Salvation
How does one obtain eternal salvation?
“For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.” Romans 10:9-10
Now there are those that will disagree with this and say that if they do enough good things they will go to heaven (be saved).
The questions invoked by a comment like this are,
- How much is enough?
- Where is it written what I must do?
- How often do I have to do good?
- How many good things does it take to balance out bad things?
September 12th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Once you enter into the realm of losing your salvation, you move your foundation of salvation from grace to works. If you can’t earn your salvation by works, then it follows that you cannot lose your salvation through works either. Nothing we DO has any bearing on our salvation. I John 1:9 is very explicit that “He is faithful and just”. We are not, nor ever will be faithful. Our salvation depends on His faithfulness.
September 13th, 2005 at 11:03 am
I agree totally. No club, no church, no organization can save you. God does it all.
September 15th, 2005 at 7:30 am
As any healthy relationship will attest to,there MUST be faithfulness on both sides.God is always faithful,I am not.
Is that Gods fault? No.I MUST CHOOSE HIM.God provides the salvation,I supply the obedience.”If you love me you,you will keep my commandments.”
Jesus says,my love(which is my choice)will motivate me to obey His commandments.
“Faith without works is dead….the demons believe and tremble”
Thank God I have His forgiveness when I fail,but I will not deny my responsibility in the process.
September 20th, 2005 at 11:28 am
I agree that “faith without works is dead,” however those works do nothing to save us. The EE witnessing program has a great word picture for this. Imagine yourself on the edge of a one-thousand foot cliff and you have a friend on the other that has to get across in order to save his life (there is a fire on the other side or something. I can’t remember.). The cliff is 100 feet across and you throw him a rope that is 99 feet of strong, good rope and 1 foot of thread. Would it hold? No, even if 99 feet is good, there is one foot that makes the entire span useless. That is the way of depending on our works for salvation. If we even depend on one single “good deed” that we do as contributing to our salvation, the cross event becomes useless to us.
I think we need to really see how totally helpless we are in this. We contribute nothing to the salvation process. Our works are important as proof of the relationship, but they don’t add a thing to our salvation. How can you add anything to something that is already complete?
September 20th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
What our works contribute to is justification.It is out of our relationship with Christ,because of the realization of what He has done for us,that we respond in obedience.There is work in salvation,His work and mine.His work is “finished”, mine is still being worked out(Phil.2:12).
Matt.10:38 says if I do not take up my cross and follow Him,I am not worthy of Him.Sounds like work to me.Hard work.
Ja.2:26 just as the body without the spirit is dead so also is faith without works.
To accept Christ in faith,I die to myself in obedience to Him.If I don’t do this..my faith is dead.
Jesus provides..I respond…daily.
Love and peaceto you all
September 21st, 2005 at 3:40 pm
This is sooo great! I am a new “blogger” and I am having a ball. Tim, you and I could do this over the phone, but I like being able to formulate responses a little better. I would love for someone to weigh in on this! Anyway . . .
Justification, meaning to show to be true or right, is precisely on target! We are justified by our works. They show us to be true or right with God. In other words, they show what has already happened on the cross. I think we agree on this!
September 21st, 2005 at 5:12 pm
This is great,ain’t it!?
Yes,I too wish we didn’t appear to be”blog hogs”!ha ha
I knew we would agree,for we both know Christ and His truth.
Grace and peace to you and to all!
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:03 am
A friend of mine told me once that he was afraid that many “Christians” would never make it to heaven because they had not been baptized. He quoted Acts 2:38, “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” He then pointed out ‘baptized…for the remission of sin’. I said that didn’t mean be baptized in order to receive forgiveness of your sin – it means be baptized because you have already repented and been forgiven. When we say ‘jump for joy’ doesn’t mean we jump in order to achieve joy. We jump because we are already joyful. When we pray for a wayward child, we are not praying because we want a wayward child, we already have one. The ‘for’ in this passage explains it to me. Now for you Greek scholars out there you may be able to shine a little light on this.
I believe that baptism is an act of obedience and that all you come to know the saving grace of Christ, should be baptized.
September 22nd, 2005 at 9:30 am
NOW you’ve really gone and done it Dolan! You’ve provoked them with the baptism issue!!!!
Deanna
November 15th, 2005 at 7:03 am
After re-reading some of Luthers work,I find that he states we are “justified” by faith alone…earlier we said we are justified by our works (resp.#6 above).Luther also made the statement he could commit adultry 15 times in one day and have the same standing before God..enough about him though,my point is that we are saved by grace alone through faith, working in love(Eph.2 8-10).
Peace be with you all