Thank you for your reply.
That's the beauty of how these words are actually so woven together. If I may: "Doing good works for the purpose of getting in heaven will not necessarily get you into heaven without belief..."
At least in the main sense of "good works" in the NT, I don't think there are good works apart from belief (Biblical Faith). That's the point and reality of what this interwovenness results in.
Exactly, faith and works are not separate from each other. Genuine faith believes Gods Word and follows or obeys what Gods' Word says. Anything else is the dead faith of devils (James 2:17-26).
Please pardon me for saying so, I mean no disrespect, but I still read your statement as hedging. What I'm saying since my first post to you, is that there is a precision in God's Word that we need to conform to if we are to think His thoughts and from there speak His words.
For example:
If I say, "we show our love for God when we obey Him" - it's not necessarily the same as saying, "our non-burdened obedience to God
is our Love for God" (1 John 5:3).
- Depending on the thinking of the one saying the first statement, I am left wondering if this person thinks we can love God apart from obeying Him.
- And this goes into what Jesus spoke about regarding the Law - the Law works at the level of our thoughts, not just our actions.
- Being in Christ, having the gift of God's Spirit, having God's Law written on our hearts, is changing us to our core. He's dealing with the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, our will and desires. Hebrews speaks of our consciences now being perfected and the inability under the old priesthood and sacrificial system for this to be accomplished.
- I think all this is why John speaks of loving in truth in 1-3 John, which suggests that people can love not in truth, which in reality would not be Biblical Love.
- Unfortunately, people are good at acting. But not in God's eyes, and He doesn't like hypocrisy, so He's changing us in Christ, and He tells us with specificity that our non-burdened obedience to Him IS our love for Him - our actual willful obedience from our core with a new heart and His Spirit in us. I think this non-burdened concept is very important, because it speaks of this Love/Obedience being natural and effortless, because it's from who and what we are now in Christ.
- In essence He's telling us no more acting like you love Him, no more thinking we love Him just because we act outwardly in a certain way under Law that makes us, or others think we love God. At and from our core, as a new creation in Christ, our willful, natural, and knowledgeable obedience in Faith/Obedience and Love/Obedience to Him in truth, is what He's developing in us as He saves us.
- I also see this tied to what Jesus said in John 4, when 7 or 8 times He in a few verses spoke of worshipping God in Spirit and Truth - He spoke of that time being the beginning of the outworking of God's desire that true worshippers do this. The translational issue there is that "worship" does not convey the primary meaning of the word He used. It means to bow in obeisance [to a ruler - to God]. So, it's another discussion about our Obedience. Thus, it's another Faith and Love and Works [in Spirit and Truth] discussion put forth with great emphasis by Jesus Himself.
A lot of expressed thoughts just to say I like God's precise statement in 1 John 5:3, which I think is John's precise commentary stemming from walking with and following Jesus and hearing things like Jesus stated per John 14:24.
To be precise, at this point I don't think there is "getting into Heaven" apart from abiding Faith/Obedience/Love/Works for those of us who He does not take home soon after truly coming to Biblical Faith in Jesus Christ. I think this compares with the Loss of Salvation thoughts expressed by some here. What He does with perpetual infants in Christ, if there is such a thing, is another topic of discussion.