Believe on Jesus Christ to save you. I put in my OP to trust and have faith in Jesus to save you as well as to believe. I still think believing Jesus is will save you is enough. It is not works that save you as nothing you do is going to clear the sin debt you have.
There is absolutely nothing any person can do to clear the debt of sin anyone has, this is true. But it is equally true that if you do not do what God says leads to receiving salvation, then you also do not receive that salvation. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and faith is not just intellectual assent. Faith is both intellectual assent (belief) and the actions engendered by that belief, for without actions faith is dead (James 2:26). Our actions complete, or make perfect, our faith. And imperfect, incomplete faith cannot save (James 2:14). If your belief does not cause you to do the actions that God commands, then you don't really believe; you just think that you do.
What actions lead to receiving salvation if it's not calling on the name of the Lord to save you (Ro 10:13)? It can't be offering your children as human sacrifices.
Those are examples of faith in those people in those times. Today, we have the commands in Scripture to tell us what actions we must take. Rom 10:9-10 says that confession of Jesus as Lord results in receiving salvation. Acts 3:19 says that repentance results in forgiveness of sin. Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38, Col 2:11-14, Rom 6:1-7, and 1 Pet 3:21 all say that baptism in water results in salvation. These are the only things in the NT that we are commanded to do to receive salvation. All other actions flow out from having already received salvation (fruits of the Spirit). While calling on the name of the Lord is necessary, just calling on the name of the Lord does not lead to salvation, because many will call on His name and He will say, "I never knew you." Calling on His name must be done in terms of a relationship with Him. An example would be the brothers (sons of Sceva) who tried to use Jesus' name to cast out a demon. The demon replied, "I recognize Jesus, and I know of Paul, but who are you?" (Acts 19:11-17)
They are examples of faith plus works. In Abraham's case, God instructed him to offer his son as a sacrifice on an alter. Just saying, "I believe you" and doing nothing would not have been enough. Follow-through was necessary. But faith plus works was also necessary when he didn't sacrifice Isaac upon God telling him to stop. The same thing is true for Rahab. She feared God would destroy her town. Just being certain would not have saved her. She had to act on what she believed in order to be saved.
I prefer this list of necessary and sufficient conditions:
Faith without works is not real faith; it is dead and worthless.
That is exactly the point. Without taking action none of them would have received the blessings at stake. Just saying "I believe" is not faith, and it does not result in the receiving of the blessing. Faith includes doing what is required based on that belief.
That is analogous to dead faith, which is to say no faith at all.
So you're saying the action of being baptized as Scripture commands is not essential, but the action of eating Jesus body and drinking His blood as Scripture commands is essential? Is that not still an action? Is it not still something we have to do to be saved?
I'm saying that James was not promoting a faith plus works recipe for salvation. His "faith without works is dead" comments were aimed at ending hypocritical Christian living... to people saying they believed in the tennants of the gospel (mercy, liberty, love, etc.) but whose actions were the opposite (judgmental, legalistic, and self-endulgent, etc.). In none of his criticism's was he questioning their salvation but in all urged them to turn back to God... even in this harsh passage:
Faith means the same before one is saved as it does after one is saved. There is not one faith that saves and then a different faith that one has after receiving salvation.
These passages do not negate or cancel out Rom 10:9-10, Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19, Rom 6:1-7, Col 2:11-14, 1 Pet 3:21, and all the others that tell us there are other things that are also required to be saved.
His flesh and blood is the Spiritual Word which we have recorded in the Scriptures. It is the digestion of them, starting with the milk of the Word (the Gospel and then the simpler matters of the Christ like life) that brings life. And then as you grow in life, you graduate to the more weighty (solid meat) matters of the Word.
Took you long enough to get here. But notice this, not all who eat His flesh and drink His blood (read and study the Scriptures) receives life. It is those who digest it (internalize it) and obey it (have faith in it) who receive salvation. Notice in Heb 5:9 that Jesus is the author of salvation to those who obey Him.
I have already made the case that baptism is required by Scripture, and is the point at which salvation is actually received. And this is shown in 1 Pet 3:21, Col 2:11-14, Rom 6:1-7, and Acts 22:16. Baptism is a step of faith and is the point at which we become one with Christ. As with a wedding, there is a point in time during the ceremony when the two become one. They entered the room as two, and they leave the room as one. It is not a gradual process of slowly over time moving from two to one, it happens in an instant, with one declaration the minister declares them one. This is what baptism is; the moment in which the Holy Spirit actually removes sin and resurrects us from death in sin to life in Christ.
No it's not. He is referring to Himself, not the Bible.
If we take eating Jesus out of the equation and substitute in obeying the Bible, then we get what we see here... religious people that never receive eternal life. Why is this so? Because Jesus Himself is the bread which came down from heaven. Eating Him (I would say this is analagous to receiving Him into our hearts) and drinking His blood (I would say this is analagous to believing that His blood offering to God for our sins sufficiently satisfies the debt we owe) is the one and only way to receive eternal life. Contrary to what you say, EVERYONE who eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life!
If we take eating Jesus out of the equation and substitute in obeying the Bible, then we get what we see here... salvation by works.
And what is the Bible but His Word? The Bible came from Jesus, just as Jesus came from the Father. Just as Cornelius was saved through the words spoken to him by Peter, so we are saved through the words written by the inspired writers of God's Word.
There is no such thing as "salvation by works". That is a fabrication of Satan as a diversion from obedience to God. Eating Jesus' flesh is more than "receiving Him into our heart", it is receiving Him as our Lord, Master, and submitting to Him as his servant. One who does not do his Master's will is not really a servant, but a liar and a deceiver. Drinking His blood is more than believing that Jesus' blood covers our sin debt, it is completely submitting to His authority and honoring His commandments found in His Word, the Bible.
Consistent with what you are saying, the big problem with the Lordship Doctrine is that the Bible is made "Lord" and not actually Jesus Himself. Even if that were not a problem, a person's sins after they have "made Jesus their Lord" prove that their commitment wasn't worth the paper it was written on. As a result, they must rely on God's grace for their "failures to obey Him as Lord" to not count against them. And before you say it, I will just say that godly sorrow after a person sins is not a valid substitute for obedience.
The Bible is not "Lord", that is only God (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), but the Bible is God's words written by inspiration by His instruments. And as such, it should be followed as if God were speaking directly to us through it.
Faith is confidence in what you hope for and certainty about what you do not see. Believe is to accept something as true, to be persuaded something is true.
Maybe you could clarify a couple things about your beliefs.
Faith is not just confidence and certainty. It is confidence to the point of action, thus evidence of what is hoped for. It is certainty to the point of obedience, thus substance of what cannot be seen. Without action there is no faith, because there is no substance/evidence. The actions complete the mental aspects of faith, making it complete, whole, and alive.
We should obey God when He speaks from whatever source at all times. We certainly don't always do so, meaning that we continue to sin all through our life, like stumbling while walking a path through the woods, but God has told us that as long as we are walking in the Light, even though we stumble, He will continually cleanse us from all sin.
No human is perfect, and God knows and understands that. It is not possible for a human to be perfect, because we have a nature of sin, a flaw that Satan caused that makes us want to be our own master instead of submitting to God as our Master. But one who, as Paul put it, continually buffets his body daily to keep it in line with God's Lordship is walking in the Light. One who submits to his body's urging to sin continually is not submitting to Jesus as Lord, and so is not walking in the Light, even if he claims to be. He is deceiving himself. The more one buffets his body, driving it to stay in line with God's commands for how to live life, the more like Jesus that person will become. And the more one allows the body to direct his actions, the more like Satan that person becomes. It is the desire to do God's will to the point of sacrifice of ungodly pleasures that leads to continually doing God's will more easily. Just having the desire does not make one godly, it requires the actions also, even though those actions are flawed, fall off the path, and fail often.
I 100% agree. He tells you in a dream to rise up, kill, and eat, you don't say, "No, Lord".
I 100% agree. We are to walk in the Spirit all the time. If we do it, we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But we don't always walk in the Spirit, and when we don't walk in the Spirit, we end up gratifying the lusts of the flesh.
I can't say I agree with this because of the words, "as long as". It appears you are saying God's continual cleansing from sin stops if we are not walking in the light. But that doesn't make sense because forgiveness is not needed when a person walks in the light, for there is no cause for stumbling when he walks in the light (1 Jn 2:10). Therefore, if he stumbles, it is evidence that he is not walking in the light, and that's the only time His cleansing from sin is needed. Are you saying He forgives our past sins only after we get up after a fall and start walking in the light again?
I think I materially agree with this. James beautifully describes the lifecycle of sin in James 1:14-15. He says, in particular that "each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed". (Jas 1:14) The devil may entice, but a person's own sinful desires are what draw him away from God to sin. This is the sin-nature that does not go away after a person is saved, and its presence in a person is why he continues to sin after he is saved. The Spirit and the flesh have desires that are in adversarial opposition to one another, and that is why walking in the Spirit is the only way to not carry out the desires of the flesh.
I would say that a person who has been joind to the Lord and is one spirit with Him (1 Cor 6:17) and who also walks in lock step with the Spirit (Ga 5:25) is walking in the light. There is no way to change the flesh into being less sinful than it is, so buffeting it doesn't make it more holy. Gratifying the Spirit is the only way to prevent the fruits of the flesh from developing and maturing.
I agree that walking in the flesh is the opposite of walking in the Spirit. If a person walking in the Spirit, he is not walking in the flesh. Obviously, no instance of sinning is in line with submitting to Jesus as Lord. But I would also say that no sinful desire of the flesh (draws us away from God to sin) is in line with submitting to Jesus as Lord.
I first learned the tennants of progressive sanctification in the early 1980's. Back then, I eagerly adopted them. But the longer I practiced them, the more obvious it became that progressive sanctification is a false doctrine. The bottom line is that the flesh is corrupt beyond repair and the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness, is not corruptible by sin (Eph 4:22-24). We could discuss this in more detail if you are interested.
Yes, "action" is required. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." (Ga 5:25)
Peter's resistance was righteous at the time.
The Light illuminates the Narrow Path, it does not illuminate the darkness of the wide path. Satan tempts us even while we are walking the Narrow Path, and if we stumble and fall off of the Path, we enter darkness. If we repent and return to the light, the Blood cleanses us from all sin, but if we fail to repent and return, then we remain lost and condemned. This is what James is telling us in James 5:19-20.
Buffeting the body does not mean beating yourself with rods, or depriving yourself of pleasures as those in the middle ages did. To use a horse analogy, it means breaking the flesh to the reins, and using a bit and bridle to maintain control of it. Like a young mount, it may break free and cause havoc in its youth, but the more it is trained with the reins, the less often it seeks to break free, and the more quickly and easily it is brought back under control when it does.
I agree, but Satan is still there constantly placing obstacles in our way, and trying to draw us away to himself. To use another analogy, it is easy to keep focused on the road when you have a clean windshield. When you have driven for a while, insects start to splatter on your windshield. One insect is easy to overlook, and keep your focus on the road. But after a while there are hundreds of insects on the windshield, and it becomes easier to take your focus off of the road and onto the guts of a particularly large bug that splatters in amazing color and brilliance. When this happens, an accident becomes much more likely. Satan is a master at sending "bugs" to splatter on our life, just in time for the traffic in front of us to stop suddenly and we end up with a massive crash in our life. Part of our duty is to keep our windshield clean so we are not as distracted when the bigger bugs hit.
Correct, there is nothing "progressive" about sanctification. We are either sanctified, or we are not. It is the training of our spirit to be in tune with THE Spirit, and to have greater and greater control over our flesh that is progressive.
Lol. It's righteous to say "No, Lord, I'm not going to do what you say" when the Lord tells you to do something?
You're gonna double down on that?
So, you would not contend that the one acceptable answer is "Yes, Lord. You are in control. I will do what you say."?
Thanks for clarifying. That's what I thought you meant... a saved person becomes lost when he sins, then gets his sins forgiven after repenting and returning again to walking in the light. Since that is what you believe, how many times can a person sin, repent, and be saved again? Is seventy times seven the lifetime limit?
So, you're saying that over time, as we train our flesh to be good, we sin and lose our salvation less frequently and we gain back our salvation through repentance more quickly? I heard a famous preacher from Texas say in a sermon that he had gone as long as 3 days in a row without sinning once. Let's assume his clame was right. Would you say that he needs to beat his flesh some more to stretch out the number of days that his salvation lasts to several weeks or months or years instead of just 3 days?
I don't know exactly what you're saying. The idea of training our spirits to be in tune with His Spirit is not a scriptural concept. On the contrary, gaining new life in Christ gives us new spirits that are rightly aligned with Him in every way. Our new spirits are rightly aligned with Him by virtue of the fact that they were created when He gave birth to us by His Spirit, meaning we are His offspring. But I do agree that we walk in lock step with His Spirit more effectively as we learn through use to train our spiritual senses to discern good and evil.
