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To: Iowegian
We will be in agreement if you state that obedience comes after the saving faith and is in response to the love and grace that God has shown us through His Son.

Gladly! If my dog fetches the morning paper (I don't have one... go with me here), it is merely an obedient servant/creature and has "earned" nothing. If my son (I have two, the oldest 18 mo.) does the same work... I as a father view it in an entirely different fashion since he does it out of love for his father. There is NO good deed, apart from Christ, that has ANY merit in an eternal sense.

That's probably about as close to agreement we will get. BTW, how much obedience is necessary, in your view, to obtain salvation? Total perfection (sinlessness)? And to what exactly must you be obedient to? I think the answers that people give to these questions is very telling.

Remember that the first and last times that faith is mentioned by Paul in Romans, he talks about his mission being to bring about "the obedience of Faith". So any doctrine of salvation that pits Faith in Christ against obedience starts the race with both feet in a bucket. I would imagine that Christ measures our obedience against our maturity as Christians - using my example above... If my son at 18 YRS still brings me the paper (and that is the limit of his obedient love), he is falling short. The Father expects more from us as we recieve more from him... It is still not the work that accomplishes the salvation, but they are inexplicably bound up.

169 posted on 10/15/2001 5:42:33 PM PDT by IMRight
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To: IMRight
It is still not the work that accomplishes the salvation, but they are inexplicably bound up.

Any "binding" that you put in there (works/obedience with salvation) makes in not a free gift, and therefore not by grace through faith. When you get Christmas presents, how would you feel if there was a note inside each one that said: "You only get to keep it if you do _____________" ? That's not a free gift, that is, it would not be true grace.

174 posted on 10/15/2001 5:56:51 PM PDT by Iowegian
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