Posted on 06/15/2015 2:49:32 AM PDT by Cvengr
DOCTRINE OF SALVATION BY WORKS
Eph 2:8-10
(8) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
(9) Not of works, lest any man should boast.
(10) For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
My job is convincing them that God created them for a specific and critical element in His plan for the entire universe. Without him or her, God’s creation is not the same, and there isn’t as much joy in it as there needs to be.
That's your issue, your burden...That's not everyone's burden...God gives different people different things to do...
That is your opinion and it is wrong. It is a denial of the Word of the Lord. It is a denial of The Truth.
Your opinion is false and either heresy or incredulity. Although you may be in the stage of apostasy.
What Is Heresy?
Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often misused. It is not the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy, or other sins against faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him” (CCC 2089).
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“If Abraham was not justified by works, how was he justified? The apostle goes on to tell us how: What does scripture say? (that is, about how Abraham was justified). Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3; Gen. 15:6). Abraham, then, was justified by faith. Paul and James do not contradict each other: good works follow justification.” (Augustine, Exposition 2 of Psalm 31, 2-4.)
“When someone believes in him who justifies the impious, that faith is reckoned as justice to the believer, as David too declares that person blessed whom God has accepted and endowed with righteousness, independently of any righteous actions (Rom 4:5-6). What righteousness is this? The righteousness of faith, preceded by no good works, but with good works as its consequence.” (Augustine, Exposition 2 of Psalm 31, 6-7.)
"... the human will does not obtain grace by freedom, but obtains freedom by grace; when the feeling of delight has been imparted through. the same grace, the human will is formed to endure; it is strengthened with unconquerable fortitude; controlled by grace, it never will perish, but, if grace forsake it, it will straightway fall; by the Lord's free mercy it is converted to good, and once converted it perseveres in good; the direction of the human will toward good, and after direction its continuation in good, depend solely upon God's will, not upon any merit of man. Thus there is left to man such free will, if we please so to call it, as he elsewhere describes: that except through grace the will can neither be converted to God nor abide in God; and whatever it can do it is able to do only through grace. "(Augustine, Aurelius. Augustine's Writings on Grace and Free WIll (Kindle Locations 45-46). Monergism Books. Kindle Edition.)
Augustine was entirely a Monergist, and thus believed that salvation was entirely by grace, and even all our good works are wrought in us by God. With Grace no one can fall away, nor resist it, because salvation rests entirely upon the will of God, not on man and his will or works.
Augustine did indeed believe that Baptism and attending the Lord's Supper were necessary for salvation in a sense, but not in the sense of "earning" salvation, but as a common obligation that all those already saved must do and do already, and will be made to do by God, even daily. Nor does he understand the Lord's Supper in the same sense as the Papist, as he denies a Salvific work in the Eucharist, but puts the work of it in the faith of the believer already had even before eating:
“They said therefore unto Him, What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” For He had said to them, “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto eternal life.” “What shall we do?” they ask; by observing what, shall we be able to fulfill this precept? “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent.” This is then to eat the meat, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life. To what purpose dost thou make ready teeth and stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten already. (Augustine, Tractate 25)
“If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, says Christ, and drink His blood, you have no life in you. John 6:53 This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share [communicandem] in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory [in memoria] of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us. Scripture says: If your enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink; and this is beyond doubt a command to do a kindness. But in what follows, for in so doing you shall heap coals of fire on his head, one would think a deed of malevolence was enjoined. Do not doubt, then, that the expression is figurative; and, while it is possible to interpret it in two ways, one pointing to the doing of an injury, the other to a display of superiority, let charity on the contrary call you back to benevolence, and interpret the coals of fire as the burning groans of penitence by which a man’s pride is cured who bewails that he has been the enemy of one who came to his assistance in distress. In the same way, when our Lord says, He who loves his life shall lose it, we are not to think that He forbids the prudence with which it is a man’s duty to care for his life, but that He says in a figurative sense, Let him lose his life— that is, let him destroy and lose that perverted and unnatural use which he now makes of his life, and through which his desires are fixed on temporal things so that he gives no heed to eternal. It is written: Give to the godly man, and help not a sinner. The latter clause of this sentence seems to forbid benevolence; for it says, help not a sinner. Understand, therefore, that sinner is put figuratively for sin, so that it is his sin you are not to help.” (Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Ch. 16)
For Augustine, the point of the Eucharist was not to earn salvation, but to commune with the whole church, as the Lord's Supper, in fact, represented the entire church. When eating the bread and drinking the wine, it is our own selves who are being eaten:
“What you can see passes away, but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. Look, it’s received, it’s eaten, it’s consumed. Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the members of Christ consumed? Perish the thought! Here they are being purified, there they will be crowned with the victor’s laurels. So what is signified will remain eternally, although the thing that signifies it seems to pass away. So receive the sacrament in such a way that you think about yourselves, that you retain unity in your hearts, that you always fix your hearts up above. Don’t let your hope be placed on earth, but in heaven. Let your faith be firm in God, let it be acceptable to God. Because what you don’t see now, but believe, you are going to see there, where you will have joy without end.” (Augustine, Ser. 227)
“How can bread be his body? And the cup, or what the cup contains, how can it be his blood? The reason these things, brothers and sisters, are called sacraments is that in them one thing is seen, another is to be understood. What can be seen has a bodily appearance, what is to be understood provides spiritual fruit. So if it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members, it’s the mystery meaning you that has been placed on the Lord’s table; what you receive is the mystery that means you.” (Augustine, Sermon 272)
Also notice that these statements are not compatible with Transubstantiation, which makes the bread and the whine the body and blood of Christ, and not only spiritually or figuratively.
This statement, by itself, would be perfectly fine and even Reformed. However, this is slight of hand. the Romanist religion does not believe that a person is justified and that good works follow justification. The Romanist believes that his justification is continual and maintained through good works or "faithfulness"-- that is, continued obedience.
But as already demonstrated in my last post, there can be no way that justification can be maintained by works, because even Paul is a 'wretched man" in the sight of God.
Justification can stand only on one thing: faith. Why? Because by the instrument of faith we receive the imputed righteousness of the only perfect person in the world, which is Christ. With our own goodness, we cannot get into heaven. We can only do so with the righteousness of another.
False statement.
A man, through faith alone, is also justified when his work manifests that faith, but he isn't justified without faith.
It does not state we must have works for any justification.
Why do you fear placing faith in Christ?
Nope its not.
James 2
24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
Well and truly stated! Those ‘works’ are the Spirit of God working in us, raising us up in the way that we should go. It sure gets noticed by any who are seeking.
Prove that the commandment to never in any generation drink the blood is somehow cancelled for you and was cancelled before Jesus went to the cross. In the Upper room, the breaking of the bread and the passed cup of wine had to be just bread and wine because Jesus had not yet gone to the Cross. You are twisting scripture to fit the Catholic heresies, defending a blasphemous lie which commands Catholics to believe they are imbibing the actual fleash and blood of Christ! Are you so dense that you cannot see that in the Upper Room, Jesus had not yet died, so the bread and wine HAD TO BE METAPHORICAL. Show me where this was to no longer be metaphorical AFTER the Cross. Jesus broke bread with Luke and one other then vanished. If He had wanted us to be sure and cannibalize Him then and for the coming Church Age He would have explained such an important alteration to the commands before, to those disciples for whom he broke the bread.
So you think a man is justified as the natural man, without faith in God’s provision, but simply by performing any good work, thereby establishing himself as a substitute for what God provides to those whom he has provided the good work?
Well stated and agreed.
The Book of James, in the Bible, says that your faith must be justified by works (James 2:24)
Your comment: False statement.
So you know when an Apostle makes a false statement in the Bible inspired by the Holy spirit? What arrogance.
So where in the Bible does it state by “faith alone”?
Guess what? It is not there.
One can claim faith, but his actions can contradict that alleged faith.
I truly hope that you understand the teachings of Jesus and follow them.
Peace.
That is what I was taught when I was a catholic. Maybe the teaching is different now, but if I misinterpreted what the priests and nuns were telling us, so did everyone else in my catholic high school.
Nope.. In James chapter 2, James wrote on the difference between a "professed" faith and a "possessed" faith.
The book of James was written to a converted church , not heathens seeking salvation . It tells them how their conversion is seen by the unsaved world . It is not about becoming saved or being saved. It is about the fruit of your salvation.
Jam 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Jam 2:18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
This is an amplification of the teaching of Jesus that we know a tree by the fruit it bears. It is how we know the saved from the unsaved. It does not declare that the man has faith ...but that he SAYS he has faith.
This addresses a hollow profession of faith , not a saving one .Can a hollow profession save him? NO, any more than works can save.This scripture says to the church that this faith is non existent , it is dead.
So where in the Bible does it state by “faith alone”?
Salvation by Faith alone is the major theme of the NT ... you just have to read the scripture
Ephesians 2:8 ....Douay-Rheims Bible For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God;
You are conflating what man sees and what God sees. God sees the inward parts. ADSUM sees the outward behaviors. James is referring to which perspective do you think? ... BZZZZZ times up. James is referring to what men see, not what God sees.
The article references Eph 2. The issue is salvation, not justification, different terms.
We are saved by faith alone, not by works.
Your comment:so the bread and wine HAD TO BE METAPHORICAL
No. Because Jesus said it numerous times and made sure that people understood his exact meaning. It is very clear on how it was meant and understood by the Apostles and Catholics for the last 2000 years. Jesus turned water into wine and other miracles. Jesus has the ability to do whatever he says.
Since you are a doubter, I would suggest that you do a google search. In 1100 in Italy and recently 2008 (approx) in Poland, s soiled Consecrated Eucharist host was held and it turned red. The host was scientifically examined and determined that it was blood and heart tissue (Blood type AB). The full story has been previously posted on FR.
Your comment: “Prove that the commandment to never in any generation drink the blood”
Jesus established the New Covenant based on His sacrifice = blood on the Cross. He ended the Old Covenant and the Jewish mosaic laws. This is not ordinary body and blood, but a gift from Jesus that is the food of eternal life.
So now you are claiming not only cannibalized but even before He is dead, Sacrificing Himself on the Cross! Such stretching to support the blasphemies of Catholicism is astonishingly transparent foolishness.
Jesus established the New Covenant WITH HIS DEATH on the Cross, not before. either eat the cake or put it down.
‘Satan will appear with all signs and lying wonders.’ Anything to keep Catholics from awakening to be saved in Christ.
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