Saved by grace thru faith alone: What is a work?

a reply to: NOTurTypical

Our works as believers only counts if it is done in the power of the Holy Spirit. That means using 1 John 1:9 to confess your known sins privately to God the Father, as needed. Any "good" works done in a state of carnality are as dead as the work of a non-believer.

If we remain in the Holy Spirit, our works will reflect God's glory before the world.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Amen, any works done on our own without the Holy Spirit would be wood, stubble and hay.

But needing Faith in a god to receive anything at all, be it direct gifts, be helped, or even a have a positive feeling, defies the meaning of what Grace even is.

Religous folk sure love their buzzwords. Makes them feel all nice and holier then thou to use em.
But they don't know what they mean xd

a reply to: Bisman

God does provide you and everyone else with grace, whether you have faith or not. Does your heart still beat, do your lungs draw air, do you have the freedom to think within your own mind? We dont deserve those blessings, we didnt earn our births. The fact that we have the opportunity to accept or reject God's love is grace in itself...all the while, we continue to lie, cheat, steal and slander eachother. We as sinners dont deserve God's love, let alone existance.

a reply to: LittleByLittle

It does contradict itself and people who believe not are from my point of view using faith in it not doing it to blind themselves. James and Paul are not giving the same story and "people who have no interest in the bible as a whole being the only truth" will "see it" if they "seek" knowledge with critical logical thinking.

This is just a broad statement with absolutely no facts. Explain yourself.

a reply to: NOTurTypical

I put my thoughts on james because I knew someone would come along and tell me the Bible says something about faith without works is dead .

a reply to: Akragon

The work of GOD is to believe... That is HIS work that YOU believe... Not your own Thus Faith is not Our work.... But God working

Yea you are not understanding the question asked to Jesus, "Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? " What shall who do? We. Not God We. They are asking what actions should they preform to do God's will. He says believe in the on he has sent. Our work to do God's will is to believe in the one he has sent.

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? 62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? 63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

IF It was Faith alone, he would not have needed to tell us how God wants us to live.... but all of the gospels cover the same thing... How God wants his children to live

Actually your wrong. All the Gospels tell us Gods children can't live the way they are supposed thus our need for Jesus. Second, This interpretation verse 60-63 makes no sense...please point out where Jesus is telling them how to live....why dont you go back up and listen to Jesus reiterate the exact same points he's already made.

41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.

42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?

43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves.

44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.

46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.

47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

48 I am that bread of life.

49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.

50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.

Verse 47 Verse 50 both of those still say only He will get you to Heaven it has nothing to do with works. There is no way to read that into these verse unless your being grammatically ignorant of the sentence structure and diction.

IF one believes in Jesus... they do as he asked...

I agree, and all he ask is that you trust in Him and spread the word.


"Not by Bread alone, but by every word that comes from God... "

The word of God is the manna from heaven.....John 1 paired with John 6......

Christ left the bread metaphor and spoke directly in verse 63 you really have to twist Scripture something hard to get your ideas.

a reply to: Rex282

Paul never wrote you are "saved" BY faith or works.....he said by grace(the power of the creator God which is the anointing..christ) and then explains how NOT by your faith or works but by what God has done.

I agree we are saved by grace according to the whole Bible, but I just want to point out the title says saved by grace thru faith. The question I am addressing is how grace is obtained. Grace is obtained by simply trusting God and Christ(his Word made flesh).

a reply to: FlyersFan

Obvious you didn't even read the OP as it has James in it.....You also are misunderstanding what a work is...maybe you should read the OP then re-comment .

Also everyone of those verses is cherry picked and taking out of context. So give me some honest info worth my time and we can have a conversation.

a reply to: Bisman

"But needing Faith in a god to receive anything at all, be it direct gifts, be helped, or even a have a positive feeling, defies the meaning of what Grace even is.

Religous folk sure love their buzzwords. Makes them feel all nice and holier then thou to use em.
But they don't know what they mean xd"

Grace makes us feel all nice and holier then thou? Maybe its you who doesn't understand Grace. Grace is forgiveness you don't deserve. Forgiveness however even between people is something that must be given and received.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: NOTurTypical

I put my thoughts on James because I knew someone would come along and tell me the Bible says something about faith without works is dead .

Yeah it's a common misunderstanding of James, I'm not faulting you for that. Look at my post count man, I've dealt with the same error quite a few times here. But it's a valid question, because I'm a firm believer that it's important for people to understand exactly what it says. It's quite a common error even among churches.

originally posted by: Bisman
But needing Faith in a god to receive anything at all, be it direct gifts, be helped, or even a have a positive feeling, defies the meaning of what Grace even is.

Religous folk sure love their buzzwords. Makes them feel all nice and holier then thou to use em.
But they don't know what they mean xd

I would say it's a problem the other way around. I've only known a few unbelieving individuals who referenced a Concordance or Lexicon to understand exactly what the Greek or Hebrew words meant that the English was translated from.

a reply to: NOTurTypical

I'll second that.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

These men were seeking Jesus, and Jesus uses the analogy of food fulfilling hunger to what he does for a person spirit. Jesus is the one who will give you the bread (John 15:26, v27) and the Father will seal you as his for all eternity(Ephesians 1:12-13; v27).

I think what it is talking about in Ephesians is what it is calling "the first believers", who would likely include the Apostles, where they were given the spirit, as in the Pentecost story in Acts, to have God's power to preach the gospel in a convincing way.
I think it has more to do with the idea of an inherent level of authority to the Apostolic version of the Gospel, as attested to by the fact that there was this existing church in Ephesus that would presumably be the fruit of that initial outpouring.

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

The work of God is to have faith in Christ. The words "believe" and "faith" come from the same same word in the Greek. If anything else was required to work the works of God Jesus was either lying or equivocating on a very important question...

In the same sort of way as the ancient Israelites believed in Moses. It had nothing to do with the Israelites just saying the thought that Moses existed, or was from God, but it involved carrying out all the things he instructed they to do.

Now Abraham is before Christ was reveal so a work for OT people was to have faith in God. Does that stand in the verses above? Yes. Did Abraham do anything more than trust God when he went to offer Issac? Notice verse 23, "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD.." and that is was what attributed righteousness to him and made Him a friend of God. Works are acts based on trust in God.

The two things go together, you have to believe that is what God wants you to do, so you can then go ahead and do that thing. It does not end at the believing stage.

It took no physical work for Rahab to recieve the messagers that was simply an dangerous act she preformed based on faith in God. Choosing to trust in Christ is the only work God requires. Christ is the root of all Good works because all good works are done with faith in Him in mind.

She didn't work like go out into the fields and hoe weeds all day, she did the kind of work prostitutes do, receiving men into their company, so it is still work, and physical, where she was doing something.
What is your point in reversing the lessons that the Bible are teaching?

a reply to: DISRAELI

. . . Faith comes first in order of time.

Faith comes through hearing, like in the quote by Akragon in the post below yours,

". . . they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? "

They had already heard it in order to be able to comment on it, but there apparently is another sense of "hearing" where you allow the idea in, so there is a sort of personal work going on at the beginning, where you are attentive to the words.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Saved by grace thru faith alone? Not according to scripture. well ... scripture contradicts itself ..

I don't think that the Bible contradicts itself, it is just that the New Testament was written with a limited choice of words available for use, so they had to be used to mean slightly different things according to the context.
A lot of times when Paul says "works", he means following rules in the Old Testament Law that really are irrelevant in the light of the righteousness revealed through Jesus.

a reply to: NOTurTypical

People are still confusing salvation with sanctification and service. No one says a saved person should not show any evidence of that conversion . Good works follow a true conversion.

Conversion is a meaningless thing outside of what a person does.
That new behavior is what the conversion essentially is.

originally posted by: jmdewey60
a reply to: NOTurTypical

People are still confusing salvation with sanctification and service. No one says a saved person should not show any evidence of that conversion . Good works follow a true conversion.

Conversion is a meaningless thing outside of what a person does.
That new behavior is what the conversion essentially is.

I would say conversion is the new birth, born again of the Holy Spirit as Jesus explained to Nicodemus. It's consequently the Holy Spirit that leads the new believer to do works to glorify Christ. Paul explains that it's the Spirit who wills us to do these works. I can't fathom how an unregenerate person who is spiritually dead willing on their own to do works to glorify Him.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

You are of the opinion that the individual's work matters. It doesnt. The work of God is our faith.

Faith is an influence of change, as in relation to the literal meaning of it in the New Testament Greek, that it is being convinced of something.
We do good deeds as we are convinced by God that those are the things that we should be doing.

Faith is the beginning of works. If you work without faith, your work is as dead as your faith.

There wouldn't be any works to wonder if they were "dead" or not.
"Dead Works" are like rituals that people walk through, expecting some sort of reward for doing, but don't actually help anyone else, and are just for show, to make someone superficially look holy, like the Jews were in the habit of doing, wearing clothes a particular way that made it apparent that it was according to the Law.

If you reject His payment for sins, your works are illegal in God's eyes.

Jesus did not die to somehow "pay" for sins.
So if you start out with a false premise like that, then make it a foundation to build a theology of doing nothing, that is the perfect recipe for disaster.

a reply to: NOTurTypical

Well, I would clarify that it doesn't matter for our justification, but it does matter in glorifying the Lord, helping our fellow man, and trying to be Christ for others. We may be the only impression of Jesus someone may ever see. So in that instance works are huge.

There is no justification that comes from some sort of ethereal, non-physical thing or concept, it has to be based on a person's actions.
What you do in your life is not just a bonus, to get some sort of imaginary points.
Right or wrong, your life affects others, so you always want to be in the right.
If we purport to be Christians, then we are incurring a greater liability, where we can then have the additional charge of leading others astray, and we then loose whatever justification that we think that we had.