Posted on 09/06/2013 8:25:37 PM PDT by matthewrobertolson
A look at last Sunday's readings in the context of the position that faith and works are both directly important for salvation.
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"Good works are extremely important for our salvation. We will be judged 'according to [our] deeds' (Revelation 20:13)."
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(Excerpt) Read more at answeringprotestants.com ...
Eph 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Be ye doers of the Word and not just hearers.
Here’s my explanation of Ephesians 2:8-9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxM6ZhV-Ers
Also, don’t forget the very next verse... “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10, NASB translation)
I watched your video, Matthew, and looked up an article (Wikipedia) on “The Council of Trent” (So many things wrong with this council’s decisions).
Anyway: So you really don’t define “Grace”-what is your definition of Grace?
(I do know what Grace is, but I am just curious your personal definition)!
I also visited your website, btw: I think you are confusing saving faith (which also requires that we repent-and make Him Lord) with rewards in heaven.
Your talk of a new law (and the old not being valid is patently an error).
Matthew 5:17
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
And do you know how He fulfilled it? The law demanded payment for any sinner-one that was only symbolically shown by the Temple sacrifices, but truly only fulfilled by Jesus death and resurrection (His Gift of salvation, rather than by works-which we cannot fulfill, they are as “filth rags” to God). Instead of destroying us in Judgment God gives us His salvation (Grace) though we ARE His enemies until we receive that sacrifice by, yes..faith!
I do not mind speaking with you.
God Bless,
J.J.S.
Great!
Grace is a difficult thing to define, as I don’t think of it as a very rigid thing, but basically, I would say that grace, in all its forms, consists of various gifts from God to aid us in our salvation process (either directly or indirectly).
The only major constraint on grace (that I can think of right now, anyway) is that God, being good and wise, does not allow Himself to use it in opposition to free will.
No, but what is Grace as strictly defined by you, what IS it and how does it work?
(I could tell you what I think, and partially have in a previous answer-and IT is deceptively simple in all truth), but I want to hear your opinion?
We disagree on that. Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by re-establishing the Law in its fullest, purest, most universal form. Also, His death brought redemption to humanity — freeing it from the debt it owed due to past sin — and offered past souls that couldn’t make it to Heaven a chance at salvation (see 1 Peter 3:18-20, also see http://catholicexchange.com/did-jesus-really-go-to-hell/). His death did not result in the gift of automatic salvation for all believers, as evidenced by Matthew 7:21, in which He reveals that not everyone who says to Him ‘Lord, Lord’ (which would require that they believe Him to be the Lord) will enter Heaven.
And as for your question about Grace, see the answer that I have already given; that is my definition.
The old law wasn’t abolished, nor reestablished. It was fulfilled by Christ. He took all sin upon Himself, and those that believe in Him as the Old Testament believers did (see John 3:14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[g])
We believe Just as Abraham and the Old Testament saints did, only we are looking back in History toward the cross where they were looking ~forward~ to the promise of the Cross (Isa 53).
There is NO salvation to those who have rejected God and “lightly esteemed” His sacrifice.
Matthew 7:21 is clearly talking about those who say they believed in Christ, and repented but had not believed in truth. What a sober warning to us all!
Grace isn’t many unknown Gifts of God (though it is a gift-and a very important one), It is the beautiful concept that though we deserve death and hell (because God is bound by His perfect justice, and Righteousness) We are given the gift of salvation by believing in Jesus death and resurrection (of which if didn’t exist there wouldn’t be any salvation, but there is!).
Grace is plainly the opposite of works as a basis of salvation to all those who receive the sacrifice in truth and want to repent (allow Him to be Lord).
-JS
“Also, don’t forget the very next verse... “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10, NASB translation)”
I’m too lazy to watch any tired old Papal videos (and too tired at the moment, had a rough day), but this verse is actually speaking of the purpose and result of salvation, not its cause. All good works, including the desire to perform them (and to believe) comes directly by God who works them in us. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”(Php 2:13). And again, “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom 9:16). It has nothing whatever to do with our free-will, as our will before salvation is in the bondage of sin, and is incapable of either understanding or seeking God. In fact, we are dead in our sin, and being dead, cannot understand the things of eternal life until we are quickened (Rom 3:11, Rom 8:7, Eph 2:1-5, 1 Co 2:14). Thus it is said that God predestinated us before the world began, without regard for our works, unto salvation. “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,”(2Ti 1:9).
Nor is this predestination based on what He foresees in us, as if He foresaw that we would do good and obey. Rather, Christ rules out any foreknowledge as this when He says “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” so it cannot be said that we chose Him first, and thus received the election on our own decision (John 15:16). And again, when Christ speaks to the unbelievers, He tells them the reason they do not believe is because it was not given to them by the Father. Not that He foreknew they would reject it (John 6:64-5).
As Augustine says, God foreknew what He himself would do:
“Although the apostle says that it was not because He foreknew that we should be such, but in order that we might be such by the same election of His grace, by which He showed us favour in His beloved Son. When, therefore, He predestinated us, He foreknew His own work by which He makes us holy and immaculate. Whence the Pelagian error is rightly refuted by this testimony.”(Augustine, Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints, Ch. 38)
And again,
“He chose them out of the world while He was wearing flesh, but as those who were already chosen in Himself before the foundation of the world. This is the changeless truth concerning predestination and grace. For what is it that the apostle says, As “He has chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world?” Ephesians 1:4 And assuredly, if this were said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because He Himself would make them believers, the Son is speaking against such a foreknowledge as that when He says, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;” (Ibid, Ch. 34)
The verse you quote says that “we are His workmanship, created in Chris Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand...”. Now we cannot say that our obedience is His workmanship, or that God prepared it beforehand, if it was really thanks to our own personal righteousness and obedience that led to their doing. Otherwise it really is “man who wills, and man who runs, and not God who has mercy” in contradiction to the verse in Romans. The meaning is that the good works that we possess are given to us entirely by God, who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure, and has no native source within our bodies, which were by nature dead in sin, before being quickened and born again from above. Thus we are plucked out of the fire, predesstinated before the world began, for the purpose that we produce good works as a result of that effectual calling and regeneration that God has given without regard to antecedent faith or works.
“His death did not result in the gift of automatic salvation for all believers, as evidenced by Matthew 7:21, in which He reveals that not everyone who says to Him ‘Lord, Lord’ (which would require that they believe Him to be the Lord) will enter Heaven.”
But you didn’t take into account Christ’s reply. “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Mat 7:23). This same theme of “not knowing them” as the elect of God is taken up elsewhere by John, who speaks of Apostates as “not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us”(1Jn 2:19). Thus no apostate is of the elect, but are, in fact, infiltrators who must at some point be expelled. As Augustine concludes,
“But of such as these [the Elect] none perishes, because of “all that the Father has given Him, He will lose none.” John 6:39 Whoever, therefore, is of these does not perish at all; nor was any who perishes ever of these. For which reason it is said, “They went out from among us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would certainly have continued with us.” John 2:19. (Augustine, Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints, Ch. 33)
“And as for your question about Grace, see the answer that I have already given; that is my definition.”
The problem with the Papist definition is that they tend to make it something like a magical substance which is received or continued based on their merits, even though it is said that “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt” (Rom 4:4). The grace of God is, quite simply, the favor of God given to undeserving sinners, which is manifested by His work in us both to better our souls and to save us eternally, though He rightfully might have left us in a state of condemnation, waiting fearfully for the fire. “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Rom 9:15).
There will be no Christians at that Judgment...
To utilize that grace, we must have Faith...Without the faith, we waste the grace that is freely available...
The rest of the verse is very simple and self-explanetory...No Works, so that we can not boast that our works somehow aided in our salvation...
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