Faith alone, Works alone, Faith AND Works?
A new and young friend asked for my input about the issue of faith and works as they pertain to salvation. Here is my reply:
***********************************************************************
You wrote, ‘…some people claim, “salvation by faith alone”, but they didn’t seem to consider scriptures where we are commanded to “be perfect” or “strive to enter the narrow door”.’
The problem with that Evangelical maxim “by faith alone” is that they are blending something that has truth IN it with a very sloppy and incomplete idea of “faith.”
First of all, it is true that we DO enter into a saving relationship with God without any previous acts on our part that earn that relationship in ANY way. There is no “admission charge” as the following passages make very clear:
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been FREELY GIVEN to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also FREELY GIVE us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
“14 … death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. 15 But the FREE GIFT is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the GIFT by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. 16 The GIFT is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the FREE GIFT arose from many transgressions resulting in justification” (Romans 5)
“23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified FREELY by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; …” (Romans 3).
You can also see this truth by observing the examples of those who responded to the apostolic Gospel. Look at the audiences in Acts 2:14-41, 3:11-4:4, 8:5-13, 8:26-30, & 10:24-48. When you read what was preached you see that none of them were told they had to do anything except “believe” what was preached. The word “believe” is merely the verbal form of the noun “faith” (“pisteuo” versus “pistis”).
So, they are correct about how you ENTER into that relationship free from any good deeds that are understood to “earn” His good favor. All you can do is to receive or accept a relationship in which Jesus is now your “Lord and Savior.” And when you read about what is described in Acts 2, 8, 10 & 19, the “free gift” nature of that relationship actually continues through to the event of receiving your own Pentecostal filling – they did not receive that wonderful anointing as a reward for years of faithfulness, DID they! Sometimes they just waited for 9 days (Acts 2); Sometimes they waited a few weeks/months (Acts 8); and sometimes they did not wait at ALL (Acts 10, 19). All they did was “receive” that free “gift of God” (Acts 8:20; 2 Timothy 1:6).
His commands to “be perfect” and “enter by the narrow door” are what you must get stretched into doing AFTER you enter into His covenant of salvation, and AFTER you receive that “power from on high” of His Pentecostal Spirit. What He required and commanded is INDEED impossible: “25 When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ 26 And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With men this IS impossible, but with God all things are possible'” (Matthew 19). Jesus did knowingly demand of them what He knows was impossible for them. His burden is only “light” and His yoke is only “easy” AFTER experientially receiving the Holy Spirit!
But here is where Evangelicals get “fuzzy” and very sloppy. First, to accept a relationship in which Jesus is your “Lord” means accepting a relationship in which He is now your MASTER, which of course means you are His SLAVE to obey. And Jesus was VERY careful and precise about what that unqualified and unconditioned obedience means – Matthew 5-7 alone ought to give you goose bumps, no? The GREAT majority of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists actually teach what is heresy when they say you always receive the Holy Spirit when you “believe” in Jesus. And most of them, along with most of Christendom have GREATLY watered down, even adulterated, the plan sense of what He taught and commanded. Somehow, for example, they assume that “love your enemies,” “do not resist him who is evil,” and “overcome evil with good” – plus His own behavior – can be easily mixed with taking the life of your nation’s Communist, Fascist, or Muslim enemy.
I said above that “there is no admission charge” to enter His covenant of salvation. But that lack of admission charge is more like entering the Marines than entering a free concert. The Marines to not ask for any “payment,” but they DO require a pledge on your part to let them take you apart and put you back together, no?
To “believe in Jesus” or “have faith in Jesus” is invalid if your belief/faith is limited to Him bearing away your since on the Cross. You cannot “believe IN Jesus” unless you “BELIEVE Jesus” – believe that all of His commands and teachings are true and binding upon YOU. They never seem to get around to saying that, or – if they do – they remain very vague about what those teachings actually are (as in Matthew 5-7). If you do not believe His teachings (in their plain and grammatically natural sense) you do not yet believe in Jesus – pure and simple. That is the big difference between the way the earliest churches taught and wrote, and the way they (along with the vast majority of Christians) teach and write. The ancients were just as specific as Jesus was regarding what to believe and do.
Additionally, there is also the issue of REPENTANCE being a part of “accepting Christ” or “believing the Gospel.”
” 8 Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Indeed, Lord, I herewith give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I restore fourfold”. 9 So Jesus said about him, “Today SALVATION has happened in this house, in that he also is a son of Abraham; 10 because the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
“37 Now upon hearing this they were CUT TO THE HEART and said to Peter, and the rest of the Apostles, “Men, brothers, what shall we do?!” 38 So Peter said to them: “REPENT AND BE BAPTIZED, each one of you, upon the name of Jesus Christ,33 for forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far away34 —as many, [that is], as the Lord our God may call.” 40 With many different words he both testified and kept exhorting, saying, “ESCAPE from this perverse generation!”
It ought to be clear that recognizing your corruption and turning away from it does not “earn” you anything. It is merely a part of recognizing and openly acknowledging that you DO need to be “saved,” no? But it clearly IS a requirement for entrance into His covenant of salvation. So, receiving THIS “free gift” is not like receiving a present at your birthday party. Rather it is more like the man who foolishly gets himself caught into quicksand, waiting until he is up to his chin before he cries out for deliverance, and THEN receiving the “free gift” of salvation. If GOD’s free gift does not bring you into a deeply humbled state of mind you are not yet “saved.” It is one thing to come to believe that “Jesus died on the cross to bring salvation to all men”; it is quite another and existentially deeper thing to accept that I, Reed, am so twisted and deformed by being who I am that _I_ personally needed Him to be tortured to death in order for MY guilt to be born away.
Finally, they do not accept that, in GOD’s eyes, being immersed in water while you are openly confessing Christ as Master and Savior has anything to do with accepting His Salvation. Consequently, they implicitly accuse His apostle Peter of being a lousy communicator, because HE said that it DOES: “20… In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water. 21 And this prefigured baptism, which now saves you – not the washing off of physical dirt, but the pledge of a good conscience to God – through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,… ” (1 Peter 3). Evangelicals tend to say that Peter was teaching that immersion in water is NOT a part of salvation, because he says that it is the “pledge” part that does the saving. This is another example of man craftily separating what God had joined together (as in Matthew 19:6). While the pledge certainly is the most important part, Peter is clearly saying that it is the pledge made at the time of BAPTISM that “saves you.” In other words, in baptism was creating an action that is like our marriage event – the time when you exchange vows with each other and enter into union with each other. Evangelicals tend to have decided to invent their OWN marriage ceremony, they invented their “altar call” in place of what HE had invented. The ancient churches also faithfully taught baptism’s importance the way Peter did, and in the balance that he had described. Peter was probably saying it the way he did to make sure we do not attribute some magical power to the water part of immersion (as indeed DID happen when the churches eventually succumbed to the practice of baptizing infants).
