My sentiment is Biblically correct and you are on dangerous ground to say that you don't have to have Faith in Christ to be saved.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
First of all I have NEVER said that one doesn't have to have faith in Christ to be saved. Quite the opposite, in fact.
You, however, don't get to define what the word faith means. I, on the other hand, have presented what is at the very least biblical evidence if not outright proof that the book of Romans, a book divinely inspired by God Himself, defines faith as belief. If you want to have a different definition then I can't stop you but simply showing up to tell me that you're right and that I'm dangerously wrong isn't going to convince anyone, most especially me. I suggest that you make an actual argument rather than relying simply on boldly restating your position.
I haven't placed myself under the Law in the slightest.
Saying it doesn't make it so. The degree to which you believe that good works are required for any aspect of your standing before God is the degree to which you have, in fact, placed yourself under the law, whether you acknowledge it or not. That is not my opinion, thus the use of the phrase "in fact". Words means thing and ideas have consequences.
Worshipping the God of the Bible is NOT the same as placing yourself under the Law.
I never ever suggested otherwise. What in the world did I say that would have led you to make such a comment?
That's a real question. I can't imagine what I could possibly have said that could have engendered such a reaction.
I suspect, but could be wrong, that the problem here is semantic in nature.
Define "Worshiping God".
He is the means of Salvation. I do trust God, which is why I Worship Him. Of course we crucify the flesh, daily, but not for Salvation, because of Salvation.
The point I am making is both are accomplished in the same way. The same Spirit that saves is the One Who sanctifies and by the same method - belief. You cannot live a sanctified life via the flesh. YOU cannot live a sanctified life at all! Christ living His life through you is sanctification.
I already understand everything you are saying and I agree, but I strongly disagree with you saying that you don't have to have Faith in Jesus Christ to be saved.
Well, then we are in complete agreement because I never said that you don't have to have faith in Jesus Christ to be saved. That would be stupidity.
That's the issue here. It's by Faith YES in Christ and His Sacrifice. Question: WHO is the Sacrifice for our sins? Answer: Jesus Christ. You MUST have Faith in HIM to be saved AND that He died on the cross and and rose from the dead, shedding His blood as a Sacrifice for our sins. It's not JUST the Cross, it's the person of Christ because HE is our Sacrifice.
Galatians 2:16
Knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the law, but
by the
faith of
Jesus Christ, even we have believed
in Jesus Christ, that we might be
justified by the
faith of
Christ, and not
by the works of the law: for
by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified.
Galatians 3:26
For ye are all the children of God
by faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 3:15
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through
faith which is
in Christ Jesus.
As stated, I agree with every syllable of this. You keep capitalizing the word "Faith" and so are almost certainly using that word to mean something other than what everyone else on planet Earth, including the biblical authors, mean when they use that word.
Faith is belief. Saving faith is belief in certain specific things. In times past, salvation was granted to those who mixed faith with good works (James 2). Now it is by faith alone apart from works (Romans 4). When the fullness of the gentiles has come in and God ends this dispensation and turns back again to Israel, it will go back to requiring both faith and good works.
This single point alone is positive proof that faith cannot be about good works, otherwise, salvation by faith "apart from works" would be a contradiction.
When reading this post through, it occurred to me that I should clarify something here....
I do not want to leave the impression that I believe that faith is merely an intellectual exercise. It is not. Faith is dependence upon God but you cannot trust someone further than you know him and so biblical faith is based on biblical facts and it is when these biblical facts become something more in us than mere pieces of biblical trivia in our minds and becomes something that we are certain of down deep in our souls that it stops being an intellectual exercise and becomes true biblical faith.
Not even close. Submission to God in Faith is NOT Works, it's Faith. Faith results in works, but Faith is NOT the works. Faith is Trusting the Lord, to the point of submission to His will as these men did. That doesn't mean perfection or works to obtain Salvation.
Hebrews 10:38
Now the just shall live
by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
Hebrews 11:4
By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain
Hebrews 11:5
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death
Hebrews 11:7
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as ye
Hebrews 11:8
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
This is a dispensational error that you are making. It makes no sense to be a Mid-Acts dispensationalist and then apply books of the bible in a manner consistent with Acts 2 Dispensationalism or with systems that aren't dispensational at all. The book of Hebrews was not written to you. It was written to believing Jews, thus the name "Hebrews". You are not a Jew of any sort. The book was written to Kingdom believers, not to members of the Body of Christ and as such does not apply to you in this direct of a manner. When you are reading the New Testament, you have to remember who is writing and who is being written too. Everything from Hebrews on through Revelation is all terrific stuff that is very profitable from various perspectives and for various reasons but it is all someone else's mail and has to be read in that light. A failure to do so results in the error you are making here. Specifically, mixing faith with good works, which is not required either for your salvation nor can it result in your sanctification. Quite the contrary, in fact. Your attempts to do and to be better, hobble your walk with Christ and tacitly ignore the biblical fact that you are identified in Christ and cannot be better than you already are.
Put another way, attempting to do good works for sanctification sake, rather than simply resting on the biblical fact of your righteousness in Him, is the opposite of crucifying your flesh daily. It is resurrecting your flesh daily!
We are Saved UNTO good works, NOT because of Good works. I do not Preach works for Salvation. The works we do after Salvation are for Rewards, not Salvation.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
As I said in my previous post, it could well be that most of our disagreement is semantic rather than substantive in nature so I caution against taking too much offense until we graduate to a point in the discussion where we've ironed out just what we each mean by the words we are using.
I completely agree that we are indeed saved unto good works. Good works are just that, good! I am not suggesting otherwise.
II Thessalonians 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish [strengthen] you in every good word and work.
What I am suggesting, indeed more than suggesting, I'm telling you that whatever good works you perform do not alter, enhance, maintain, sustain or in any other way effect your position before (in) God.
“To preach devotion first, and blessing second, is to reverse God’s order, and preach law, not grace. The Law made man’s blessing depend on devotion; Grace confers undeserved, unconditional blessing: our devotion may follow, but does not always do so,—in proper measure.” - Romans, Verse by Verse, Wm. R. Newell
"Have we been afraid to really believe God? Have some even been afraid to allow others to really believe Him? We must never forget that “God’s ways are not always man’s ways. To some men, constant peril is the only spur to action, and many religions and psychologies are dependent on fear to keep their disciples in line. Fear, too, has a place in Christianity, but God has higher and more effective motivations than fear, and one of these is love. Often fear after a while produces only numbness, but love thrives on love. To promise a man the certainty of his destiny may seem, on the human level, like playing with fire; but this leaves God out of the picture. Those who have the deepest appreciation of grace do not continue in sin. Moreover, fear produces the obedience of slaves; love engenders the obedience of sons” (J. W. Sanderson, Jr.).
God does know all things ahead of time and I am not a Calvinist.
John 21:17
And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
That verse does not teach that God knows everything in the sense that the doctrine of omniscience does. As I said, God knows all things that He wants to know and is able to find out anything else so long as it is knowable.
We know from simple logic that God does not know the unknowable. That's a simple, by definition, piece of thinking. One might want to argue about whether there is any such thing as the unknowable but that's a different discussion. To whatever degree there are things that are unknowable, God does not know them, by definition.
As for things that are knowable, we know with certainty that God does not know everything because He Himself says so....
- They "burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak nor did it come into My mind" Jer. 19:5
- they "cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin" Jer. 32:35
- they "burn their sons and their daughters in the fire [to sacrifice them], which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart" Jer. 7:3.
- God said to Abraham, "now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me" Gen. 22:12
- "the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name" Gen. 2:19
- "there He tested them and said, 'If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God... I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians' " Ex. 15:25-26
- "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not" Ex. 16:4
- "And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not" Deut. 8:2
- "the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart" Deut. 13:3;
There are literally dozens more such passages throughout the bible. The idea that God knows every single thing is simply not a biblical doctrine. The doctrine was imported into Christianity by Augustine in the 4th century from the Classics (i.e. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, etc.) which Augustine intentionally and openly interpreted the bible in light of. A fact of history which is not in dispute, by the way. Look it up for yourself if you doubt me.
I highly disagree. Foreknowledge is taught throughout the Bible, but not the Calvinist view. So is Predestination, but not the Calvinist view. We are Predestinated According to Foreknowledge.
Romans 8:29
For whom he did
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
1 Peter 1:2
Elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
Acts 2:23
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
There are things that God foreknows but that is not what the doctrine is about. The use of the word "foreknowledge" is not an endorsement of the idea that God knows every detail of what will happen in the future. It's not even an argument for that. There are things that God has predestined and there are things that He foreknows, but that is a very long way from a doctrine that teaches the every single detail of existence was predestined or that it is foreknown.
Original Sin is taught in the Bible:
Romans 5:12
Wherefore, as
by one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin;
and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned:
1 Corinthians 15:22
For as
in Adam all die, even so
in Christ shall
all be made alive.
Did you read Ezekiel 18 or did you just ignore me?
Neither of those passages teach the doctrine of original sin. If you think they do there are two and only two possibilities.
1. You do not understand what the doctrine of Original Sin teaches.
2. You are reading the doctrine into those texts.
It could be a bit of both.
God is just! Therefore, the doctrine of Original Sin is false. So says God Himself in Ezekiel 18!
I agree for the most part with you on the TULIP doctrines, except maybe one of two.
None of them, not even one or two, can stand for one second if God can change in ANY WAY whatsoever. The entire Calvinist system is based on that single premise.
John 1:14 And the Word BECAME flesh and dwelt among us....
We would vastly disagree on a wide array of Doctrines.
We cannot both be right. One (or both) of us is wrong.
How would you go about evaluating one doctrinal system vs. another?
There's a whole list of various doctrines that Christians have debated over the centuries...
Do you have to have good works?
Do you have to get water baptized?
Can one lose their salvation?
Are miracles for today?
Will we suffer through all or part of the tribulation or be raptured out before it begins?
Should we observe the sabbath?
Should we tithe?
etc.
There are well meaning Christians on both sides of such controversies and they cannot all be correct. How can we know who is right and who is wrong? Can we know? Can we even have any confidence about being more likely to be right? If so, how?
I struggled for a long time over this exact issue. My entire youth was spent wondering why the church I attended taught one thing while the church that was literally across the parking lot from my church taught things that were sufficiently different to justify having two completely separate congregations in two full sized church buildings, less than two hundred yards from each other, where no one from either church knew anyone from the other. Across and down the street a ways there was a third church and half a mile down the road was a fourth and between my church and my house, there where probably a dozen or more churches that all taught different stuff. This bugged the crap out of me through my teenage years!
Do you spend any time watching "Christian" television? How many different teachers are there who's head would explode before accepting 10% of Les Feldick's doctrine (i.e. his distinctive doctrines)?
Why is Les any more right than Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer?
Is it just personal preference? Does it just come down to whichever teacher tickles our ear in the most delightful way or is there an objective means by which a doctrinal system can be evaluated?
What if there was a teaching that clearly answered all the above controversies while remaining entirely biblical and completely rational and allowed anyone to read any passage of the bible and take it to mean what it plainly states and at the same time leaving them with no problem texts that must be interpreted to mean something other than the plain reading would seem to be communicating?
Do you suppose that if God came down and we asked Him to give such a teaching that He could do so? God doesn't have problem texts for His doctrine, right? Indeed, if such a teaching exists, wouldn't it be in the bible already?
I submit to you that such a teaching does exist and that it is not only in the bible but that it is "nut-shelled" in one single verse!
Imagine that! One single verse taken at totally its face value with no goofy interpretation or even any need to references the original languages or anything like that at all, that can resolve all these various seemingly unrelated doctrinal debates and, on top of that, leave you with no problem texts and in a state where you can simply read the bible for yourself and understand it by virtue of having simply read it.
I cannot think of a more eloquent argument for any systematic theology than that! Can you?
This is what Bob Enyart's "The Plot" is all about. It is, very simply, the most important theology book that has been written in centuries, if not millennia. In short, and speaking in general terms, if you haven't read The Plot, you don't understand the bible.
Interesting that you are a Mid Acts Dispensationalist, because so am I, but we are vastly different in core Doctrines other than that.
The fact that you accept that the Body of Christ began in Acts 9 with the conversion of Paul means that you are already 99% of the way there. All that remains is for the paradigm shift to occur. Which, even as I write it, I understand sounds rather cryptic. I don't mean for it to be. It's just that you're so close to it that you've gotta be able to smell it and all it's going to take is for you to have this sort of light bulb moment where suddenly all the pieces click together and you see it and then you'll wonder how you hadn't seen it before.
I grew up in those Churches. I am not KJV only, but I do trust it more than any other Translation. Not a hill to die on for me though.
Me either. People can use whatever bible they want. It's just that I personally don't see the advantage of reading God's word in a language I don't speak, including 17th century English.
Yes it does say that our Faith must be in Jesus Christ to be saved, I never said anything about throwing in good works to boot and being good. Never said those things were part of Salvation. But true Faith does submit to God and submission RESULTS in Obedience. Faith is Trusting God to the point of submission, reliance on Him.
You deny saying it and then you say it. I don't get it. Why attempt to have it both ways?
Galatians 2:16
Knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the law, but
by the
faith of
Jesus Christ, even we have believed
in Jesus Christ, that we might be
justified by the
faith of
Christ, and not
by the works of the law: for
by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified.
Galatians 3:26
For ye are all the children of God
by faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 3:15
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through
faith which is
in Christ Jesus.
None of which say a syllable about obedience!
I know...and you are making a very big mistake if you think you don't need to have Faith in Jesus Christ Himself to be saved....
Right, he's not trying to attain Salvation through works...He trusts in the Lord in Faith....
You forgot this one.
Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
We are saved UNTO good works, not because of good works....
I forgot nothing. I am saved whether I ever do another good thing for the rest of my life because my righteousness has not been and is not being earned or even performed by me but has been imputed to me. It is a gift that I received when I believed and I can neither pay for, nor accept, nor even apply it to my life on the basis of my actions. To do so is to resurrect my flesh which was crucified with Christ.
That is not to say that I will not do another good thing. Quite the contrary! I desire to do nothing but good things, but whether I do or I don't, my standing before God is not effected because I wasn't saved by my actions nor is my relationship with God based on my actions. My entire relationship with God is based solely on my faith in what Christ has done for me and what He is doing through me and on NOTHING else.
I know this stuff as good or better than you do. We need Faith to be saved. Paul said it and I quoted several passages to you.
The disagreement has to do with how you define faith. Why capitalize it? Why insist that it includes works (i.e. obedience) when Paul explicitly states that it does not?
Faith is believing. Faith is Trust.
Exactly!
Believing what? Trusting what?
Trust means you are submitted to God, that you rely on Him. I am not adding works to Salvation, I am defining True, saving Faith. Merely believing something is true is NOT true Faith. Faith Trusts God and relies on Him and yes it believes Him.
Your words here sound correct. Why then do I suspect so strongly that you would condemn anyone who doesn't meet some nebulously undefined standard of devotion in their daily walk? Why do I suspect you to be a "fruit inspector" (as folks like Ray Comfort like to call themselves)?
Christ is the Sacrifice. You must have Faith in Christ along with the Cross, death, burial and resurrection. Jesus is the Sacrificial Lamb of God, It's all one package.
Those who trust in HIM and His Sacrifice on the Cross....
Yeah, you can stop repeating this. There is no disagreement on such points. The degree to which you think I deny these things is the degree to which have severely misunderstood me.
I find his pace to be fast, but he does stall at times. He cross references better than anyone I have seen. I don't agree with his definition of faith as just "Believing God" I think it's includes believing to the point of trusting God, which results in a submission to Him and His will. This has nothing to do with good works for Salvation.
How does it not?
Seriously, explain that to me. What does "believing to the point of trusting God, which results in a submission to Him and His will" look like in practical terms if not in good works?
I did find two in my State and visited one. I have learned that Mid Acts, doesn't mean I agree with everything they say or teach. Even you and I disagree on many things it seems.
Yeah, like I said, you're so close that it's practically crawling up your leg. I don't know with any certainty yet but it seems like a mere matter of application. You acknowledge that the Body of Christ began with Paul but seem to read and apply the bible as though it began in Acts 2 or even earlier.
You've gotta read The Plot! Or at least listen through the audio of The Plot seminars. I really think you'll be amazed by it. I assure you there isn't anything weird about it. He isn't (wasn't) an Alex Jones type of guy at all where he bases things on half truths or convoluted and obscure theories or anything remotely like that. Bob was a very straight forward and extremely thorough and logical guy. Just as you seem to be, by the way. I'm tellin' ya! You want to read that book!
bereanbiblesociety.org
