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It's good to not entwine, entangle, mix, confused Law and Gospel. BOTH are true. BOTH apply all the time. But they are not the same thing. Yes, we are to be His friends.... yes He LOVES His enemies and died for them. Yes, we are to be PERFECT.... yes He promises to forgive us ("77 times 7") when we come with repentance and faith. Law and Gospel are both true, neither deminishes the other. Again, kind of a red flag comes up in the mind as people try to minimize one in light of the other. Let Law be Law - and accomplish it's task. Let Gospel be Gospel - and accomplish it's task (they "meet" at the Cross).
If we summarise the gospel as being "we sinned and deserve damnation, Jesus died and paid the price for our sins, so now we can go to heaven if we accept the sacrifice Jesus made" it doesn't work without the law. The reason we sin is that we break the law. Jam 2:10 makes it clear that if we keep the whole law but stumble in one area we are guilty of everything, but even so if we could keep the whole law why would we need a savior at all? The two have to go hand in hand - the law shows that we can't live up to the standard God expects, the gospel then gives us an alternative to eternal damnation for failing to keep to the requirements of the law. As you say they meet at the cross. I'm not looking to diminish one over the other, just looking to say that in theory if we could keep the whole of the law we wouldn't need grace because we would never have sinned. If we could achieve that then the gospel, to us, would be the exact opposite of Eph 2:8-9 in that we would have earned a place in heaven through our own works having lived a sinless life.
Got to run (work pesters). Good discussion! You are making me think - and I appreciate that.
It's getting late here and the comfort of bed is calling me. I too am enjoying the discussion, it's good to thrash out ideas and see where they stand and where they struggle. It's the whole "iron sharpens iron" thing