Again, nobody has denied believers should be careful to excel in good works. We do so out of gratitude to God for His grace. But these works are "good and profitable unto men", they honor God and help our fellow man. God rewards our righteous living in this life and into eternity. BUT...it doesn't say they are for our salvation. God HAS saved us by His grace and mercy and we receive His gift of eternal life through faith - not by our works, as if we must add to Christ's work or do our work to keep the gift He freely gave us.
You have been arguing this topic for as long as I can remember and there are times that I think you're right on the edge of finally getting it but then you step back and go downhill to the accursed Gospel of works righteousness.
When we face the Lord at our judgment, we won't be carrying a bag with all our good deeds to lay on a scale hoping to outweigh all the bad deeds we did in this life to determine if we go to heaven or not. No, we will approach Him either clothed in the righteousness of Christ, His white linen garment of salvation washed in HIS blood draped across our shoulders or our own filthy rags of righteousness. This is because it is ONLY by the shedding of blood that we have our atonement for our sins. All the good deeds, law keeping, works of love or kindness or corporal works of mercy - no matter how many we did - can never take away our sins. Only Christ, in our place, can do that. We won't be saved by any righteous deeds we have done, but because of HIS mercy and grace. Eternal life is His gift to us and we receive this gift by faith, trusting in HIM to save us. We respond to His offer by our faith and the changed life that results from being a new creation, having a new spirit nature with the indwelling Holy Spirit within us as the earnest of our inheritance, we now have the desire to please God by how we walk in newness of life. Our works don't save us, Jesus saves us. Our works don't keep us saved, Jesus saves us to the uttermost.
Well worth keeping and repeating, over and over.
Preach it, sister!!!
The need for self justification is strong with some. I couldn’t have even accepted Christ without the Father drawing me.
We know exactly what will happen:
And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and covered thee? Or when did we see thee sick or in prison, and came to thee? And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you covered me not: sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me.
And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting. (Matthew 25:31-46)
As you can see, we are judged on our good works done in imitation of Christ and with awareness of Christ present.
Nor as expounded, are we saved because by God's grace we finally attained the actual practical perfection of character needed to be with God, which in pat purgatory is promote as doing, nor would a lack of holiness result in anything less than Hell. Instead as with Abraham who had done good but whose faith was counted for righteousness, and the unGodly who has no works to offer God but whose faith is counted for righteousness in conversion, and the dying contrite criminal of Lk. 23 who directly went to be with Christ by faith, the believer is counted as righteous though he has not attained the actual practical perfection of character needed to be with God.
Yet God presently and at the judgment judges a believer as being so and fit to be rewarded based upon his works/holiness, as said and shown. (Mt. 25:31-40; Rv. 3:4)
““We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
Also, rather than the easy believism Rome associates with sola fide, in Puritan Protestantism there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period that notes,
“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”
Rome confuses the evidential effects of faith which are justificatory as confirmatory of salvation, with being the cause of it.
Although the sinner is justified by the justice of Christ, inasmuch as the Redeemer has merited for him the grace of justification (causa meritoria), nevertheless he is formally justified and made holy by his own personal justice and holiness (causa formalis).” Catholic Encyclopedia>Sanctifying Grace