Saved by Faith or grace?
- Thread starter LoveofTruth
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I see it the other way around by faith we enter into the grace by which we are saved. Grace is God's unmerited favour working in us through His divine influence on the heart and its reflection in our life. This grace is at the new birth. But we abide and continue in this grace through faith. So we are encouraged to continue on the faith and to continue in the grace.
If a man says he has faith and is not born again is he saved? If a man says he has faith alone and does not have God working in him by His grace is he saved?
So do you see how that as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without God working in us is dead also.
"By grace are ye saved"
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I see the "things we believe" and "the things we do" as different sides of the same coin called faith.
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The Faith of Jesus isn't "belief", faith is really a verb, it's an action word, it is to dominate the mode of living. Faith that dominates the mode of living indicates hat such a person has in fact been spirit born.
By faith we are saved, by growth in grace we remain.
God responds to the faintest flicker of faith.
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the things we believe are by faith and the things God does in salvation and new birth are by His grace. Then as a new creation we can DO all things through Christ who strengthens us. Then God works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure and to make us perfect unto every good work. This is the grace that saves. But this grace can only be entered into by faith and continued in by faith. By faith Christ dwells in our heart,
Can a man say he has faith and is not born again inwardly be saved?
if a person says they have faith alone and yet does not have God working in him is he saved? Can faith save him?
but yes grace and faith are connected
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
Remember Romans 11.6:
"And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work."
SOLA FIDE, SOLA GRATIA indeed!
"And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work."
SOLA FIDE, SOLA GRATIA indeed!
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Jesus said "where is YOUR faith"
The faith is wrapped up in the seed sown in the heart. This is the word of God and His Light that shines in us. We don't see but know inwardly of this working. Unless God gave this free gift we could have nothing to believe in, and unless Jesus died on the cross and rose again we could have nothing to believe in. Through Jesus work on the cross and his work in us we are saved by believing/faith in His work and the grace he gives at salvation and new birth.
But scripture clearly says that we are saved by grace. It doesn't say we are saved faith alone.
consider
Ephesians 2:5
Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)"
Ephesians 2:8
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:"
Titus 2:11
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,.."
Galatians 1:6
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:"
do you have verses that say faith alone saves?
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the word "faith" means
"from 3982; persuasion, i.e. credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly, constancy in such profession; by extension, the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself:--assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity."
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I agree with this.
By faith we have access to grace.
And this faith is not just about knowing the grace.
For if >>after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome<<, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
===(2Peter 2:20-22)===
This passage tells me that our faith is not mere knowledge.
For knowledge stays even when our faith isn’t.
Faith is an understanding (hope) which bring us to act a certain way. In Hebrews 11, we read how Noah built an ark by faith, and Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice by faith, etc.
By faith we have access to grace.
And this faith is not just about knowing the grace.
For if >>after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome<<, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
===(2Peter 2:20-22)===
This passage tells me that our faith is not mere knowledge.
For knowledge stays even when our faith isn’t.
Faith is an understanding (hope) which bring us to act a certain way. In Hebrews 11, we read how Noah built an ark by faith, and Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice by faith, etc.
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fhansen
Oldbie
It's both/and though, not either/or. God calls us; He offers us faith so to speak; He gives us the reason (truths to believe in) and means and power to believe but we can nevertheless refuse His calling. So grace leads to more grace, depending on how or whether we receive it. We respond to the gift of grace, to God, by believing, and that introduces us into a life of grace.
But, yes, faith is our first act, and it's important to emphasize that it's a free act even as God helps us to make it.
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Over-analysis paralysis!
Jesus never made any if this so complicated.
In his religion of self forgetfulness, we dedicate our lives to searching for and doing God’s will for the joy of it. Falling back into the lawyerly splitting of hairs misses the point. In fact this kind of theological technocratic “angling” is what lead highly religious people to miss the Son of God altogether.
Even faith is a gift not an accomplishment!
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God does not have to extend mercy to us. We don't deserve eternal life and we have no claim on any part of nor can we we work our way into... the Kingdom. God owes us no favors. Yet... He still extends to us a hand of mercy, grace... and that is His doing, His choice, His will... not ours. We can accept it in faith and that is Paul's reasoning... saved by grace through faith.
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Since grace is just God deciding to be lenient, and picking people without considering merit, how did Christianity misunderstand grace to mean a resource needed to be sanctified, so that men could then be completed, perfected and finally saved?
To understand how, we must examine the methodology.
Simplified, the church taught that grace was a resource by which the souls was purified in order to be saved. And it was the depository of that grace, able to impart it through teaching, shepherding and administering of the sacraments. It was the misuse of these means that triggered off Luther's rejection not only of the means, but of the part grace played in salvation.
Grace in Christianity - Wikipedia
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Luther and Lutheran theology[edit]
Martin Luther's posting of his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517 was a direct consequence of the perfunctory sacramentalism and treasury doctrines of the mediæval church. The act was precipitated by the arrival of Johann Tetzel, authorized by the Vatican to sell indulgences.
The effectiveness of these indulgences was predicated on the doctrine of the treasury of grace proclaimed by Pope Clement VI. The theory was that merit earned by acts of piety could augment the believer's store of sanctifying grace. Gifts to the Church were acts of piety. The Church, moreover, had a treasury full of grace above and beyond what was needed to get its faithful into heaven. The Church was willing to part with some of its surplus in exchange for earthly gold. Martin Luther's anger against this practice, which seemed to him to involve the purchase of salvation, began a swing of the pendulum back towards the Pauline vision of grace, as opposed to James's.
Luther taught that men were helpless and without a plea before God's justice, and their acts of piety were utterly inadequate before his infinite holiness. Were God only just, and not merciful, everyone would go to hell, because everyone, even the best of us, deserves to go to hell. Our inability to achieve salvation by our own effort suggests that even our best intention is somehow tainted by our sinful nature. This doctrine is sometimes called total depravity, a term derived from Calvinism and its relatives.
It is by faith alone (sola fide) and by grace alone (sola gratia) that men are saved. Good works are something the believers should undertake out of gratitude towards their Savior; but they are not necessary for salvation and cannot earn anyone salvation; there is no room for the notion of "merit" in Luther's doctrine of redemption. (There may, however, be degrees of reward for the redeemed in heaven.) Only the unearned, unmerited grace of God can save anyone. No one can have a claim of entitlement to God's grace, and it is only by his generosity that salvation is even possible.
As opposed to the treasury of grace from which believers can make withdrawals, in Lutheranism salvation becomes a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy, in which penitents acknowledge the inadequacy of their own resources and trust only in God to save them. Accepting Augustine's concern for legal justification as the base metaphor for salvation, the believers are not so much made righteous in Lutheranism as they are considered covered by Christ's righteousness. Acknowledging that they have no power to make themselves righteous, the penalty for their sins is discharged because Jesus has already paid for it with his blood. His righteousness is credited to those who believe in and thus belong to him.
To understand how, we must examine the methodology.
Simplified, the church taught that grace was a resource by which the souls was purified in order to be saved. And it was the depository of that grace, able to impart it through teaching, shepherding and administering of the sacraments. It was the misuse of these means that triggered off Luther's rejection not only of the means, but of the part grace played in salvation.
Grace in Christianity - Wikipedia
Quote
Luther and Lutheran theology[edit]
Martin Luther's posting of his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517 was a direct consequence of the perfunctory sacramentalism and treasury doctrines of the mediæval church. The act was precipitated by the arrival of Johann Tetzel, authorized by the Vatican to sell indulgences.
The effectiveness of these indulgences was predicated on the doctrine of the treasury of grace proclaimed by Pope Clement VI. The theory was that merit earned by acts of piety could augment the believer's store of sanctifying grace. Gifts to the Church were acts of piety. The Church, moreover, had a treasury full of grace above and beyond what was needed to get its faithful into heaven. The Church was willing to part with some of its surplus in exchange for earthly gold. Martin Luther's anger against this practice, which seemed to him to involve the purchase of salvation, began a swing of the pendulum back towards the Pauline vision of grace, as opposed to James's.
Luther taught that men were helpless and without a plea before God's justice, and their acts of piety were utterly inadequate before his infinite holiness. Were God only just, and not merciful, everyone would go to hell, because everyone, even the best of us, deserves to go to hell. Our inability to achieve salvation by our own effort suggests that even our best intention is somehow tainted by our sinful nature. This doctrine is sometimes called total depravity, a term derived from Calvinism and its relatives.
It is by faith alone (sola fide) and by grace alone (sola gratia) that men are saved. Good works are something the believers should undertake out of gratitude towards their Savior; but they are not necessary for salvation and cannot earn anyone salvation; there is no room for the notion of "merit" in Luther's doctrine of redemption. (There may, however, be degrees of reward for the redeemed in heaven.) Only the unearned, unmerited grace of God can save anyone. No one can have a claim of entitlement to God's grace, and it is only by his generosity that salvation is even possible.
As opposed to the treasury of grace from which believers can make withdrawals, in Lutheranism salvation becomes a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy, in which penitents acknowledge the inadequacy of their own resources and trust only in God to save them. Accepting Augustine's concern for legal justification as the base metaphor for salvation, the believers are not so much made righteous in Lutheranism as they are considered covered by Christ's righteousness. Acknowledging that they have no power to make themselves righteous, the penalty for their sins is discharged because Jesus has already paid for it with his blood. His righteousness is credited to those who believe in and thus belong to him.
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can anyone show me scriptures that say we are saved by "faith alone"
if so I am willing to look at them
Would you say to him, “I can have no faith you have to force me to believe” if I am one of the elect? would that be fatalism or faith?
if so I am willing to look at them
So if Jesus asked you “where is YOUR faith?”
Would you say to him, “I can have no faith you have to force me to believe” if I am one of the elect? would that be fatalism or faith?
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Yes I agree we do not save ourselves or force God to do anything against His will.
And yes we can chose life or death faith or unbelief then by faith we enter into this grace and are saved and God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts. We are actually born again a new creation. Not just done legal fiction that many try to create.
If a man says they have faith alone and are not born again and have God in them are they saved? Can that faith alone save them?
As the body without the spirit is dead so faith without God’s work is dead also.
Show me your faith without God working in you and I’ll show you my faith by God working in me
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Actually, the idea came from the Reformation, in reaction to the RCC teaching of the need for good works in order to be saved. It, ofcourse, misses the point, completely, that in the Ancient Near East, when they said “have faith”, they meant “be loyal”
Theo Geek: The Patron-Client system and Hebrews 11:1
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Hebrews 11:1.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (NRSV)
That is a rather horrible translation.
The words "faith" (faithfulness) and "hoped" (expected), are technical terms in the Patron-Client system. As noted before, "faithfulness" denotes the client's loyalty to their patron (and also the patron's loyalty to the client). "Expect" denotes the hope of future favours. A client could validly expect favours from their Patron if they had been faithful to their Patron and served them well. Thus, in the first half of the verse we actually just have a basic statement about how the Patron-Client system works: If you are faithful you can expect favours. That's it. It's a summary of how a part of their every-day life society worked. The second half of the verse is just saying the same thing a different way: Our faithfulness testifies that we will receive favours that we haven't yet gotten (that we do not yet "see").
Historically this verse has been a minefield for people arguing over the definiton of faithfulness. A huge amount of stuff has been written trying to nail down precisely what each of the words in the sentence meant in an effort to get a precise definition of "faith" out of it. (Unfortunately this didn't work too well as a few of the words in the sentence have a variety of translation possibilities) But as a result of these efforts a lot of people are convinced that the Bible here defines faith as belief in things we can't see. As a result of theologians' sterling efforts over the centuries in mining the bible for sentences such as this one they have had great fun in formulating exactly what it means to have "faith". "Faith" had become an almost-magical word, set apart from everyday life.
That's one of the reasons, I suspect, that theologians have been relatively slow to pick up on the findings of the social sciences. The discovery of how the word "faithfulness" was actually used in the day-to-day life of the first century AD Mediterranean world has made hundreds of years of theological discussions worthless, and a lot of people don't like to let mere facts or evidence get in the way of their ideas and traditions. [Maybe I'm being too harsh, after all, the first book on the subject of linking Social Sciences with NT exegesis was only in 1981, and it was pretty badly written]
A great rule to keep in mind is this: Faithfulness is targeted at people, belief is targeted at ideas. You can be committed to a person, or committed to an idea. But talking about faithfulness to an idea, or belief in a person is nonsense.
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We can agree against the Roman Catholic Church and others that there is no such thing as meritous grace and no work we do can merit grace.
But for some to say they have “faith alone “ and say they are saved by some legal fiction is not salvation. Jesus said that unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom. This new birth is a real inward change and we become a real new creature . This is where by faith Christ really dwells in the heart. If Jesus Christ is in us and we in him then we (the New man in Christ) can do all things.
Can a man say he has faith alone without God working in him and still say he is saved?
Show me your faith alone without God working in you and I’ll show you my faith that has God working in me and The word of His grace in me to build me up.
Show me your salvation without the word of God in you giving you birth and I’ll show you my faith as I abide in Christ and His word in my heart .
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fhansen
Oldbie
The basic concept of grace being more than God's favor is theologically sound-and a necessary aspect of the New Covenant. Grace can be considered to be the life of the Holy Spirit in us. Man is not in a state of justice unless for the indwelling of God, and that indwelling necessarily produces change, God's work in us, a work He does as we cooperate with Him, 'apart from Whom we can do nothing', but 'with Whom all things are possible'.
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