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 Believing by faith alone will not get you saved

There was a thread that started out as another topic, but as it progressed it really became about something else.

Please do not bring up the other topic.

The REAL topic (which was hidden, but soon revealed) was the proposition that we are not saved by faith alone, but by faith and works.

Are we saved by faith alone? Or are we saved by a mixture of faith and our works?

Is there only one covenant, and not two? We were informed that there is only ONE covenant, and that we are decieved if we think there are TWO covenants.

We were also told we are deceived if we think that we do not have to live by the Levitical Law... and by faith in Christ.

Does anyone disagree with this? Does anyone agree?

I've noticed this type of teaching popping up on this forum under different topics.

(By the way, this is not meant to undermine the authority of the moderator who closed down the previous thread. He did so because on the surface the thread was about another topic altogether... but I suspect he did not realize that this other topic had risen to the surface. I think it is a worthy topic of discussion since there are some newer people here who are bringing these teachings to multiple discussions on here.)

Krispy

 2011/11/12 6:03









 Re: Believing by faith alone will not get you saved

A newbie told me that at over 7,000 posts (in 7 years) that it was time for me to be silent... and so I will.

I will honor the request of the newbie and offer nothing. I am interested in seeing what everyone believes concerning these new doctrines that are making their way onto this forum.

Krispy

 2011/11/12 6:05









 Re:

No, we are not saved by faith alone.

We are saved by Faith through Grace and as clear as this may seem, it goes on to say, not by our own works have we achieved this, but by unmerited favour.

When people start talking about "works" and that we "must" do this or that to be saved, thier spirit is tainted with a lie and it really shouldn't be tolerated lest we ourselves fall victim to the same lie through debate and reason.

The works that Paul and all the other writers including James is speaking of is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and His exploits that He does with each person in the body as He Wills.

When He says, "go over there and share my love". Our part is to obey and move in the direction that He is telling us to go. When we arrive at the destination and we open our mouth He is speaking through us.

Look at the words of Jesus;

John 14:10 .... the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.

HE IS DOING THE WORK!

Not us, all He requires of me is that I move when He tells me to move, or open my mouth when He says speak. He warns us not to be stiffnecked. Stiffnecked people don't move, they hinder.

James is saying that if you have love(faith) but don't show compassion what good is your love (faith), for "faith worketh by love"?

Many think that we "have to" feed the poor, or "have to" do something to maintain God's favour by doing some charitable work.

Hey charitable work is great, but our motive has got to be right before God and to those that we are being charitable.

If our motive to doing any act of compassion is based upon obtaining favour with God or giving into the offering plate will some how turn Gods' Head towards us in special recognition for our good deeds, we have missed the mark.

Our works are filthy rags. Only the works that proceed out of the believer come directly from the power of the Holy Ghost when we obey His voice and do His will, that no flesh shall glory in my presence sayeth the Lord.

 2011/11/12 8:58









 Re: Believing by faith alone will not get you saved

I hope you don't mind, but rather than argue the point (which is just a tired exercise these days...) I will post some thoughts from an article, "Resting...True Faith" by Malcolm Smith:




Resting in the Lord is the beginning of all true obedience. If you are not resting then you are struggling, striving, and spending a lot of energy in the attempt to please God. Faith is a simple rest in the absolute assurance of the Lord to do just as He has promised. "He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it." (1 Thess. 5:24) Know this: God keeps His promises. Real faith is resting on His word and on His Person. I cannot repeat this too often. Faith is rest.

 2011/11/12 9:29









 Re:

Many Christians are asking, "what is the reason there is so much feebleness in the Church?" We cannot ask this question too earnestly, and I trust that God Himself will so impress it upon our hearts that we will say to Him, "It must be changed. Have mercy upon us." But, that prayer and that change cannot come until we begin to see that there is a something extremely wrong in the way we have tried to please God. Many are living more after the flesh than the Spirit is. Many people are attempting to please God and overcome sin by the law. God did not give us the Law as a new or alternate way to Him, but to show us the depth of our sinfulness and selfishness, and to bring us to the point of despair of all our own ability to change our condition. In the hour of helplessness, we are driven to receive of God’s grace.

 2011/11/12 9:30









 Re:

The devil did not suggest that Eve become a devil! Instead, He suggested that her action would result in her becoming like God. God commands us "to be ye holy for I am holy" which certainly sounds as if man was to be like God! Can you fault a man for wanting to be like God? The subtle temptation was that they should pursue the course of being like God, but quite independently of God, using their own will power and struggles to achieve what ONLY God can do.

The Pharisees fell into this same error. They dedicated their lives to understanding God’s law and its application to life and ended up, not with righteousness, but with slavery to rules and regulations that they had set up for themselves to keep. They were seeking to follow the letter of the law by their own self-effort and will power. They also were prideful and looked down others who seemed less dedicated to the law than them.

 2011/11/12 9:34
murrcolr
Member



Joined: 2007/4/25
Posts: 1839
Scotland, UK

 Re:

Quote: Is there only one covenant, and not two? We were informed that there is only ONE covenant, and that we are decieved if we think there are TWO covenants.

It is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondmaid, and one by the freewoman, Howbeit, the one by the bondmaid is born after the flesh; but the son by the freewoman is born through promise. Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants. GAL 4:22-24.

THERE are two covenants, one called the Old, the other the New. God speaks of this very distinctly in Jeremiah, where He says "The days come, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not after the covenant I made with their fathers"

This is quoted also in Hebrews, with the addition "In that He saith a new covenant, He hath made the first old." Our Lord spoke Himself of the New Covenant in His blood. In His dealings with His people, in His working out His great redemption, it has pleased God that there should be two covenants.

------------------------------------------

Quote: Are we saved by faith alone? Or are we saved by a mixture of faith and our works?

Quote: We were also told we are deceived if we think that we do not have to live by the Levitical Law... and by faith in Christ.

In keeping with the theme of covenants

The Old Covenant we should keep in mind has two aspects under which we have seen in Scripture The combination of the two aspects are clear in Galatians. Paul speaks of all who are of the works of the law as under the curse Gal 3:10 And then almost immediately after he speaks of the law as being our benefactor, a schoolmaster unto Christ, into whose charge, as to a tutor or governor, we had been given, till the time appointed of the Father.

The lessons God would teach us through the Old Covenant.

1) Brings men to a sense of their utter sinfulness.
2) The need of a savior as they are hopeless impotent to deliver themselves.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jer 31: 33-34

A summary of the New Covenant. The last-named blessing, the pardon of sin, is the first in order, the root of all. The second, having God as our God, and the third, the Divine teaching and the law in the heart.

Through the whole of the Old Covenant there was always one trouble: man's heart was not right with God. In the New Covenant the evil is to be remedied. Its central promise is a heart delighting in God's law and capable of knowing and holding fellowship with Him.

The central demand of the Old Covenant, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, has now been met. With the law written in the heart, He can be our God, and we shall be His people. Perfect harmony with God's will, holiness in heart and life, is the only thing that can satisfy God's heart. And it is this the New Covenant gives in Divine power, "I will give them an heart to know Me; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; for they shall turn to me with their whole heart."

It is on the state of the heart, it is on the new heart given by God by faith, that the unmerited favor of New Covenant life hinges.

Pauls asks

Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or the hearing of faith?"

The Galatians had indeed been born into the New Covenant; they had received the Holy Spirit. But they had been led away by Jewish teachers, and, though they had been justified by faith, they were seeking to be sanctified by works; they were looking for the maintenance and the growth of their Christian life to the observance of the law.

They had not understood that, equally with the beginning, the progress of the Divine life is by faith alone, day by day receiving its strength from Christ alone.

Almost every believer makes the same mistake as the Galatian Christians. Very few learn at conversion that it is only through faith that we stand, and walk, and live.

At conversion we have no conception of the meaning of Paul's teaching about being dead to the law, freed from the law about the freedom with which Christ makes us free. "As many as are led by the Spirit are not under the law."

The mistake is to regard the law as a Divine ordinance for our direction and considering ourselves prepared and fitted by conversion to take up the law as a natural duty.

Not knowing that, in the New Covenant, the law written in the heart needs an unceasing faith in a Divine power, to enable us by a Divine power to keep it.

Failing to understand that it is not to the law, but to a Living Person, that we are now bound, and that our obedience and holiness are only possible by the unceasing faith in His power ever working in us.


_________________
Colin Murray

 2011/11/12 11:35Profile
ginnyrose
Member



Joined: 2004/7/7
Posts: 7534
Mississippi

 Re: Believing by faith alone will not get you saved

I believe the message of Hebrews 7:7-14 speaks to us today just as it did to the Jews it was sent to originally.

Hebrews 7:7-14: NASB

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.

8 For finding fault with them, He says,
“BEHOLD, DAYS ARE COMING, SAYS THE LORD,
WHEN I WILL EFFECT A NEW COVENANT
WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AND WITH THE HOUSE OF JUDAH;

9 NOT LIKE THE COVENANT WHICH I MADE WITH THEIR FATHERS
ON THE DAY WHEN I TOOK THEM BY THE HAND
TO LEAD THEM OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT;
FOR THEY DID NOT CONTINUE IN MY COVENANT,
AND I DID NOT CARE FOR THEM, SAYS THE LORD.

10 “FOR THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL
AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD:
I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR MINDS,
AND I WILL WRITE THEM ON THEIR HEARTS.
AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD,
AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.

11 “AND THEY SHALL NOT TEACH EVERYONE HIS FELLOW CITIZEN,
AND EVERYONE HIS BROTHER, SAYING, ‘KNOW THE LORD,’
FOR ALL WILL KNOW ME,
FROM THE LEAST TO THE GREATEST OF THEM.

12 “FOR I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO THEIR INIQUITIES,
AND I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SINS NO MORE.”

13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

The OT serves us well in helping us understand the person and nature of God - His holiness, how he deals with sin and its remedy. Without this information Jesus' death and resurrection would be meaningless.

My understanding...

Seems to me some folks love to complicate simple doctrine...


_________________
Sandra Miller

 2011/11/12 13:49Profile
learjet
Member



Joined: 2010/4/19
Posts: 447


 Re: Believing by faith alone will not get you saved

Hi Krispy,

Love the topic!

Here's my view:

The world has a saying "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it's a duck"

I agree 100% that we are saved by faith alone (as Paul explained to the Ephesians) and now by works that any man should boast.

A truly born again person whose cup is cleansed on the inside will do works, not out of obligation, but from a love of Jesus who gave everything for us. This person's motivation is not to 'be saved' but a work of appreciation for all that has been given to him in grace. It's not the works that saved him but the original work of the Spirit in his heart.

There are many in the organization known as the church (the corporation) that are doing works that aren't saved. Jesus warned us about this in the parable of the farmer who went out and sowed seed, the seed came up and there were weeds in the midst of it. The servants asked Him is they should pull the weeds and He told them "no" because it would damage the good plants, He would separate them at the harvest.

Anyway, that's my feeble attempt to answer your question, thanks for asking and I hope this makes a little bit of sense. :-) Love ya brother!!

 2011/11/12 14:22Profile









 Re: What does the Lord say?

John 6:28-29
Then they asked him. "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this, to BELIEVE in the one he has sent:"

Acts 16:30-31
He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs what must I do to be saved? They replied, "BBELIEVE in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved-------you and your household."

Acts 15:9
He made no distintion between us and them for he purified their hearts BY FAITH.

Romans 1:17
For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is BY FAITH from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live BY FAITH."

Romans 10:9-10
That if you confess with your mouth "Jesus is Lord," and BELIEVE in your heart that God raised him from the dead YOU WILL BE SAVED. For it is with your heart that you BELIEVE and are JUSTIFIED and it is with your mouth you confess AND ARE SAVED.

Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by GRACE you have been SAVED, through FAITH -------and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-------not by works so that no one can boast.

Caps are for emphasis only.



The scriptures testify that salvation is by faith and faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Anyone who denies this is denying the truth of the gospel and is not saved. In this matter no Christian should ever be silent.

Krispy I may disagree with you on some things but this issue we agree on SALVATION IS BY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST. So I say brother don't be silent. But proclaim from the roof tops that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ and him alone.

Submitted without apology,
Blaine Scogin

 2011/11/12 15:04





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