Posted on 09/02/2017 7:03:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Salvation comes through faith and confession. You are saved FOR good works, but you don't have to perform works. The works are the treasure you store up in Heaven. Who wants to go to Heaven broke? If you truly love the Lord, works will follow. If they are empty works, they don't even count. The thief went to Heaven with Jesus just because he confessed Christ, but had he lived, he would have been expected to get baptized and do something for Christ. I can't imagine a person that is saved not wanting to do something to glorify his Savior. If you don't, I have to question your salvation and if you even understand what Christ did for you. Confessing Christ is NOT fire insurance. It calls for you to love Him as He loved you. The "pew sitters" left behind will have to face the Beast and get their heads removed to show their love for Christ. Wouldn't it be easier to pay someones light bill or mow their lawn while they recoup from surgery? Maybe help a lady with her groceries or fix a child's bike? We come to the Lord as we are, but He expects us to change. It's called sanctification. If you think you can have an experience some night with God and stay on your booze and dope while living with your girlfriend, or worse yet your boyfriend, you didn't understand the covenant you made with Him. You are expected to leave the world behind and live for Him. That requires some works. If you confess Jesus is Lord with your mouth, I believe you are saved, but if you don't leave the world behind, He make take you home early.
Acts 16:27-31 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Romans 5:1-2 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Romans 10:9-13 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Also, Romans 3-4, Galatians 2-3, Ephesians 2.
And Jesus had this to say about faith saving.
John 3:3-8 Jesus answered him,“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:14-18 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 6:40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
WRONG.....
AMEN!!!!!
Let us see: Ten virgins, five wise, five foolish. Yeah, that fits.
>>We better hope most Muslims don’t understand clearly what Islam and the Koran really teaches...
The irony is that they know their Koran better because it teaches that the balance of their good works vs their bad works is essential for salvation and simple faith means nothing.
As long as a Christian has a saving faith in the completed work of Christ on the cross, then all their good works are to the glory of God (and not for salvation) anyway.
NOT NEEDED FOR SALVATION.
ARE THE NATURAL RESULT OF BEING SAVED.
If good deeds are required for salvation why did Jesus need to die on the Cross? Just start doing good deeds.
I do not work to be saved, I’m saved and as a byproduct I can work.
There is, however, an apparent distinction between works.
Guess what is the work that is specified? The one that matters for salvation?
John 6:29 “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.”
All others, if they are genuine, arise because of obedience to the Holy Spirt whom God gives to all the Saints.
... So here’s the thing, when someone “works” in their own strength rather than from obedience those works may seem good but they are counterfeit. Which is to say that I’m persuaded that these are the works which will be burned up when tested by fire (wood, hay and stubble).
To be in that judgment where your works are judged IS to be among the saved. Works that are judged are works that were done because of aforementioned fact and are not the “work of God” (rather that one is always reckoned imperishable).
The imperishable are those which God prepared in advance for us to walk in them, these are matters of obedience.
The perishable, as I’ve indicated, I’m here saying are the things we just did. As an old preacher was to have once asked a young pup: “Were you sent or did you just went?” The imperishable is the former (the “sent”), the perishable the latter (the “just went”).
Now if blood bought saints can have works that will not survive judgment, and scripture plainly says it will happen no matter how I try to figure things, then what of the unsaved? What of those who fool men, and even themselves, that they are Christians?
Certainly they can ape works like those given to the Saints that they should walk in them, so of course the can counterfeit fleshly works too! They may even excel at these.
Remember that Scripture says that faith without works is dead. But what are the works approved of? Those arising from obedience if I’m not far off! So faith where the “saint” does not obey the Holy Spirit is dead.
This would include openly carnal Christians but need not be limited to them. Stealth carnality is what I’m suggesting. But that is for Christ to judge, isn’t it?
... and of course someone who is unsaved, they do not obey the Holy Spirit in anything while they remain so, for they do not have Him that they could obey Him.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
NOTICE it is in past tense.
Forty four years ago the shackles of LEGALISM were broken over me from a group which required works, works, and more works. I tasted the Liberty we have in Christ Jesus.
My mom, who spent fifty years in that church, was on her death bed, she cried to one of her preachers that she was afraid SHE HAD NOT DONE ENOUGH to be saved.
They assured her she “HAD DONE ENOUGH!”
I wanted to scream! “IT IS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR CHRIST, IT IS WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE FOR YOU that saves you!”
The argument in this post is not what most people believe in any way.
Those who say that faith saves are correct. Those that say that Grace saves are correct. Those that say the Blood of Christ saves are correct. I do not know of anyone who says that works save.
Now, the above is basic and true but there is so much more. What are works? Works are what follows people of faith. It is works that show faith.
So many people believe that they can go to Christ with their sins and ask to be saved with no effort on their part and be saved, but they are wrong.
Works save nobody. Works however are important, how you might ask. If you don’t have works then you don’t have faith. James tells us that faith without works is dead. He also says that if you show him your works he will show you your faith.
Faith is a requirement to be eligible for the Grace that is freely given to those who ask. Placing your sins on the altar of God is the work of our lives. Before Christ people used to place animals on the altar to remind them that one day Christ would come and place himself on the Altar and pay for our sins like we were paying for them with animal sacrifices. We don’t do animal sacrifice anymore, we put our sins away on the altar, we give them away to receive the gift that The Savior wants so give us. We don’t just stop sinning, we feel sorrow for the sins we have heaped upon the Lords back that He had to pay for. So, does sorrow save? No. Sorrow is evidence however of repentance which is evidence of faith. While none of those save, saving doesn’t happen without them.
I’m not Catholic but I have to believe that is what they mean when they talk about works.
Perhaps a good Catholic could school us all on this point.
I’ll put my flame resistant suit on now and see what others have to say.
Yep. We don’t surprise God one jot. His preparing them beforehand provides the proof that we were obeying Him when we obeyed Him.
Many years ago I dreamed that I’d entered His presence and with only He, the Son, and the Holy Spirit there (or perchance it would be more accurate to say with God there I wasn’t aware of anyone else) and I was given a bible.
I said, IIRC, something about an old friend, but when I opened it it didn’t begin with Genesis 1:1 but with something about me (just what I cannot recall) and my response was to fall down and worship.
Maybe what it was, was a statement of what He had prepared beforehand for me to do? Along with that time I just woke up laughing hysterically but have NO IDEA WHY that would be the dream I’d like to know more about. If only out of curiosity.
Is your tagline configured correctly, FRiend?
Yeah, these threads are a mess. So much endless nullifying the grace of God with the fatal “buts”. God has given us awesome “but nows” that don’t stimulate religious flesh, wherefore they are resisted!
To your point:
“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is DEAD IN VAIN.” KJV
“I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ DIED FOR NO PURPOSE.” ESV
Galatians 2:21
“Faith without works is dead.” “IF you remain in the Faith...” We can quote verses back and forth until the cows come home. Protestant here, but the more I see the gross excesses of some preachers - I saw the enormous mansion of a certain mega-preacher from Houston - the more I appreciate the Catholic perspective which basically says “If you claim to be a Christian, then your walk must match your talk.” Multiple theology degrees here, including earned Ph.D.
**...a figure, not literal.**
“....the days of Noah,....eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 1Peter 3:20,21
For without the resurrection, baptism would be only vanity.
“Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” 1Cor. 15:29
The “dead” in that verse is Jesus Christ, the subject of the previous 28 verses, who, of course is not dead, praise God!
I am posting from a device with a mousepad, my thumb must have hit it. Thanks.
Can we get rid of that word 'unsaved'? People can became done and undone, happy and unhappy, employed and unemployed, healthy and unhealthy, ambitious and unambitious.... etc. etc. etc. But one thing that a person can't become 'un' (or lose) is their salvation. Yes I know that many here will argue that point but scripture points to the obvious.... once Christ saves an individual, that person can never be plucked from His hand. There is no such thing as 'unsaved'. Very simply, there is the 'saved', and there is the 'lost'.
Happy to be of service.
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