What I read here is: According to setst777, salvation is obtained by repentance, faith in Christ and enduring in the faith. The first two things are Christ-dependent but the last is you-dependent. Insofar as your salvation depends on you, on your endurance, your Saviour is actually not Christ but you. What I hear you saying is that, however perfect Christ's atonement was, however much it perfectly satisfied God's holy justice, it still needs your effort, your addition of endurance, to be complete. I hear you saying Christ can only save you if you if you save yourself by your endurance. You are, essentially, a co-Saviour with Christ. He only does most of the saving but you play a crucial role in keeping yourself saved. It's some of Jesus and some of you.
Do you not see how blasphemous this is? There is no co-Saviour. There is only one Way, one Good Shepherd, one Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Timothy 2:5) Jesus saves you; you don't - you can't - save yourself. Your helplessness, your utter weakness, is exactly why Jesus had to die in your place, why he had to rescue you from the consequences of your sin through the torments of crucifixion and the shedding of his blood.
Romans 5:6-10
6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die.
8 But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Ephesians 2:1-5
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
You were "without strength" before God drew you to Christ; you were bound under the power of the World, the Flesh, and the devil, "dead in trespasses and sins," and totally unable to do anything to save yourself from yourself. But now, being saved, you suddenly have sufficient power to keep yourself saved, to endure to the end? You had no power before your salvation to live God's way. By what means have you obtained the power necessary to endure in your salvation?
As I have explained in past posts, your ability to "endure to the end" is imparted to you from the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit has, by coming to live within you, worked into you all that God has commanded you to work out.
Philippians 2:12-13
12 ...work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
In the Person of the Holy Spirit, we abide in Christ, who is called the "Spirit of Christ" in Romans 8:9. Without the Spirit of Christ, we can do nothing.
John 15:4-5
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
We cannot save ourselves, we cannot "bear fruit," and we cannot endure to the end without the power of God working in us in the Person of the Spirit, enabling us to do so.
I am not talking about compulsion, here. The Spirit does not coerce or compel us to right living. He works in us only as we submit (James 4:7), yield (Romans 6:13), surrender (Romans 12:1) ourselves to his will and way. As we do, he moves in us to transform us, conforming us to Christ, empowering us unto holiness.
But just as Christ is the Bridge to God through salvation, saving us from ourselves, the Holy Spirit is the Power Source for Christian living, in himself being for us what we could never be for ourselves. There is, then, no contribution we make to the work of God in saving us or in keeping us. We simply receive, remain in, and reflect the work of God.
1 Corinthians 1:27-31
27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,
28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are,
29 so that no man may boast before God.
30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,
31 so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."
Yes, according to God's word. See above.
What blindness! Wow. This is what happens when Self is given its head, when Self supplants the Spirit in Christian living.
I don't contend that all responsibility is removed from the Christian in walking with God. But the believer's "responsibility" is to respond to the work of the Spirit by receiving his work, remaining in it by faith, and reflecting his transforming work in holy living. Any other approach to Christian living is both unbiblical and doomed to failure. Without Christ, the Vine, living in us in the Person of the Spirit, we can do NOTHING.
Actually, I hold to a mixture of Provisionism and Molinism, soteriologically.
No one on this board denies that God saves us. God graciously saves those who believe, and those who refuse to believe remain condemned (
John 3:14-18). That is God's will and plan. Call it a condition if you like.
Who are we to say God's free gift of salvation is no longer the free gift of salvation simply because God chooses to save those who believe (
a continuous believing - not a past experience)?
"Faith" and enduring in that faith (continuous faith), is something you may never grasp, even after you almost understood after I quoted the verses on the
Great Commission (
Matthew 28:19-20) and those on repentance.
Read and understand the faith of the Gospel -
a sanctified life onto God:
Galatians 5:24-25 (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.
Yet, you say sanctification is optional to be saved. No, rather,
sanctification unto God
is the
only faith by which God chooses to save us.
Notice in the following Scripture that Paul is instructing and admonishing, not God, but the believer on how to live in the faith -
a sanctified life - so they may receive free gift of eternal life.
Romans 6:15-23 (NIV)
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
By a repentant faith, God indwells us by His Spirit, through whom we are
set free from sin, but only as we faithfully live, walk, and sow to the Spirit who indwells us (
Romans 8:12-13;
Galatians 6:7-9;
Romans 8:3-4), because many will grieve, quench, and insult the Spirit (
Ephesians 4:30-32;
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22;
Hebrews 10:24-31). Therefore, by God's choice, His
saving work, grace and power of salvation are all
accessed and
kept by faith in His Son.
Romans 1:16-17 (WEB) 16 For I am not ashamed of the Good News of Christ, because it is the
power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek. 17 For in it is revealed God’s righteousness
from faith to faith. As it is written, “
But the righteous shall live by faith.” [
Habakkuk 2:4]
Romans 5:1-2 (WEB)
5 Being therefore
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; 2 through whom we also
have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
1 Peter 1:4-5 (KJV)
4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 Who are
kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
John 8:12 (WEB) 12 Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. [
Isaiah 60:1]
He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but
will have the light of life.”
I did quote for you many of the Scriptures that
teach and
admonish and
warn us that we are to endure to the end to be saved, with examples of those who fell away.
That does not mean we save ourselves, as you so seriously misunderstand, but that
God requires us to endure in our faith to receive His free gift of salvation that He paid for.
All those Scriptures regarding enduring to the end to be saved were meant for believers - instruction that believers are responsible to follow. Those warnings to endure to the end
were not directed to God to follow, but to believers by God, so that we may be saved by God.
Surely, those who truly repent and believe in Jesus are indwelt by the Spirit. All those who understand the basics of the New Testament know this. But that never takes away the responsibility and obligation of the Christian to remain faithful to the end - living, walking, and sowing to the Spirit in us
to be saved, receiving eternal life. That is what those Scriptures clearly stated (
Romans 8:12-13;
Galatians 6:7-9;
Romans 8:3-4). I quoted those Scriptures for you repeatedly.
And not all Christians will remain faithful, and will
quench,
grieve, and
insult the Spirit
who indwells them, and are in danger of condemnation. I quoted those Scriptures for you repeatedly as well (
Ephesians 4:30-32;
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22;
Hebrews 10:24-31).
So, God does his saving good work in us, but only as we faithfully live, walk, and sow to the Spirit. God saves us - working out His good pleasure in us - as we continue to live out our faith in this way, and remaining faithful, so God can continue is saving work in our lives.
No,
that does not mean we are co-Savior, or that we save ourselves. These are statements made by you because you do not understand what faith means, or how God chooses to save us as recorded in His Word.
Although I quoted all these Scriptures repeatedly for all to see, including the many Passages regarding our responsibility to remain faithful, to endure to the end, to be saved by God; yet, you accuse me of things I never said.
Thankfully, all these messages are on this board for all to see.
So there is nothing more to discuss with you.
I truly wish you well, but I am grieved that you are doing your best to mislead people, whether knowingly or unknowingly. And I am concerned about their salvation, because Scripture teaches us that many will be deceived and mislead by false teachers.
I already know you will accuse me of the same, but I did show that your use of Scripture is faulty, quoting Scripture out of context and supplying your own meaning.
No one denies the Scriptures you quoted, but you neglect the Scriptures teaching us
how,
when, for
what purpose, those promises of God are attributed to us.
And you cannot legitimately accuse me of blindness for that which God already commanded and warned us to do so that we may be found worthy by Him to receive His free gift of salvation (
Revelation 3:1-5;
Luke 21:34-36,
2 Thessalonians 1:4-5) as if that means we are saving ourselves.
And I did provide the many Scriptures that reveal what you reject as "works-salvation," that the believer is obligated to endure to the end to be saved by God. The Bible is full of such Scriptures - so many warnings, admonishments, and urgings from Lord Jesus, all through the Epistles, and again in Revelation.
Faith is not a one time action, but an enduring to the end. Therefore, enduring to the end is not to be taken lightly, as if God does that for you, and you do nothing - all God's work. Not according to Scripture.
God saves those who endure in that faith to the end, living by His Spirit. God holds each of us responsible and accountable for our faithfulness to Him, and we are obligated to live, walk, and sow to His Spirit that indwells us by faith as the requirement God himself established through which He chooses to grant the free gift of Eternal Life.
Blessings.
