Of course living a holy life in obedience to the Lord is what we are saved FOR, For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10) When you say it is something we "must" do because we are saved, then you get into the quandary Knarf is talking about. You just told him in the prior post:
So you are implying that because you were saved in ‘81, you would be forgiven if you murdered someone in cold blood tomorrow? You see, this is why I joined the Church. Our Lord saves. He also said an impossibility for us - “Go forth and Sin no more.”
Make up your mind. If we are saved by the grace of God THROUGH faith and that NOT of ourselves as Ephesians 2:8,9 says, then you cannot make salvation conditional upon how we live our lives after we receive Christ. Either he saves us by His shed blood for our sins and we are not condemned or we somehow must do things in order to stay saved, which is really no different than saying we must do good works to BE saved. And if we can do enough good works to merit eternal life, then Christ died for no reason, in vain.
You stated that what turned you off about "Protestants" is those who "got saved" and then lived like hell and showed no evidence of being Christ's. I can certainly sympathize, I saw the same thing in Catholicism. Sure they teach you must be sorry for your sins, go to confession, do penance, try to do better, but many people used that as an excuse to live like hell because they knew all they had to do was go to confession and everything would be okay. Neither one is Biblically correct. A person who genuinely trusts in Jesus Christ to save him, and surrenders his life to the Lord in faith, is born again - which means he is reborn as a child of God and a new spirit nature resides with the old carnal one. The Holy Spirit is also given to us as an "earnest of our inheritance" or like a down payment as a guarantee of Heaven.
The new nature will contend with the old as we grow in our sanctification and we learn to heed the discipline and chastisement of our Heavenly Father. The more mature our faith, the better we become at being conformed to the image of Christ - what God is preparing us for. When we sin, and we will, our close relationship with the Lord is hindered and when we confess our sins to Him - come clean because we KNOW He knows - He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. BUT, while we may be in between the commission of sin and the confession of it, we have NOT lost our salvation - NO, because our salvation was not based upon our being good or deserving it in the first place, was it? Our sins are not paid for by anything we can do - if it were, we would spend eternity separated from God. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, his precious blood is what paid our penalty for sin and that same grace KEEPS us saved all the way to Heaven.
That is the amazing grace of God! That by His mercy we are not condemned, and by His grace we are made righteous - as righteous as Christ - because we are found IN Him. The grace of God goes even further than that by adopting us into His family and as children of the Most High we are secure in His love. Jesus said, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37)
It is 6 AM here and I am falling asleep, but I’ll give it a shot.
You are quite correct that we cannot earn our way to salvation. It is a gift, freely given, that all we need do is accept.
That, to me, is a cop out. I can accept the Lord into my heart then go on a killing spree with a clear conscience.
To me, once you accept the gift of salvation, you have a duty to attempt to live up to it. We can not, as we are only human, but we both can and should try.