Saved by Grace through Faith

vsjb34 · Fierce Poodle Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 281

Gswisher,

Excellent post! You are putting things together well.

vsjb34 · Fierce Poodle Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 281

Gswisher,

Excellent job of putting the pieces together!

HeKkLeR · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2003 8:07 pm Post subject:

Van · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2003 8:28 pm Post subject: The Gift of Faith

The Gift of Faith prior to salvation is a bogus doctrine that cannot be supported biblically.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says the gift is the gift of grace.

Ephesians 2:10 does not prove that salvation is by faith. Salvation is by grace. Faith is a gift of God to some following salvation, and the object of our faith, Christ Jesus, is a gift from God prior to salvation. God protects the faith of those He saves.

Ephesians 2:5 indicates we are spiritually dead, separated from God due to our sins, and that we are saved by the gift of grace.

Limited intervention, the hardening of some to bring His predestined plan to fruition is not a pillar of Calvinism, it proves the concept of exhaustive control is a fiction.

The source or object of our faith is God and His Christ. If God had not sent Christ we would have nothing to have faith in. Therefore our faith is of or from Christ meaning it is based and focused on Christ and not from anyone else like false gods.

Roman 1:17 simply says that righteousness is from faith and nothing else, faith from beginning to end, faith from faith.

The gift of pre-salvation faith is a fiction supported by assertions such as faith of Christ means Christ gave us the faith by magic mind manipulation or in otherwords support for the premise conjured from thin air.

So lets return to the beginning - unconditional election is the underlying false premise of Calvinism. The idea was created to explain why some people hear the gospel and then reject Christ. The Biblical Answer to the problem was not utilized.

The Bible teaches our election is conditional. We are saved by grace through faith. God gives the gift of grace to believers. Just as Ephesians 2:8-9 says!

vsjb34 · Fierce Poodle Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 281

Van,

You are right. Election is conditional in one sense and that is that through the power of the Holy Spirit we repent. The Holy Spirit works through us and gives us the capacity to do that. Otherwise we cannot.

The Holy Spirit comes and convicts us of sin, persuades us of the truth and quickens us to respond. True we must respond.

Salvation is a miracle. It takes the power of God to make a Christian. It is more than an intellectual assent to a body of information.

Van · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 5:59 am Post subject:

Vsjb34, thanks for agreeing that election is conditional. That is crucial.

Next point, it is true that we repent by the power of the Holy Spirit. But how is this accomplished. Who inspired the prophets and apostles to reveal God and His Christ? The Holy Spirit. Who empowered Christ to demonstrate with signs and wonders that He was from God? The Holy Spirit. By what power was Jesus raised from the Dead? The Holy Spirit.

So when we turn from going our own way to God's way, our knowledge of God's way is by the power of the Holy Spirit. What the Calvinist do is take this truth and extrapolate it and say God also, secretly envades our minds and magically manipulates them, giving us Christ's faith. This is nowhere found in scripture, it is a tradition of men, a false doctrine.

Here is how Paul put it: 'My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." The Holy Spirit works through believers (Paul in this case) to convict sinners and call them to repentence.

BTW did you note that this passage also reinforces the idea that the gospel causes a person to shift their own faith from whatever it rests upon to God. The body of knowlege concerning Christ is the faith of Christ but the act of trusting in that body of knowledge, of believing in Him is the act of faith that is the condition God looks for in order to give the gift of grace.

vsjb34 · Fierce Poodle Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 281

The reason I have been emphasizing Election to much is that we make too much of our response.

We are all so subjective. We always want to start with ourselves. The Bible starts with God and Ends with God. God is first. What He does is first.

It seems to me the trend now is that it is all about us. We don't want to talk about what God does as much as what WE do.

God acts. God judges. It's all over the Bible. Yes we are active participants but the point of the Bible is God not us. If God wanted to He could rightfully send us all to Hell. For some reason He chooses to save some of us. Praise Him for that!

Van · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:13 am Post subject:

Vsjb34, Amen to everything in your last post.

Ron · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:28 am Post subject:

Just two quick points:

1. I am not sure who wrote this, it was in a an un-named quote on a post above here- "He [God] is revealed in a mystery, it is difficult and complex." When this word mystery is used by Paul and the other NT writers, its definition is "something that was unknown and is now revealed through us." Here are a couple examples.

This is from the Modern KJV-
Rom 11:25 For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you should be wise within yourselves; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the nations has comes in.

and the same from the Contemporary English Version-
Rom 11:25 My friends, I don't want you Gentiles to be too proud of yourselves. So I will explain the mystery of what has happened to the people of Israel. Some of them have become stubborn, and they will stay like that until the complete number of you Gentiles has come in.

another in MKJV-
1Co 15:51 Behold, I speak a mystery to you; we shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed;

and the CEV says-
1Co 15:51 I will explain a mystery to you. Not every one of us will die, but we will all be changed.

2.

vsjb34 · Fierce Poodle Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 281

Your right Ron. He does love us. Sometimes it just amazes me though and I wonder why. I sure don't deserve it.

Ron · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:59 am Post subject:

Amen vjsb. I do not deserve His love either. Grace, an unmerited favor, is His way to loving us. And we all thank God every day for His loving grace.

gswisher · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 421

Van,

It makes no difference to me what you claim to be false. You have not dealt in any convincing way with the scriptures that clearly show our faith comes from God. You do not beleive in the spiritual power of God to change human hearts, but you rest on your own natural understanding.

Ron · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 8:42 am Post subject:

Van · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 9:34 am Post subject:

gswisher writes: "You have not dealt in any convincing way with the scriptures that clearly show our faith comes from God." Yes I have, so your assertion is yet another false statement! The body of knowledge that we rest our faith upon comes from God. What you have done, using deception, is to point to this truth and claim this shows we get our act of faith from God. I have demolished your arguements using scripture. Jesus seeing the faith of individuals, seeing "their faith" forgave them. Matthew 9:2

The gift in Ephesians 2:8 is grace not faith. It is granted to those who believe in Christ, or in the body of information of Christ also referred to by the noun "faith" For example to believe in the faith of Christ illustrates that the act of believing, or having faith, as a verb, can be blurred with the facts upon which the belief rests, the faith as a noun. This was the argument offered by gswisher and is of no merit.

gswisher · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 421

Van,

As I said you have not dealt with the other verses.