Lily
Active Member
Way too complicated for me but have at it. All you need is Jesus and him crucified.
"Works Salvation"
- Thread starter Seabass
- Start date
Doug Brents
Active Member
No doubt about this. But when is this applied to an individual? The moment they give intellectual assent to the truth of the Gospel? Or when we say a "sinner's prayer" or "ask Christ into our heart"? Or, as Scripture says, when we are buried with Christ in baptism?
Lily
Active Member
"Baptismal regeneration." makes things unnecessarily complicated. Baptism is an important step of obedience for us, but not required for salvation.
Doug Brents
Active Member
Acts 3:19 is too complicated for you? Hmm.
Let me make it easier for you:
"Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord"
Here is something other than "Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth", but it also leads to forgiveness, and thus salvation. Must this not also be part of what is required to receive salvation?
Doug Brents
Active Member
That is not what Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38, 1 Pet 3:21, Acts 22:16, and other passages say. Also look at Col 2:11-14 and Rom 6:1-4.
Baptismal regeneration is just a fancy title that people give to this truth so that they can then sweep it under the rug and forget about the TRUTH that is in God's Word.
Azriel
Active Member
Jesus saves us by dying in our place. Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself on our behalf, paying the infinite and eternal penalty only He could pay. It's all about Jesus.
charismaticlady
Active Member
Jesus did much more than die in our place. He defeated the works of Satan in us so we won't sin! Jesus takes away the desire to sin against the Ten Commandments by cleansing the human nature from Satan's sin nature in us to commit mortal sins. Then by abiding IN Him He prunes the fruit of the Spirit so we can become more and more like Him.
Do not believe any false teacher that says we will always have a sin nature because they don't believe Jesus does that. Jesus says few there are that find it. Most preachers are leading us down the wide road. Study for yourself.
Azriel
Active Member
Sounds like the voice of experience. Let's pull it back out from under the carpet and take a look at it.
Baptismal regeneration is the belief that baptism is necessary for salvation, or, more precisely, that regeneration does not occur until a person is water baptized. Baptismal regeneration is a tenet of numerous Christian denominations, but is most strenuously promoted by churches in the Restoration Movement, specifically the Church of Christ and the International Church of Christ.
Advocates of baptismal regeneration point to Scripture verses such as Mark 16:16, John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Galatians 3:27, and 1 Peter 3:21 for biblical support. And, granted, those verses seem to indicate that baptism is necessary for salvation. However, there are biblically and contextually sound interpretations of those verses that do not support baptismal regeneration. Please see the following articles:
Does Mark 16:16 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Does John 3:5 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Does Acts 2:38 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Does Acts 22:16 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Does Galatians 3:27 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Does 1 Peter 3:21 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?
Advocates of baptismal regeneration typically have a four-part formula for how salvation is received. They believe that a person must believe, repent, confess, and be baptized in order to be saved. They believe this way because there are biblical passages that seem to indicate that each of these actions is necessary for salvation. For example, Romans 10:9–10 links salvation with confession. Acts 2:38 links salvation with repentance and baptism.
Repentance, understood biblically, is required for salvation. Repentance is a change of mind. Repentance, in relation to salvation, is changing your mind from rejection of Christ to acceptance of Christ. It is not a separate step from saving faith. Rather, it is an essential aspect of saving faith. One cannot receive Jesus Christ as Savior, by grace through faith, without a change of mind about who He is and what He did.
Confession, understood biblically, is a demonstration of faith. If a person has truly received Jesus Christ as Savior, proclaiming that faith to others will be a result. If a person is ashamed of Christ and/or ashamed of the message of the gospel, it is highly unlikely that the person has understood the gospel or experienced the salvation that Christ provides.
Baptism, understood biblically, is an identification with Christ. Christian baptism illustrates a believer’s identification with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4). As with confession, if a person is unwilling to be baptized—unwilling to identify his/her life as being redeemed by Jesus Christ—that person has very likely not been made a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) through faith in Jesus Christ.
Those who contend for baptismal regeneration and/or this four-part formula for receiving salvation do not view these actions as meritorious works that earn salvation. Repenting, confessing, etc., do not make a person worthy of salvation. Rather, the official view is that faith, repentance, confession, and baptism are “works of obedience,” things a person must do before God grants salvation. While the standard Protestant understanding is that faith is the one thing God requires before salvation is granted, those of the baptismal regeneration persuasion believe that baptism—and, for some, repentance and confession—are additional things God requires before He grants salvation.
The problem with this viewpoint is that there are biblical passages that clearly and explicitly declare faith to be the only requirement for salvation. John 3:16, one of the most well-known verses in the Bible, states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” In Acts 16:30, the Philippian jailer asks the apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” If there was ever an opportunity for Paul to present a four-part formula, this was it. Paul’s response was simple: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). No baptism, no confession, just faith.
There are literally dozens of verses in the New Testament that attribute salvation to faith/belief with no other requirement mentioned in the context. If baptism, or anything else, is necessary for salvation, all of these verses are wrong, and the Bible contains errors and is therefore no longer worthy of our trust.
An exhaustive study of the New Testament on various requirements for salvation is not necessary. Receiving salvation is not a process or a multi-step formula. Salvation is a finished product, not a recipe. What must we do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will be saved.
From Got?
Azriel
Active Member
Of course he did and thank you for pointing it out. Bad news is we will sin. If anyone thinks they have sinless Perfection down pat guess what? They're traveling under the sin of spiritual pride.
charismaticlady
Active Member
Do not believe any false teacher that says we will always have a sin nature because they don't believe Jesus does that. Jesus says few there are that find it. Most preachers are leading us down the wide road. Study for yourself.
Azriel
Active Member
Duly noted. I accept your explanation and understand it. I also respect your opinion but I have studied this out for myself and talked about many times on many forums and my conclusion is Christians do sin. Sins like anger, lust, Pride. And then there are the sins that we accept.
Like our gossip or unkind words about a brother or sister in Christ roll easily off our tongues without any awareness of wrongdoing. We harbor hurts over wrongs long past without any effort to forgive as God has forgiven us. We look down our religious noses at “sinners” in society without any sense of a humble “there but for the grace of God go I” spirit.
Believe it or not these things happen.
Doug Brents
Active Member
The problem with this writeup, is that it assumes that John 3:16 trumps the other passages listed as "baptismal regeneration" passages. In other words, they postulate that the passages that state only belief, faith, etc. are more important, more inspired, than those other passages. And since they don't say anything about repentance, or baptism, etc. then those things are not necessary.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Take for instance the 4 passages that detail what the plaque over Jesus' head said.
Mark 15:26 says that the plaque said, "THE KING OF THE JEWS". But
John 19:19 says that it said, "JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS." and it said it in three languages.
Taking these people's view, Mark is 100% correct, and John is just adding unnecessary fluff that is irrelevant. But that is not so. Mark just did not record everything because his audience didn't need to know the other details. The same goes for passages like John 3:16.
charismaticlady
Active Member
What you described are immature fruit of the Spirit. Jesus helps with those by pruning them, but notice in John 15:1-4 that first we are cleansed the first day we are born again where He first takes away the sins unto DEATH, or sins deserving of death. That is when he takes us from death to eternal life. I actually felt a heaviness leave my body.
Last edited by a moderator:
Azriel
Active Member
Now that I can relate to. Especially the heaviness leaving our body. A friend asked me what it felt like right after I got saved and I told him I felt like the weight of the world is taken off my shoulders.
Johann
Active Member
When it comes to the subject of “salvation and good works,” there are two serious errors that plague the church.
One is that of Roman Catholicism, which teaches that in order to gain enough merit for salvation, we must add our good works to what Christ did on the cross.
Under this view, you can never know for sure whether or not you are saved, because there is no way to check your “merit balance” to see if you’ve stored up enough.
So you have to keep adding good works in the hope of gaining eternal life. Under Roman Catholic teaching, a person could never say what Paul says in Ephesians 2:8, “you have been saved.”
The other error, which is more pervasive in evangelical circles, is that good works have no connection whatsoever with salvation.
This view teaches that since we are saved by grace through faith alone, a person may believe in Christ as Savior, but there may not be a life of good works to follow.
A person may pray the sinner’s prayer and profess to believe in Jesus as his Savior. Later he may profess to be an atheist and live in gross sin, but he will be in heaven because he made a decision to receive Christ.
This view fails to realize that salvation requires God’s raising a sinner from death to life, which inevitably results in a changed life. It divorces repentance from saving faith and teaches that saving faith is simply believing the facts of the gospel. Submitting to Christ as Lord of your life may follow salvation, but it is not a necessary aspect of saving faith, according to this error.
Ephesians 2:10 succinctly answers both of these errors. Paul is explaining (“For”) the previous two verses, where he has said that we have been saved by grace through faith, apart from any works on our part. It is all the gift of God, so that He alone gets all the glory. Now Paul further explains that…
Genuine salvation is entirely of God and it inevitably results in a life of good works.
Sometimes it is said that there is a conflict between Paul and James over the matter of justification by faith versus works (compare Rom. 3:24, 28; James 2:18-26). But both men are saying the same thing from different angles to address different issues. Paul was attacking the Pharisaic idea that our good works will commend us to God. He argues that no one can ever be good enough to earn salvation. God justifies guilty sinners through faith in Christ alone. But James was attacking the view that saving faith does not necessarily result in good works. He shows that genuine faith always produces good works.
That is precisely what Paul is clarifying in Ephesians 2:10. While salvation is entirely of God, so are the good works that follow salvation. God has ordained the entire process. Just as we cannot claim any glory for ourselves in our initial salvation, even so we cannot claim any glory in our subsequent good works. God is behind the entirety of our salvation from start to finish. Thus He gets all the glory. Note five things from verse 10:
1. Genuine salvation involves a new creation that is entirely God’s doing.
Paul says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus….” “His” is emphatic in the Greek, underscoring the point that Paul has been making throughout chapters 1 and 2, that our salvation was ordained by God from eternity and that we had nothing to do with it. We were dead in our sins, but God raised us from the dead (2:1, 5). Just as God created the universe out of nothing by the word of His power, so God created us in Christ Jesus by His mighty power.
The Greek word translated, “workmanship,” occurs in only one other place in the New Testament, where it is translated, “what has been made.” In Romans 1:20, Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Paul is referring to the original creation. Just as God powerfully brought that creation into existence for His purpose and glory, so it is when He saves a soul. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
If you think that I have been emphasizing this point too much in the past few weeks, it is only because Paul emphasizes it repeatedly in these first two chapters. He knows how prone we are to take some of the credit for our salvation. If we can’t claim any reason to boast in our salvation, then we’ll try to boast in our good deeds after salvation.
Seabass
Active Member
Salvation is a free gift thus cannot be earned. Yet God never made His free gift of salvation unconditional for God has placed conditions upon receiving this free gift...belief (Jn 8:24) repentance (Lk 13:3) confession (Mt 10:32-32 baptism (Mk 16:16).
Rapture Bound
Active Member
Well stated my friend! Here are my thoughts on this vital topic :
You stated, "The other error, which is more pervasive in evangelical circles, is that good works have no connection whatsoever with salvation."
This, in my opinion, is an excellent definition of the term "antinomian" and "antinomianism".
You said, "Genuine salvation is entirely of God and it inevitably results in a life of good works."
And this is precisely what I have been contending for on these Forums all along = Once a person has been justified, they will always be justified ['Once Justified, Always Justified'] ... since God has promised to complete the work He started in all of His children ... His 'new creatures in Christ'...
To put your statement in the wording of this OSAS Molinist Arminian ... "The new creation in Christ is the work of God which will inevitably result in a life of good works".
You see, if a person's faith has genuinely been placed upon the proper object [Christ's substitutionary atoning work alone] for their right-standing [total acceptance and forgiveness before God the Father] ... the guaranteed result will be a transformed life - one that will most certainly produces works ["fruit"]. However, "how much works/fruit" will be produced within a regenerated person?" and "what does that look like in real life from a practical sense?" become only a couple of the many 'sticking points' -- the difficult issues that are inherent to these questions [which also become difficult concepts to articulate].
One of the main problems that exists here is "how do we quantify or measure the 'level of acceptable fruit/works' that will result in the life of a genuine believer?", and "how do we know that a person's good works are not just the product of an unregenerate nature [un-saved person] in which they vainly suppose will somehow earn merit before God?" Many times I've witnessed those within the non-OSAS camp falsely accusing those of the OSAS camp of the following ... those trusting in Christ's imputed righteousness [i.e. "as if it were our own righteousness"] as the sole grounds for full acceptance before God [from the inception to the completion of their regenerated state necessarily entails making the claim that good works have absolutely no connection whatsoever in salvation.
However, Sola Fide [Faith Alone] when properly understood, looks like this .. faith alone saves [the lone instrument appointed by God by which a person may be justified before God], but the faith that saves is not alone ... genuine faith [faith which is directed upon the proper object - the efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ - will inevitably be accompanied by good works. If a person chooses to reject God's only acceptable means by which they may be saved -- all the way up to the time of their last breath on Earth ... the inevitable consequence will be the forfeiture of their soul.
Seabass
Active Member
Some (faith only-ist) try and claim no works at all is necessary to being saved therefore try to even eliminate obedience. They try and equate obedience to a work of merit yet there is not one example in the Bible of a perosn's obedience to God being called a work of meirt. One's obedience does not earn anything (Lk 17:7-10) nor cause God to owe man.
So salvation is not mongeristic as Calvinism falsely claims, but salvation involves God in providing a means for man to be saved, the gospel (Rom 1:16) and it involves man in his obedience to the gospel (2 Thess 1:8).
The difference between Paul and James is they were talking about different kinds of works. When James said works justifiy, the KIND of work he was talking about that justifies is obedience to God....."Was not Abraham our father justified by works,(what kind of work?) when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?" (obedience to God). The KIND of works Paul speaks about that does not justify (Rom 3:20-28) are works of the OT law which required one to do the work of perfect falwless, law keeping to be justified by that law.
Paul and James are in 100% agreement that obedient works do justifiy:
James -- works (obedience to God) >>>>>>>>>>>> justifies
Paul ----- obey from the heart >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> justified-freed from sin
Good works therefore cannot save the sinner yet good works are necessary for those who are already Christians in order for the Christian to remain saved.
Johann
Active Member
Well said @Rapture Bound
Well, that is certainly what the RCC and the "many" religions of this world promote. But the Church of God existed and grew for several years while Paul was still persecuting it, let alone, before he wrote any of his Epistles, and decades, in some instances, centuries, before most of the Body of Christ would ever read Paul's letters. But the Holy scriptures that Paul said he believed all that was written therein, that is able to make a man wise unto Salvation through the Faith that was in Christ Jesus, that we can trust "for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works", was there for them, being read by those who sit in Moses Seat every Sabbath of God.
This again, is simply undeniable Biblical Truth.
Again, this is why I left mainstream Christianity of today. Because they promote such foolishness as this, that Jesus came to destroy or "make obsolete" God's Laws.
The "Way of the Lord" of the Bible, is the Life of Christ. The Jesus "of the Bible" didn't create HIS own religion, HE Walked in the Righteousness of His Father, and advised us to do the same. At least the Jesus of the Bible did.
Again, as I pointed out. The religions of this world have created their own religion, their own judgments, their own definition of Good, Clean, and Holy. Their own Sabbaths, their own High Days, their own images of God in the likeness of some random handsome long haired man.
What is absolutely undeniable, is the Body of Christ in Acts did not behave in such a fashion. In Acts 15, the Apostles led Gentile converts away from the mainstream religion in Jerusalem, with their doctrines and traditions of men, and turned them towards Moses, just as Jesus did to the multitudes and His Disciples.
Acts 15: 20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. (Unclean according to the Judgments of God)
21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.
Matt. 7: 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
Except for the Law and Prophets that you said the Christ made obsolete. But the Christ of the Bible didn't even imply any such thing.
Look, I knew this is where we were headed. I was hoping you might consider the Scriptures I posted, perhaps even discuss them. But you went straight to the religious philosophies of the religion you adopted, which varies from the philosophies of the Catholic adopts, which varies from the philosophies the JW's adopt, which varies from the philosophies the SDA adopt and on and on.
The Christ of the Bible frees men from all this Babylon, but they must first believe Him.
OH my, how can you even say such things. What did God do to Adam and Eve? Cain? The world of Noah's Time. Sodom and Gammora? The Egyptians? Amalek? Jerico? Goliath? Is this not God's Wrath against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men being revealed to us?
Again Doug, this is why the Holy Scriptures warn of this world's religions, because they would teach such foolishness that God's Righteousness was not revealed in the Law and Prophets.
Psalms 119: 171 My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy statutes. 172 My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments "are righteousness". 173 Let thine hand help me; for I have chosen thy precepts. 174 I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my delight.
Jesus was Righteous because HE walked in God's Righteousness.
Psalms 45: 6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. 7 Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore (Because of this) God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
Even this same Jesus said. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Because the Spirit of Christ knew there would be religions promoting what you are promoting here, HE inspired John to warn us.
1 Jon 3: 7 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.
Given the content of this post, I would have to agree that I was mistaken about your position.
Religions in whose doctrines and traditions cause those who follow them to Transgress God's Commandments, should be avoided, even if they call Jesus Lord, Lord, even if they are the religion of our fathers.
But this a cost to great for many, therefore Jesus called the Path HE walked, the Narrow Path, that few strive to enter.
Similar threads
