The Law of Moses was never what most people think it was. Indeed, “law” is a very bad translation, given the implications of what it means in English. It’s far better to use the word “covenant.” Equally important is that the Covenant never meant what Judaism claims, either. The legalism of the Talmud bears only a superficial resemblance to the Covenant.
And there is no law in New Testament teaching, either. The Covenant was never hard and fast; even when written in stone, it was meant to guide, not restrain. It could never hold you back from sin; that required faith and spiritual birth. The Covenant was a representation, a manifestation, of God’s will for humanity. It was not in itself His divine will, as that cannot be put into words. The divine moral character of God is His will for us, and He still lives to breathes life into that will. Anytime you put that into words, it will never be the thing itself, only a representation of Him within a particular context. That’s the same with the New Testament.
Anytime you see or hear legalistic uses of the New Testament, put some distance between yourself and the people involved. It’s bad religion. It’s not necessarily bad people, but it’s bad religion. The New Testament message is the Person of Jesus Christ, and He is the final and ultimate revelation of the Father. The New Testament writing is about Christ, but is not Christ in itself. He is the New Testament; don’t confuse the documents with the Person.
When I discuss the gospel message with people outside the Covenant, I always emphasize the Lordship of Christ. It’s all about bowing the knee in humble repentance before Him. The people who can actually receive that message are likely to experience spiritual birth. Everyone else will need to hear it some more, but more importantly, they’ll need to see it.
You can probably find some discussion of something called “Lordship Salvation” as a particular theological point of debate. The nit-picking details are not important; it’s an artificial debate. You cannot make Jesus Lord without faith. His lordship is faith. But the primary message of the gospel is His lordship; faith is what God gives people in order to receive that message. Unless the Father awakens your faith, the message means nothing to you. You cannot separate lordship from faith, but you also cannot preach faith to people whose spirits remain dead.
It goes back to the very moment of the Fall. Satan himself chose to seize some of the glory for himself. The heart of the Fall is the temptation to seize divine glory for ourselves, to become our own deities through our reasoning capabilities. The restoration to Eden requires the death of our fleshly nature, and the fleshly nature is rebellion against divine revelation. If you do not bow the knee to Him, you cannot return to the Garden.
Faith does not come from us. It can arise in our souls only by the miracle of God’s touch. There is no way to put that in words, but we can depict something of how it works by using parables. In that sense, we end up having an argument with a lot of people who claim “salvation by faith.” What they are actually saying is that you must somehow generate faith from yourself, that faith can be born in the intellect.
But the human mind is fallen, and your fallen nature is incapable of faith. The intellect cannot be perfected; it can be redeemed only when it bows the knee to the heart of conviction. You cannot arrive at faith through reason. Anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus (“Christian”) because it made sense to them is lying. I’m not saying that don’t belong to Jesus, but that they are deeply mistaken about what’s involved. They will always do a very bad job of following Him because they aren’t aware of their utter dependence on Him. They’ll keep coming up with their own answers.
“Saved by faith” means making Him Lord. The word “faith” means feudal commitment. The whole point of the Forbidden Fruit was making humans their own lords. When people are in control of any part of religion, it’s bad religion. Let nobody stand between you and the Savior.
“Anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus (“Christian”) because it made sense to them is lying.”
I tend to be sympathetic towards those folks (not that you aren’t, but I am just speaking of my own sentiments). They may not have the right language to express how they do apprehend it, so they fall back on the rational explanation of things because that’s what would communicate it best. Internally, I would think it does make a certain kind of sense, although I wouldn’t call it a rational type of sense.
Context is everything. I had a specific person in mind as the model for that statement about them lying. Still, claiming reason does not make them bad people, just badly misinformed. They aren’t actually following Christ, but reason.