Salvation By Works Alone, Why "Free Grace" is a False Doctrine

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Christian fundamentalists will read that worse to you and say "see, it says right here in the bible that our righteous deeds are filthy rags" and then assert that peoples good deeds mean nothing to God.

I don't think that's accurate. I'm a fundamentalist and I'm committed to holiness, purity, integrity, consecrated love for Jesus Christ and His glory alone. No flesh will glory in His presence. Usually when we quote that verse it's to a person who thinks their works of righteousness are what justifies them, or makes them holy to a Holy God. He alone is Holy. And offering Him a list of all our accomplishments is like offering Him a gift-wrapped box of dirty tampons. We try to reflect His Holiness, but on the day He reviews my life I'm not going to go down a list of things I did for Him.

That's absurdity. For one, He knows already what I did, and for two, I do them because of His love, not to earn it. He doesn't owe me anything, He never did. And if you look at Ephesians 2:8-10, especially verse 10 we are justified through Christ TO DO good works. And James declares that if there isn't any fruit on our tree we are operating in a "dead faith". Just like a dead tree grow no fruit.

There are nothing wrong with doing good works, but there can be idolatry behind doing them for selfish reasons, to either glorify ourselves, or to show people the hands and feet of Christ for His glory alone. If He doesn't have all of me, that's idolatry.

It all depends on the reasons we are doing the good works. It's not an attack on good works as a goal and purpose, anyone who has read a chapter in any book of the Bible knows we are called to do good works. The problem is when we do them for selfish means, and doing them in a M.O. of trying to earn His love or favor is either idolatry or witchcraft, or a combination of the two. You're either misunderstanding our position or purposely misrepresenting it.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by NOTurTypical

 

Wait, who ever says justifying grace was free? It cost God the most important thing to Him. That isn't free whatsoever.

I mean a type of hypothetical salvation which is apparently based on some sort of principle that there is nothing involved other than making a claim to it.

Well that's silly, salvation is of the Lord. People can't just walk around claiming they are right in His eyes unless He has first already declared it and we are trusting His Word. Or as someone said once:

"Salvation doesn't come by making promises to God, it's in trusting the promises He has already made to us in His Word."

~ Unknown

That there is this contract written out which we can use to force the hand of God to make Him save us.

That's witchcraft. The idea that God is angry with us and if we say a certain combination of words He is forced to do something He isn't inclined to want to do. That's a pagan view of "the gods."

Now, I know there are a ton of folks out there who believe that since they said a magic sentence in vacation Bible school one summer day when they were gluing macaroni on a paper plate that means they will get to be with Jesus someday. Not disagreeing there are people out there that believe that, but those people have no trust in Christ's work at Calvary, they trust the magic sentence they said. And to date a magical sentence hasn't saved a single person. But trusting Jesus and what He said saves 100% of the time.

IMO that's borderline Christian witchcraft, not trust at all in Christ or what He said in John chapter 6. They trust the magic sentence, and Christ isn't a magic sentence. That's why it commonly says "Jesus Saves", I've never read anywhere it saying "Jesus and Me Save".

Regardless of what it took to write such a "contract" it is still free, for the claimant, meaning without conditions, and the carrying out of the contract is somehow divorced from our real, day to day life.

What is your operating definition of "grace"? It appears to be different than the dictionary definition. And what do you make people give you so that you give them a gift in return?

Originally posted by SisyphusRide
reply to post by EnochWasRight

 

I can't get enough of that link in your sig... I have spent a half of the day reading through it and still have a ways to go.

Question: all lifeforms are based on carbon as far as we know here on earth?

Yes. On Earth, all molecules of life are based on carbon. It's a technology that God calls the fruit of knowledge. We would call our fruit of knowledge silicone based. Here's an interesting WIKI on this idea of hypothetical types of biochemistry. I assume God used the best possible. When you break us down to our essence, we are information. This is what I think God meant by Word. Jesus was the Word as the first image of creation.

1 Colossians 1:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

If you really dig deep into Genesis, it seem that the first creation story in Genesis 1 is the creation of an image. The second chapter is the rendering of the image by YHVH. Chapter one is the Elohim. To me, this is the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Father is God (Light), Son is Word (Information / Wave / Law) and Holy Spirit is consciousness. God called Himself the Great I AM. Self-awareness is the hallmark of sentient consciousness.

Paul identifies his authorship in Ephesians in the beginning and in the middle of the letter that makes up Ephesians. The construction in which Ephesians is written support that Paul wrote the text of Ephesians. Luke supports Paul in Acts 28, I think because both Ephesians and Luke states Paul is imprisoned (the author of Ephesian's states himself as being imprisoned). The vocabulary and thought of the letter resemble Paul and he characterizes justification by faith.

There seems to be a bit more evidence supporting Paul as the author at this time.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I suppose some people see it all as "The Bible" without regard to the context, where if they want to, they can take part of a verse in one book, and connect it to a part of a verse in another book, and create a totally valid new verse which they are now able to quote with authority.

What they do is composit verses from all over the bible...and use that to present a doctrine.
Its like pareidolia with words and sentences. They "see" imaginary connections between unrelated verses and then claim there is a message in there.

I believe the Lord, your and my God can provide us with an accurate text for everything we NEED to know. We will learn for an eternity in heaven. People think you go to heaven and automatically know everything. However, you will learn and be tought in heaven. This is very exciting; I can't wait.

I think the Bible is accurate simply because it's our only way to connect to God, through the word that was before the beginning. Though I understand it's not perfect in every single way, I think what you and i need to know in order to get to heaven is inside that Bible, Salvation through Jesus Christ.

A God that created all that we see and "think" we know , could create a simple but very important book for his people. At least , i hope he can.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Its like pareidolia with words and sentences.

That is what prompted me to do this thread. I was trying to describe some of the claims being made by NuT, and he asked if I could quote and link to him actually saying those things. I spent two days going through as many of his old posts as I could in that amount of time, and came to a realization that the only way he could support his position was by creating custom verses out of completely unrelated, and physically far removed (in terms of being in a printed and bound book and going from one to the other, or even from one author to another) verses, and then giving quotes with them as if they were real verses that you could do a word search on a Bible data-base, and find.
Where I got my basic thesis for this thread was from the book, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit, which goes into a detailed analysis of what exactly is the spirit, in Paul's (the real Paul, and not the pseudonymous Paul) writings.

reply to post by DarkKnight21

Works are good, but they aren't the way to grace. We must also be careful not to let our works make us self-righteous lest they "burn up". Finally, salvation always comes from Christ - the foundation - not from what we build.

You started out your post by quoting 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, which the theme of can be described in a partial quote of verse 5, "What is Apollos, really? Or what is Paul?".
To me, this is another biblical passage wrongfully applied to the individual's personal experience to point out how their "works" could be essentially worthless. The chapter is giving a lesson on how the imagined (by the writer) audience is still thinking in a fleshly manner by taking partisan positions concerning the two evangelists, Paul, and Apollos. He explains that their work as far as whether or not it builds up the church will be able to be judged when the testing comes, and if the members can persevere through it.
Giving prophecies and performing miracles could be an example of works which could make people think too much of themselves, being things God could work through a person, in order for them to be done, one way or another. Those would be separate from the work of the spirit in a person. As that spiritual work progresses, it would lessen the possibility of the subject of that work to take it in the wrong way, as in using it as a reason to think they are somehow righteous by their own doing. This concept could be gathered fron the chapter which is the subject of this post, that the Corinthians' taking partisan positions was an indication of their lack of spiritual maturity.

reply to post by EnochWasRight

If you examine the above verse, Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He did not need their testimony, although we confess with our mouth. We also confess with our actions.

They believed in him as a person, but they had the wrong perception of his goal and how he is to be approached. They wanted a military leader to fight a war against the gentile enemy to set up a Jewish state that would have a hegemony over the entire region. Jesus came for a spiritual war for those who believed in him to overcome the world we live in and all its pitfalls.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by EnochWasRight

 

If you examine the above verse, Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He did not need their testimony, although we confess with our mouth. We also confess with our actions.

They believed in him as a person, but they had the wrong perception of his goal and how he is to be approached. They wanted a military leader to fight a war against the gentile enemy to set up a Jewish state that would have a hegemony over the entire region. Jesus came for a spiritual war for those who believed in him to overcome the world we live in and all its pitfalls.

Keep in mind that this was after the resurrection. The very next chapter then goes into water and spirit baptism and the verse about being born again. It all ties together. There is an article in my signature link on water and spirit baptism with many verses from around the Bible that allude to the meaning of John 3. The foundation is John 2 at the end where Jesus shows his awareness of our hearts beyond what we know about ourselves.

For me, this appears to be a larger work that God does in us over the entire week that Earth exists. It does not end until after the last 1000 years. The week begins again with a new aspect of God's revelation to us.

What??? No mention of election, predestination, or ... shall I even say it.. SOVEREIGN Grace?? Oh, thats okay.. Ill show myself out.. carry on.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Well that's silly, salvation is of the Lord. People can't just walk around claiming they are right in His eyes unless He has first already declared it and we are trusting His Word. Or as someone said once:

"Salvation doesn't come by making promises to God, it's in trusting the promises He has already made to us in His Word."

~ Unknown

Don't worry, I have no plans to be "silly".
"Salvation is of the Lord" is pretty ambiguous. So what do you mean by "the Lord"? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you think Jesus is the Lord? It says so in the New Testament. How about God, the Father? Is He not also at least a Lord? How about the Holy Spirit? Could we call him also a Lord? The Trinity is this concept that there is One Lord, do you deny that?
Salvation is made possible in one key aspect by the past, present, and future work of Jesus. God, the Father makes all things possible, and Jesus follows the plan of the Father, as a good and faithful son. The Holy Spirit is who raises us from the dead, and it does that by already being in us while we are alive and becomes our quickening spirit which is immune to natural death. The fact that the Holy Spirit is in us is made manifest in that there is a regeneration work in progress. The lack of this work is evidence of a spirit of lawlessness, which we understand through the writings of Paul is the absence of what he terms as, Faith, which has in the new covenant taken the place of the old written Law of Moses as our guide for how we live our life.

That's witchcraft. The idea that God is angry with us and if we say a certain combination of words He is forced to do something He isn't inclined to want to do. That's a pagan view of "the gods."

No kidding. I am criticizing that way of seeing how salvation works, not promoting it. I am actually using that as a way to describe a method you seem to have adopted, as exemplified by my earlier quote from you in this post. You say "He declared it and we are trusting His Word" which to me means that you are reading it written out somewhere, and to use your term, it is in the word, which I take to mean, the Bible. So you take a writing, and it says something which you understand to be saying something which fits the description of yourself, and that it goes on further to describe this hypothetical person ending up being "saved". This seems to be a road map to a method of salvation which people can apply to their own personal "salvation" where it is all on paper, and by some mental process involved in reading those words, can actualize them to where they are eventually physically "saved". My contention is that it is like you said, "salvation" by the works of magic in the form of an incantation.
My argument is that real salvation is something which happens physically inside of a person, which is the work of the spirit which is also inside of you. If their is no work, then as the letter of James says, there is no faith. Not the real saving faith, which is also really a work, a work of the spirit to write the law of God on our hearts.

What is your operating definition of "grace"? It appears to be different than the dictionary definition. And what do you make people give you so that you give them a gift in return?

I could say the same of your use of the term, grace. You rather consistently use it to describe salvation. It seems to me that you equate free grace with free salvation, where to me, the gift is faith, which leads to salvation. Salvation comes through justification, which is a verdict of judgment. That is not a gift, the verdict, that is a determination made. The gift is what allows you to have that determination made about you when yo do go to judgment, sometime after you die and your life is brought up for review, to decide on if you are going to live among the saints, or if some other fate awaits you, whatever that may be.

Originally posted by Advantage
What??? No mention of election, predestination, or ... shall I even say it.. SOVEREIGN Grace??

Oh, thats okay.. Ill show myself out.. carry on.

Until you are physically raised from the dead, salvation is a hypothetical concept. I am pointing out a verse which seems to be neglected, which describes how we are raised from the dead, which is by a spirit that replaces the old spirit which does not have the capability for such works, either works in the form of the regeneration of our very natures, or of our physical deeds, or of bringing the dead to life.
Colossians is similar to what I was earlier describing Ephesians as being, which is a sort of condensation of Pauline thoughts but not actually written by Paul himself. But there is an important point that can be found in the slogan in Colossians, "Christ in you, the Hope of glory". The "glory" would be a reference to the glorified physical bodies we will have when we are resurrected. The "Christ" would be the spirit of Christ, which is a way to describe the Holy Spirit in action in the believer of Christ, which in turn can not be seen as somehow being separated from God.

Originally posted by Advantage
What??? No mention of election, predestination, or ... shall I even say it.. SOVEREIGN Grace??

Oh, thats okay.. Ill show myself out.. carry on.

Hey! Beautiful pit friend, he is gorgeous. I have two myself, best breed known to mankind. (Sorry poodle lovers, it's true. )

Wouldn't that fall under the statement: "Salvation is of the Lord"? But you're forgetting something and Calvinists any Hyper-Calvinists begin their TULIP doctrine in Genesis 3, it's not good to begin a doctrine where the Bible doesn't begin. It doesn't start with the "Total Depravity" of Genesis 3 and the fall. Because if you back it up to Genesis 1 you see that we are created in His image and likeness, and an operating aspect of that is He is Sovereign and He also created us sovereign as well.

No, Arminianists are also off the boat a tad for denying predestination and election from eternity past, that is ALSO TRUE. And this argument has divided the body of Christ for hundreds of years which is silly. We have a huge advantage those Christians did not have. Einstein's theory of General Relativity, or the discovery of the nature of time. We are viewing salvation from inside the time domain, God is outside of it. Something that is free will for us (Sovereignty of Man) in the time domain, if likewise also God exercising His Sovereign predestinating election and grace from eternity past. You must remember that John Calvin didn't teach TULIP doctrine, it came from 2nd generation Calvinists in response to 5 pt Arminianism. And James Arminius didn't come up with that doctrine either, his followers did after he died. Arminius didn't teach conditional security.

Jacobus told all his students to read the work of John Calvin his favorite Theologian. So remember these things brother, they were added later by their followers, NOT taught by these men themselves. Charles H. Spurgeon probably my favorite preacher after the apostle Paul said this whenever people asked him how he reconciled the difference between the two extreme positions:

"I see no need to reconcile friends." CHS also said he wasn't ashamed to call himself a Calvinist, then in 3 breaths later said he wasn't ashamed to call himself a Baptist. In his sermons he taught that salvation was by saving grace of God towards men, then also told every man everywhere to "look to the cross and you shall be saved."

The river of truth runs between the banks of two extremes brother, and both sides are right in what they assert, and both wrong in what they deny.

In Him,

NuT

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by NOTurTypical

 

Well that's silly, salvation is of the Lord. People can't just walk around claiming they are right in His eyes unless He has first already declared it and we are trusting His Word. Or as someone said once:

"Salvation doesn't come by making promises to God, it's in trusting the promises He has already made to us in His Word."

~ Unknown

Don't worry, I have no plans to be "silly".
"Salvation is of the Lord" is pretty ambiguous. So what do you mean by "the Lord"? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you think Jesus is the Lord? It says so in the New Testament. How about God, the Father? Is He not also at least a Lord? How about the Holy Spirit? Could we call him also a Lord? The Trinity is this concept that there is One Lord, do you deny that?

No one has "plans" to be silly, it's the end result of not rightly dividing the Word of Truth. And by "rightly dividing" Paul doesn't mean removing verses you don't like, or entire books of the Bible. And yes, I am Trinitarian. "Lord" is a title, not a proper name. The Son's name is Yeshua (Jesus), the Father's name is YHWH (Jehovah), and the Holy Spirit is nameless and faceless because his only duty is to point to the cross.

We call God "Him", not "Them".

That's witchcraft. The idea that God is angry with us and if we say a certain combination of words He is forced to do something He isn't inclined to want to do. That's a pagan view of "the gods."

No kidding. I am criticizing that way of seeing how salvation works, not promoting it. I am actually using that as a way to describe a method you seem to have adopted, as exemplified by my earlier quote from you in this post. You say "He declared it and we are trusting His Word" which to me means that you are reading it written out somewhere, and to use your term, it is in the word, which I take to mean, the Bible.

Yes, the Bible is His written Word. His Son is His Word made flesh. His Spirit is His Word residing in us pointing to His Son. And Salvation is of the Lord (God). It's a work of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A person cannot even be convicted of sin and come to justifying faith without the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The only unforgivable sin is a life of blaspheming that work He has don't inside of us by regenerating us and showing us our sin and pointing us to His Son and His faithfulness to the cross. We don't disagree, just saying you're justified because of some magic sentence you once uttered is witchcraft.

Having faith that you're saved based on His promises in His Word (John chapter 6) and declaring it with your mouth is not witchcraft, that's justifying faith. (Romans 10:9-10) if I have said this once, I have said this 100 times. If there isn't any fruit of the tree of your faith your faith is "dead". (James 2)

What is your operating definition of "grace"? It appears to be different than the dictionary definition. And what do you make people give you so that you give them a gift in return?

I could say the same of your use of the term, grace.

I didn't ask about me. What is YOUR definition of the word "grace", I don't care about your theological application of it right now. That wasn't the question. What does the word grace mean? Even without a Biblical connotation. What is the definition of grace?

reply to post by jmdewey60

Until you are physically raised from the dead, salvation is a hypothetical concept.

No, the issue is a loose Theological definition of "Salvation". That's why it's important to be precise. The future terminology for salvation is referred to as "Glorification", the present tense term is "Sanctification", and the past tense usage is "justification".

When people are not precise it's gets super fuzzy really fast. The three terms are lumped together into the general term "Salvation", but even that process itself is a work of God. Justification is a work God does for us, sanctification is a work God does in us, and glorification is our resurrected bodies without free from sin. Or in simple terms the "3 P's of Salvation":

Past Tense Usage: (justification) "We have been saved." We have been saved from the PENALTY for our sin, Hell.

Present Tense Usage: (Sanctification) "We are being saved." We are being saved from the POWER of sin over our lives by the infilling and leading of the Holy Spirit.

Future Tense Usage: (Glorification) "We will be saved." We will be saved from the PRESENCE of sin in our flesh when we are resurrected with bodies free of the nature to sin.



You have to be precise, you'll confuse virtually everyone to what you're trying to describe Biblically.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

The Son's name is Yeshua (Jesus), the Father's name is YHWH (Jehovah), and the Holy Spirit is nameless and faceless because his only duty is to point to the cross.

You have an extreme cultish version of trinity then.
Jesus is named, Jesus.
God is called God, and only quasi-Jews think God is YHWH.
Jesus took the title, The I Am, so there is no more YHWH as a person. That is in the dust bin of the abandoned by God religion, Judaism.
The Holy Spirit is named, the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit does more than point, and the reason why I started this thread, which is people such as yourself who think an incantation is what saves you, while it is the work of the Holy Spirit that regenerates you and then finishes its work at the appropriate time by bringing you back to life.

His Son is His Word made flesh.

This is only an assumption on your part and goes against the clear teaching of the Bible which says, the word was God. It does not say the word was the son of God. It should be obvious that it means the same thing as what we call the Holy Spirit, which entered into Jesus upon his baptism, thus why it is brought up in the prolog to the story of John the Baptist.

A person cannot even be convicted of sin and come to justifying faith without the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

Here you are just making up new terms and changing definitions to fit your religion. There is no "justifying faith", and regeneration is not what brings you to Christ. What you are doing is promoting your theory that just by feeling guilty and then thinking of the name, Jesus, then at this point you already know you have been pre-selected for salvation, and from this point on, then nothing could possibly interfere with this salvation you already "own".

The only unforgivable sin is a life of blaspheming that work He has don't inside of us . . .

This is more stuff you just made up to support your theory. The "unforgivable sin" is not a theological term to be brought to bear on theories of personal salvation, but is used in the Gospel story to illustrate the point of judgment coming down on the Jews associated with the temple cult religion current in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, from their rejection of the Holy Spirits work through Jesus.

if I have said this once, I have said this 100 times. If there isn't any fruit of the tree of your faith your faith is "dead".

If so, then you have divorced Faith from Salvation, since you believe in once saved always saved. You preach that once you show fruits to show you were sincere, than after that, you could go back to a lifestyle worse than before you were "saved" including becoming a Hitler type tyrant and murdering twenty million people, and still go to heaven.

What is the definition of grace?

All you are doing is setting me up so you can use that verse from Ephesians, which I talked about in the early part of the thread, which was not written by Paul but is a sloganed version of some of his concepts, which are vulnerable to misinterpretation, and people like you who define all the words in it to fit your theory of free grace, where you make Grace synonymous with salvation.

reply to post by jmdewey60

which is people such as yourself who think an incantation is what saves you.

I've said repeatedly in this very thread that doesn't save anyone, that is witchcraft. Making promises (saying a sentence) doesn't save anyone, believing (faith) in the promises God has already made to us is what justifies us.

And there are numerous place in both the OT and NT that talk about the just and how we are to live, by faith. Habakkuk 2:4

"Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith."

Habakkuk 2:4

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."

Romans 1:16-17

"Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."

Hebrews 10:38

"But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith."

Galatians 3:11

If so, then you have divorced Faith from Salvation.

No, faith is the catalyst for our justification. The just shall live by faith.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

You have to be precise

You are just giving a demonstration of what I have been warning about, which is how you redefine all the terms to support your theory.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

No, faith is the catalyst for our justification.

That is a totally bogus slogan you just made up.
Paul uses the term, Faith, as what in the New Covenant system replaces Law, in the old system.
So it should be thought of as the spiritual "law" by which Christians live.

Romans 1:16-17

That is Paul quoting Habakkuk 2:4.
So is Hebrews 10:38.
The Old Testament verse being quoted is:

Look, the one whose desires are not upright will faint from exhaustion, but the person of integrity will live because of his faithfulness.