I wrote the following in response to a discussion about the eternal security of the believer. I thought it would make a good blog entry, too. I hope it will be illuminating and edifying to those who may read it.
Our salvation is entirely God's doing. He draws us to Himself (Jn. 6:44); He convicts us of sin (Jn. 16:8); He moves us to repentance (2Ti. 2:25); He illuminates our minds with His truth (Jn. 16:13); He gives us faith to believe (Ro. 12:3); He gives us our second, spiritual birth and regenerates us (Jn. 3:5, 6; 2Cor. 5:17; Ro. 8:9-16) Our salvation is a monergistic work of God: He does it all. He took the initiative toward us while we were alienated from Him and enemies in our minds toward Him by our wicked works (Col. 1:21) and He continues to take the same initiative toward us once He's adopted us into His family.
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
It isn't that God "gets us off the ground" and then expects us to keep ourselves aloft. Not at all. He gets us into the air and then He sees to it that we remain there. From beginning to end our relationship with God is His doing, not ours; and so He gets all the glory for the marvelous things He does in and through us. All we do, fundamentally, is receive and transmit. We are vessels (2Ti. 2:21) into whom and through whom God communicates Himself, branches that simply abide and receive the life-giving, fruit-bearing sap of the Vine (Jn. 15:5). When this is the way we are living, good works are a natural consequence. When we are surrendered and open to the transforming power of God's Spirit, there is no need for legalistic brow-beating, for threats of lost salvation, for fear to motivate us to good works. As the apostle James explains, when we are truly born-again and walking in the Spirit, righteous living is the inevitable and natural result: our faith is unavoidably manifested in corresponding works.
When believers resort to frightening each other into doing what is right, they mistake entirely on what basis God accepts their obedience. The first and great commandment is to love God with all of one's being (Matt. 22:37, 38). This is where obedience to God, where our good works, are to start. God makes it clear in His word that obedience emanating from any other motive is unacceptable to Him:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
The threat of lost salvation and the fear it engenders are anathema to a biblical relationship with God. One cannot properly love what He fears (1Jn. 4:16-19). Now, I'm not talking about the reverential awe, the "fear" of God which the Bible commends to us, but the fear of a prisoner toward his captor, or the fear of a slave toward a hard and dangerous master. This is the sort of fear the saved-and-lost crowd often use to motivate each other to right living. But as I've shown, God rejects such a motive - and the "good works" that come out of it - entirely.
The issue, really, is about who gets the glory. If God saves us and preserves us in our relationship with Him, He gets all the glory. If we insinuate ourselves into the equation and make ourselves partially responsible for our good works, to the degree we do, we can take pride in our good works and thus diminish the glory God is due. Scripture highlights this issue:
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Romans 3:24-28
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
1 Corinthians 1:29-31
29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.
30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption--
31 that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."
Carnal, fleshly Self is at the root of the legalistic, "do right or die" doctrine of the saved-and-lost crowd. Fear of death is how one motivates Self to act contrary to its natural course. Self is incorrigibly selfish (Ro. 8:7, 8; Ga. 5:19-20); it produces only more of itself. To get it to act self-sacrificially, which is the essential core of godly love, to act in contradiction to its natural selfish impulse, one must supply a selfish motive: Self-preservation. And so, ironically, even when Self appears to act self-sacrificially from a motive of fear, it is actually motivated by selfishness. And this is, at least in part, why God rejects it. Legalistic, fear-motivated "obedience" is not an expression of love for God but of love of Self.
Scripture is very clear that the relationship God forges with us - and for us - He takes the responsibility to preserve:
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Hebrews 12:2
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
2 Timothy 1:12
12 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
A genuine child of God, one who has been "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6) who is Christ, is eternally kept by God, not because of their good works, but because of the perfect atonement of Christ on their behalf. Our acceptance with God is eternally secure because it is based on the finished and perfect work of Jesus, not our stumbling and imperfect walk with God. So it is that Paul wrote,
Philippians 3:12-14
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Good advice for us all, don't you think?
Selah.
Our salvation is entirely God's doing. He draws us to Himself (Jn. 6:44); He convicts us of sin (Jn. 16:8); He moves us to repentance (2Ti. 2:25); He illuminates our minds with His truth (Jn. 16:13); He gives us faith to believe (Ro. 12:3); He gives us our second, spiritual birth and regenerates us (Jn. 3:5, 6; 2Cor. 5:17; Ro. 8:9-16) Our salvation is a monergistic work of God: He does it all. He took the initiative toward us while we were alienated from Him and enemies in our minds toward Him by our wicked works (Col. 1:21) and He continues to take the same initiative toward us once He's adopted us into His family.
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
It isn't that God "gets us off the ground" and then expects us to keep ourselves aloft. Not at all. He gets us into the air and then He sees to it that we remain there. From beginning to end our relationship with God is His doing, not ours; and so He gets all the glory for the marvelous things He does in and through us. All we do, fundamentally, is receive and transmit. We are vessels (2Ti. 2:21) into whom and through whom God communicates Himself, branches that simply abide and receive the life-giving, fruit-bearing sap of the Vine (Jn. 15:5). When this is the way we are living, good works are a natural consequence. When we are surrendered and open to the transforming power of God's Spirit, there is no need for legalistic brow-beating, for threats of lost salvation, for fear to motivate us to good works. As the apostle James explains, when we are truly born-again and walking in the Spirit, righteous living is the inevitable and natural result: our faith is unavoidably manifested in corresponding works.
When believers resort to frightening each other into doing what is right, they mistake entirely on what basis God accepts their obedience. The first and great commandment is to love God with all of one's being (Matt. 22:37, 38). This is where obedience to God, where our good works, are to start. God makes it clear in His word that obedience emanating from any other motive is unacceptable to Him:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
The threat of lost salvation and the fear it engenders are anathema to a biblical relationship with God. One cannot properly love what He fears (1Jn. 4:16-19). Now, I'm not talking about the reverential awe, the "fear" of God which the Bible commends to us, but the fear of a prisoner toward his captor, or the fear of a slave toward a hard and dangerous master. This is the sort of fear the saved-and-lost crowd often use to motivate each other to right living. But as I've shown, God rejects such a motive - and the "good works" that come out of it - entirely.
The issue, really, is about who gets the glory. If God saves us and preserves us in our relationship with Him, He gets all the glory. If we insinuate ourselves into the equation and make ourselves partially responsible for our good works, to the degree we do, we can take pride in our good works and thus diminish the glory God is due. Scripture highlights this issue:
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Romans 3:24-28
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
1 Corinthians 1:29-31
29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.
30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption--
31 that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."
Carnal, fleshly Self is at the root of the legalistic, "do right or die" doctrine of the saved-and-lost crowd. Fear of death is how one motivates Self to act contrary to its natural course. Self is incorrigibly selfish (Ro. 8:7, 8; Ga. 5:19-20); it produces only more of itself. To get it to act self-sacrificially, which is the essential core of godly love, to act in contradiction to its natural selfish impulse, one must supply a selfish motive: Self-preservation. And so, ironically, even when Self appears to act self-sacrificially from a motive of fear, it is actually motivated by selfishness. And this is, at least in part, why God rejects it. Legalistic, fear-motivated "obedience" is not an expression of love for God but of love of Self.
Scripture is very clear that the relationship God forges with us - and for us - He takes the responsibility to preserve:
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Hebrews 12:2
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
2 Timothy 1:12
12 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
A genuine child of God, one who has been "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6) who is Christ, is eternally kept by God, not because of their good works, but because of the perfect atonement of Christ on their behalf. Our acceptance with God is eternally secure because it is based on the finished and perfect work of Jesus, not our stumbling and imperfect walk with God. So it is that Paul wrote,
Philippians 3:12-14
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Good advice for us all, don't you think?
Selah.
