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Yes, I agree completely. It requires our participation, our effort, to remain in Him, cooperating with his grace according to His wisdom and purpose for man.
Contraire. . .
Contraire. . .
One has to understand what that means. And I've explained it. Faith is the doorway to righteousness as it's the doorway to love as it's the doorway to God, the source of love. Faith does not stand in for or replace the need for righteousness in man, it simply makes it possible, the only thing that makes it possible. It's not the rote act of faith that justifies us; it's the union with God that faith realizes that is the essence of man's justice.
Where do you get that?? That's speculation. If they loved well, as God desires, they'd be perfect, they'd have fulfilled the law. No need for Christ to come. That love comes only by virtue of the reconciliation with God that rebirth consists of.
The two are totally inseparable.
True faith is the only means of salvation (Eph 2:8-9).
It is precisely that act of faith which remits our sin by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Ro 3:25), which remittance of sin is justification (forensic righteousness) by that same faith, apart from works (Ro 3:28).
"Justice" (dike) is not used in the NT of righteousness--which is the meaning of "just" (dikaios).
"...if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing." 1 Cor 13:2
That's just faith in your faith, sometimes referred to as "fiduciary faith". But it's what faith does, and what it means, that saves you. Jesus came to reconcile us with God. This reconciliation is effected via faith as He expresses and so reveals a God truly worth our believing in. That's just how it works. Faith is to be in agreement/solidarity/communion with God in a fellowship with Him of subjugation: creature to Creator. That is justice/righteousness, the way things are meant to be IOW. As we see Jesus we see God, as we believe everything Jesus said and did, we're believing God. Again:
Miracle-working faith is not saving faith (Mt 7:22-23).
Paul is addressing Christians about the Christian life after salvation, not about the saving faith that got them there.
Saving faith loves.
What it does is forgive your sin.
The terminology of the Scriptures and its meaning in the original languages are both adequate and authoritative to me.
In the NT, that is the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual (Php 2:13), and I don't think it can be better denoted any other way.
It means more than that. It means that you've become a child of God now with all that implies including the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. Our salvation is directly connected to that union with God and our participation with His work in us as together now we work out our salvation.
You're going off of translations to begin with and other's interpretations. The historic language of the church is fine with me. The Reformers often used it as well.
It's both together, us and Him, with Him directing and us responding and participating, meaning that we're remaining in Him, or not.
Sure it is. It's reliance upon God which is where he wants us. Any miracle that results from faith is surely a work of God and so He would certainly know them.
As you come to understand the gospel better, as Paul did, you'll understand along with him that faith, hope, and love are all gifts of grace, and human choices as well. They don't just happen to us even though we can't make them happen ourselves. We must embrace them, and express them, and continue to do so, and that's how we become, and know that, we are children of God. It's to drink from the font of living waters, who is Christ.
No. . .salvation's (forgiveness of sin) effect (forensic righteousness, justification) means more than that.
I'm going off the definitions of the Greek words.
Perhaps you could give me an example of the Reformation use of "justice" to mean righteousness.
It's God working it in us to act it out (Php 2:13).
As I said, it means more than that, not less than that as if forgiveness is excluded. When a person is justified, they are forgiven,, washed, cleansed, made new creations with new hearts and spirits, now children of God enabled by His grace to live as children of God should.
And justice is an appropriate translation there. Either way its all translation and interpretation unless we have the original manuscript and can speak the original language and can know the original author's intention.
The terms are just part of classical western scholarship where the Latin language and usage prevailed. Luther, commenting on his "Tower Experience" where he came to understand that "justice" as used in the bible was often referring to a good thing, the righteousness which He gives to man by faith (whether imputed or otherwise, incidentally), rather than strictly the source of judgment and condemnation. If you understand what really happened to Luther, he came to know that God is on our side even if he understood it imperfectly, as he claims that Augustine did.. This can take time in any case-we begin with the idea that God is angry, distant, aloof in His superiority, controlling, and perhaps preferring to send us to hell-sort of the attitude humans have with each other when we play God.
While we work it out with Him, in fear and trembling. (Phil 2:12)
Clare, God would've had to have made the miracles possible if they were the product of faith!!! So He most certainly would've known them-and they would've been His! As it is, you added the term "faith" into the mix. Do you really think they had faith?
Some seem confused as to what they are and how they work in us whereas the church in any case long ago worked out the fact that they are supernatural virtues given, which we are unable to possess on our own. Either way, as I said, they are both gifts of grace-and human choices to accept and act upon those gifts.
In a sense, because if we could stop breathing, as we can refuse to accept grace, then we would die. As it is, we can refuse to accept those gifts, as we can refuse to accept any gift, and then we do die, or remain dead, because of it.
The Greek dikaiosis (justification) is a declaration, a sentence, a pronouncement of "not guilty," a right standing with God, as the result of that same faith (Ro 3:28) which saved them (Eph 2:8-9).
Where do we find "justice" used as the above elsewhere in the NT?
