08
Mar
2015
Salvation Through Faith, Not Works
I saw this floating around the intertubes and thought it summed everything up about God and man:
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a bigger version of it. It says, “If you could lose your salvation, you would.”
“If you like your salvation, you can keep your salvation”
If you like your pet elephant, you can keep your elephant.
Bob,
I think this will work:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0-8/11021370_10152545186647723_6954077885209816977_o.jpg
You don’t seem to have much confidence in God’s gift of grace.
I think MacArthur is right on this, and he certainly pulls off a rhetorical slam. But I wish he wouldn’t refer to the work that God does as “your salvation.” It doesn’t have the same flourish, but I would rather point out that the notion of “losing salvation” comes from the incorrect assumption that salvation is a thing that we do or ‘accept.’ But faith itself is a gift of God, not of our “free will.”
Quite a long critique of someone who pulled off a rhetorical slam.
Or as the priest said to the minister after a theological disagreement, “okay lets just go on our way – you can continue to worship God your way and I’ll continue to worship God His way.”
Jesus did a great thing when he saved us, all’s it takes is some faith. There is 1 little part in the Bible that argues faith versus works. After much personal debate, trying to pic faith or works as the vehicle of salvation, I decided neither. Jesus saved us, it was a gift. We do need to have faith, because we weren’t there to see it and we don’t comprehend the need for salvation and the entire process of salvation. So faith is required to accept the gift of salvation however salvation was completed by Jesus. It is nothing we did. Works are not first, instead works are a direct sign that you have been saved, because honestly, what saved person wouldn’t be so grateful as to do some works. ( on a side note: Verse 25 references Rahab. A harlot who lied to the civil authority’s and was blessed for this, contrary to the statist and false interpretation of Romans13. She did not submit.)
James 2:14-26New King James Version (NKJV)
Faith Without Works Is Dead
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your[a] works, and I will show you my faith by my[b] works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?[c] 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”[d] And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?
26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
“There is 1 little part of the Bible…”
A bit of confirmation bias going on here? Virtually the whole of the Bible – Old and New Testament – is an admonition to care for the widow and orphan, the weakest among us, and you’ve only found 1 little part of the Bible that makes a case for “works”?
I can find many passages that encourages faith rather than works and legalism.
The passage I cited faces the 2 in a direct confrontation. This is the only passage the directly pits the 2 without analogy.
Larger point is this, you are saved by neither faith nor works because salvation was a gift from God delivered by Jesus.
John 19:30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Interesting. The only passage that faces the 2 in a direct confrontation (by your own words) just so happens to not support what you are saying.
The rest of what you have to say, therefore, is little more than noise.