It's still something you have to do. If you didn't have to do anything, then no one would be lost.
Let me see if I can better explain my point. If a man has a cancerous brain tumor and must have it removed in order to continue to live, he must first know he has a tumor, he must believe the diagnosis of a brain tumor, and then he must agree to surgery to have the tumor removed. Of course, he must also put his full trust in the brain surgeon who will remove the tumor. The actual removal of the tumor, however, does not involve the efforts of the tumorous man. He simply lays down on the operating table, and, unconscious, receives the saving work of the surgeon. The man with the tumor can do nothing to save himself from his tumor. He must rely entirely upon the powers of the surgeon to save him. For all of the sick man's choosing to believe he has a tumor and acting to seek its removal, in the end, being saved from his tumor is something the sick man can only receive, not accomplish for himself.
In the same way, no one is freed from the "tumor" of sin except by the power of the Great Physician, Jesus Christ. One must know one is sin-sick and one must agree to the remedy offered by God, but only Christ, the Saviour, can perform the necessary spiritual "surgery" to take away one's "tumor" of sin. The lost sinner can only receive the saving work of Christ, he cannot contribute to it and he cannot earn the salvation and spiritual regeneration he receives as a gift from God.
When a man is healed of a brain tumor, he doesn't go about acting as though he still has the tumor. He doesn't have to
pretend after surgery not to have the nose bleeds, headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, clouded thinking and faintness he had when the tumor was still in his head. With the removal of the tumor, these things are gone; the healed man's freedom from the tumor cannot help but show in his living. The important thing to note in this is that t
he character of the man's living is the consequence of his healing, not the means of it. No man sick with a brain tumor ever healed himself by acting as though he didn't have a tumor and no man sick with sin ever saved himself from his sin by acting like a man who has been saved. Salvation - the second birth - is obtained, not by behaving like a person healed of sin, but by faith in the Saviour.
You left out
Ephesians 2:10 which says, "... we are created for Good works that we should 'walk in them'". These verses from Paul that we're not saved by our own goodness is simply a warning not to become proud and boastful. Jesus said much the same thing;
Luke 17:10 "
So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do."
If Paul's words in
Ephesians 2:8-9 are a warning not be boastful of one's salvation, of one's second birth, it is because, as Paul explained in the verses (and in the ones preceding verse 8 and 9), one can do nothing to save oneself. Consider what he wrote at the beginning of the chapter:
Ephesians 2:1-3
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.
How does a lost person who is in this condition, bound under the power of the World, the Flesh and the devil, dead in trespasses and sins, contribute in any way to their salvation? They can't! And so, Paul writes,
Ephesians 2:4-5
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),
"But God," rich in mercy, saves the lost by His grace. And that grace is expressed in Christ, in whom the lost are made spiritually alive. It is so crucially important that we understand that it is God's grace that saves us, not our works, that Paul repeats this fact again in
verse 8. His focus, then, doesn't seem to me to be about our potential struggle with pride so much as it is our realizing our salvation, our spiritual second birth, is a gracious, undeserved - and unearned - gift of God to us.
Luke 17:10 was spoken by Christ to his disciples about the attitude by which they were to serve God. Jesus does NOT say this was an attitude by which they would save themselves.
We have a responsibility to practice the teachings of Jesus but we should not become proud. This is exactly the reason why Jesus said we should keep our praying, fasting, and charity-giving secret. We humans tend to become proud about our own goodness, especially in these three areas. Would we still pray, fast, and give to charity if no one else knew about it? Most of us probably would not. We love talking about such things because it makes us feel we're better than we really are.
I agree. But none of this means that a person contributes to their salvation, to being born-again, any more than someone traveling to the hospital and laying on the operating table has contributed to the removal of a tumor from their brain. No one can say, "My tumor was removed by my going to the hospital!" No, merely going to the hospital does nothing to remove a tumor from one's brain, nor does laying on an operating table. One must be operated on by a brain surgeon in order to have one's brain tumor removed. Only his work, done when one is utterly helpless, can bring freedom from the deadly effects of the tumor.
Jesus, and Paul are simply saying we should not become like this. They aren't saying we have no obligation to obey. That would make no sense.
I'm not saying Christians have no obligation to obey the commands of God, either. Being born-again, though, is not the consequence of one's obedience but, rather, the ground out of which obedience to God arises.
However, it does make sense that people who don't really want to change, but rather only to have the appearance of righteousness, would love arguments against obedience. You can talk like you're a totally spiritual person without needing to do anything. That, in itself, IS the kind of proud, boastful attitude Paul was referring to in
Ephesians 2:8-10. You come across as sounding spiritual. You post Bible verses. You talk about God's grace. But it's all for the purpose of arguing against obedience.
I don't know why people claiming to be Christians so often resort to this sort of personal attack. Isn't there some place within you that is convicted of the wrongness of this sort of thing?
You don't know ANYTHING about my life. Not one thing. And yet, you are ready to insinuate that I'm hypocritical and disobedient, regardless. Yikes!
Nowhere have I ever written that a Christian can be spiritual "without needing to do anything." What I HAVE pointed out is that the obedience of a Christian
flows out of their being born-again, it doesn't
make them born-again. If a person gets this wrong, if they think they must obey in order to be one of God's children, if they believe their good works obtain their salvation, then they live exactly as the Pharisees did, hoping to reach God by dint of their law-keeping. Such an approach to God denies the saving work of Christ, replacing the perfect atonement of Christ with self-effort, and the justification and sanctification of the Saviour (
1 Corinthians 1:30) with the impossible burden of perfectly fulfilling the law of God. (
Galatians 2:16)
