legalist in the church who thinks he can and must buy salvation: i see it everywhere.

IOW i am largely convinced that if everyone here were honest they would  almost all disagree with the statement given.

Why?

If we are carnal in fruit we are carnal in mind and if carnal in mind then,  as the carnal mind regards the things of God as foolish, and free grace properly viewed  is the core of all spiritual truth, therefore  we WILL regard it as foolish. So  we are trying to buy our salvation with our "obedience, " and this for all our passion and words to the  contrary which God is not impressed by if he sees our hearts (ie what we REALLY think). And our hearts are  given away by  our spontaneous words and reactions

Thoughts on foot washing

The classic Biblical account of foot washing, the one appealed to to justify it in modern times is in John chapter 13:1-14.

I invite you to look it up now, befoer continuing

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as a sign of service and commanded each to to this to the other, also as a sign of service.

The point was that each should serve each other and, though not explicitly mentioned in this incident, to not lord it over the other as the pagans do

BUT, and I think this important 

foot washing was a relevant cultural practice back in the days of 1st century Israel and the Middle East.

The  culture of bible times in the Ancient Near East is completely foreign to ours, vastly different

people walked everywhere on dusty roads in sandles. Their feet got very dirty, and in arriving at one's destination having them washed would be a relief.

it is no longer so  at least in the urbanized west, not when we drive in an air conditioned cars, alight from the vehicle onto a clean pavement in our  leather shoes. No feet need washing by someone who has never done so in his life 

for us to take foot washing  on is a slavish legalism that has totally lost the significance  of the thing.

Put it this way,  if some legalist  wanted to wash my feet i would regard him as a foot fetishist and get out of there quick!!  The issue is service in a manner  that the person you would serve would find helpful relevant and  not indecent and intrusive, like suddenly wanting to wash his feet "just because they did it in the bible" 

it would be as indecent as putting your hand under the thigh of a person you were making a promise to would be these days but which was a ritual  of promise making in the days of Abraham  and the patriarchs  Genesis 24:2ff  and GEnesis 47:29.

cultural context and appropriateness for these times is UTTERLY RELEVANT .

the point of foot washing is SERVICE, not the culturally relevant form of a time long past  if it is not culturaly relevant now, and  indeed may be seen as either indecent or absurd.

this is something the slavish legalist, ever obsessed with the appearance and never the substance, miises completely

if i were a church member and needed help putting up a fence or some such, and asked for help to receive it, they that helped me would have  done the proper equivalent of washing my feet, something real and practical where the slavish rite of foot washing nowadays is not