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With a nod to Tony, the question that needs to be asked is are we saved (even in part) by our own good works or 100% by Christ's work on the cross freely imputed to us?

Dear sister in Christ, you are always charitable towards me! And I'm glad you find me likewise towards you! People can disagree without being disagreeable. Yet the fact remains, on the core issues, I keep finding we mostly agree.

WRT to your question above, it seems the main difficulty between us is you tend to separate "faith" and "works" into two separable, mutually exclusive boxes while I tend to see them as dynamically, organically interrelated. Because I do, I don't have to "choose" between them.

Yet I do believe, on the one hand, that no amount of "good works" can save if we have no faith in Christ, or worse, outright deny God. At this level of the problem — call it "the level of gross description" if you will — it seems justified to speak as if the terms faith and works are indeed separable in a certain sense.

On the other hand, at the personal level, to sort faith and works into their two boxes again, and to ask which one of the two is "efficacious," seems like a bad way of proceeding. My point is at this level of the problem, such a separation creates a false dichotomy. For at this level, faith and works go "hand-in-glove," so to speak. Which is the very point I thought Pastor Tony made so very eloquently (as quoted in my last).

Your question raises a more technical point, one that seems to go to the doctrine of justification, the mystery of how Christ's work on the cross which constitutes the hope of our salvation is "freely imputed to us." By "us" I gather you mean individual souls. I can't speak very well to this issue; I don't know the details. All I know is there is no salvation outside of Christ! And that He alone purchased our redemption from eternal damnation by means of His suffering and death on the Cross.

"We teach that, whereas there may be several applications of any given passage of Scripture, there is but one true interpretation."

I so agree! Yet I recognize that the "one true interpretation" is, paradoxically, probably not something that can be reduced to a pure doctrinal form of any kind. Or at least, that is my suspicion regarding the matter. I rather suspect that, although the one true intrepretation is definitely known to God (after all, these are His own statements), the distance between God and man (cognitively speaking) is so vast that I strongly doubt that any man can ever know what God knows. At least, not in this life, in this world....

In other words, human reason — as magnificent a gift of God that it is — cannot take us "all the way home" on this issue.

And that is why we need faith — a living faith.

Just some thoughts, reflections, FWIW.

The TRUTH is there is no salvation outside of Christ.

Thank you ever so much for writing, dear Dr. Eckleburg!

Faith and good works are related. Good works are the result of faith, just like good fruit is produced by a good tree.

But as far as our own good works being "efficatious" towards salvation, I think the Bible is clear --

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Not of works, lest any man should boast." -- Ephesians 2:8-9

Unless Paul got it wrong.

All I know is there is no salvation outside of Christ! And that He alone purchased our redemption from eternal damnation by means of His suffering and death on the Cross.

Amen. And as evidence of our justification before God, He gives us faith in Christ and His work on the cross on our behalf.

When we stand before God on Judgment Day, mercifully we will not be judged for our own good works which are as filthy rags to God, but for the good work of Christ. God loves us because He sees Christ within us. Mercy triumphs over judgment.