Your definition of faith includes works too?
Not many people understand what faith means or what the New Life in Christ means. I have shown you the Scriptures already.
A new life in Christ is not works.
You are not saved by obeying all kinds of laws, or by fasting, or self flagellation, or more time spent in church, or other works.
Why? The reason is that doing good works
is not a New Life in Christ.
Salvation is a New Life of Love by a Gospel Faith in Christ Jesus –
crucified to the Old Life controlled by your flesh, to serve your Lord Jesus.
Galatians 5:24 (WEB)
24 Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let’s also walk by the Spirit.
You are God’s possession, who purchased you for Himself to be holy onto Him when you repented and then believed in Jesus as your rightful Lord. You are a noble vessel onto God’s service.
1 Peter 1:14-18 (WEB)
14 as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance, 15 but just as he who called you is holy, you yourselves also be holy in all of your behavior; 16 because it is written, “
You shall be holy; for I am holy.” [Leviticus 11:44-45] 17 If you call on him as Father,
who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear
Matthew 10:38 (WEB) 38 He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me isn’t worthy of me.
Your commitment of your whole life to God by faith is your privileged responsibility before God. By this faith God graciously counts you as righteous and worthy for salvation.
Revelation 3:2-5 (WEB) 2 Wake up and keep the things that remain, which you were about to throw away, for I have found no works of yours perfected before my God. 3 Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If therefore you won’t watch, I will come as a thief, and you won’t know what hour I will come upon you. 4 Nevertheless you have a few names in Sardis that didn’t defile their garments. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 5 He who overcomes will be arrayed in white garments, and I will in no way blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
This is something you desire to do because you trust in Jesus – to follow Him to receive real Life, which is a life of Love, the life of God by His Spirit in you.
Luke 14:33-35 (WEB) 33 So therefore whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple. 34 Salt is good, but if the salt becomes flat and tasteless, with what do you season it? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Renouncing all that you have means that, by faith, you are denying yourself as part of this world system. Instead, you follow another – Lord Jesus. Therefore, as a believer, you are to re-dedicate your talents, gifts, wealth, and your very life to the New Life of following Jesus – to glorify God just as the Apostle Paul did. This is the New Life.
Paul used all his years of education as a Pharisee to now serve Lord Jesus. You are re-dedicating all that you have and all that you are to the One who redeemed you at a very great cost.
You can only have one Master. Choose whom you will serve
Romans 16:25-27 (NIV 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God,
so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith — 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Romans 1:5 (NIV) 5 Through him we received grace and apostleship
to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.
Romans 6:16 (WEB)
16 Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone,
you are the servants of whomever you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?
Therefore, by denying ourselves and then following Christ, walking by His Spirit, we become a
new creature:
2 Corinthians 5:15-17 (WEB)
15 He died for all, that those who live should
no longer live to themselves, but to him who for their sakes died and rose again. . . 17 Therefore (
for this reason) if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
This is salvation, the new life, the new creation in Christ Jesus. The result is eternal life.
Romans 6:21-22 (WEB)
21 What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But
now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life.
That is the Gospel Faith by which we are a New Creature in Christ - saved.
Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV)
19 Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
Acts 5:32 (WEB) 32 We are His witnesses of these things; and so also is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.
John 14:15-17 (WEB). . . 15 If you love me, keep my commandments. 16 I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever: 17 the Spirit of truth
John 14:21 (WEB)
21 One who has my commandments and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. One who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.”
John 14:23 (WEB) 23 Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.
Blessings
