And so is it refreshing to come to a meeting of minds around here, which also results in a building up of truth around here.
No, I'm not saying justification by works in James 2 has nothing to do with being saved by faith in Ephesians 2. They are intrinsically connected. You can't separate the two the way this new OSAS teaching in the church says you can.
I.e. being saved by Christ cannot be separated from being justified by Christ, and so faith that is separated from works is dead man's faith only, not God's.
All of OSAS is about one thing and one thing only: to separate Romans 4 from James 2. They are simply sinners naming the name of Christ, who say their sinful works of the flesh can never deny them their salvation by Christ.
Now that is a good quote.
Anybody who thinks the faith that makes a person righteous all by itself apart from works can remain alone does not have the imputation of God's righteousness that they think they have. Being made righteous through faith in God's forgiveness has consequences. Even Paul said the faith that justifies apart from works is the faith that manifests itself in the obedience to love (Galatians 5:6).
And that is the jest of it all. OSAS teaches what we think matters most. It teaches salvation by still believing we are saved only, not by how we are living. So long as we still believe it, we are.
It truly is the false promise of the serpent to Adam and Eve, that they will be as spiritually mortal gods so long as they believing it, and so they will be able to decide for themselves what is good or evil, and has nothing to do with some law of commandment by the true God only.
They show this by declaring the law of Christ dead, and Scripture on paper does not matter, but what they think and believes matter most.
It's anthropomorphic paganism 101. They are as gods of Olympus, so that even when they do evil, which they never really admit to, they are still the gods of Olympus forever.