Faith is nothing, it is dead without works. ANd a dead faith cannot do anything, so it is not poassible one is first saved by a dead faith THEN do works.justaname said:You have put the cart before the horse here. Faith is what drives our works.
If as you say works give life to faith, why were the Jews not saved by their works? Paul writes extensively about this, and you speak directly against what he teaches us through divine scripture. Another false belief on your part.
If we as you say use the works to drive our faith, all our works are done out of a selfish desire thereby they equate to sin not righteousness.
Now I never said Jesus said to "believe only." You twist my words as you do the understanding of the relation between works and faith. I said Jesus only said to believe. Big difference.
I like the fact you use the Ephesians passage...It says we are His workmanship...not our own workmanship...we were created for good works...not that we create our own good works...He prepared them...we did not achieve them by our actions...so that we would walk in them.
Faith is not a work, you are mistaken.
Good works are evident in the lives of those being saved, not that we seek good works for the reward of salvation. False motivation will produce a true reward of sin.
The Jews were trying to keep God's law perfectly thereby meriting salvation. AN interesting passage on this I have been looking at recently is found the context of Gal 3:12...."And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them."
The law of Moses did not even require faith. When Paul says "the man that doeth them (keepthe law)" he means If one could perfectly keep that law then he earned salvation faithlessly. But none could do this for what Paul said in Gal 3:10,11, those Jews would sin at some point and bring the curse of that law upon themselves.
Coffman Commentary correctly puts it this way: (my emp)
The reason this is true is cited in Galatians 3:10. There was another important indication of the same truth, which Paul then quoted from Habakkuk 2:4, "The righteous shall live by faith"; thus the prophets had borne testimony to the fact that the purpose of God, even in the Old Testament, was looking for an "obedient faith" in his children, and not merely for the legalistic type of rule-keeping which was the essence of the Law. The Law did not even require faith, as seen in the quotation Paul gave here from Leviticus 18:5, the meaning of which may be paraphrased, "No matter about faith; do the Law and live." This was the essence of Judaism. See note 2, at the end of the chapter.
Now regarding the conceit that would make Habakkuk say, "The righteous shall live by FAITH ONLY? such a meaning was never in any Old Testament usage of faith. As we have already observed, trust/faith or faith only simply did not pertain to the word in the Old Testament. Paul was here merely pointing out that, from the beginning, God had been interested in receiving "faithful obedience" from his followers, and not a mere faithless rule-keeping. We might add that the meaning of trust/faith or faith only is also foreign to the meaning of the word in the New Testament, or even in the Greek language, as Professor Howard has so effectively demonstrated.
Tie this in to Rom 4:4,5.
In this context Paul uses Abraham as an example. In verse 4 Paul speaks of this worker who works to keep God's law perfectly in order to earn his salvation therefore his salvation is of debt and not of grace. Yet Abraham was not a faithless worker of merit trying to earn salvation by being perfectly sinless, for Abraham sinned and therefore was in need of grace. Yet Abraham had a faithful obedience that was not perfect, but God was not looking for perfection but looking for that "faithful obedience" to His will which is what Abraham had/did.
I disagree. Works is the difference between what James and Paul say.Secondhand Lion said:Again Ernest, you seem to be misreading.
1. You are correct that Paul and James do not contradict. Imagine that....God is not a liar. But where the error is coming in is not in what type of works they are talking about. Notice how you had to go into speculation about what Paul was "essentially saying", this is to fit your viewpoint to scripture...not taking your viewpoint from scripture? (Also notice how I just used the words to and from, we will come back to this at a later time) The key phrase in the Romans 4:2 is not before God. Our works never justify us before God. James is talking about our works justifying us before men. One can not make it to James 2:21 without noticing that James 2:14-22 is talking about how your "brothers and sisters" will notice your faith. verse 18 "A man may say". It seems rather clear. Paul is talking justification before God. James....man.
2.To get into your charge about Ephesians 2:10 will take considerable time if the plain language of Ephesians 2:8-9 immediately proceeding it does not speak clearly to you. I will address this in another post.
3. We agree that the work of Christ is sufficient. We know that God's desire is that every man would come to repentance. So God made a way for every man to come. A mans choice is only not to come...what a man should do by nature (Romans 1) is come. Or did God make a mistake? Did He make it so that some would not come? If He did...how can He say He wants all to come? I thought we already agreed that God wasn't a liar? Is God a liar?
4. In post #30 on this thread you used Romans 2 and said the word "one's". The word one is singular. You seem to be contradicting yourself. Is it group? Or can we reasonably take lessons from it also for "one's"? What particular individual is Paul talking about? Me? You? Geesh...only you seem to think that a group is not defined by the individual. Again, how can you have a group without an individual? So the sum may be understood from the parts. I never thought I would have to explain such basic principals. Just out of curiosity...if you were correct...and Paul is only talking about the two groups (Jew and Gentile) and didn't mean any individual instruction from it...why then in Romans 3:23 does he not say "both have sinned and..." instead of "all have sinned and..."?
SL
(1)James speaks of an obedient faith and uses Abraham offering Isaac as an example of one with an obedient faith therefore Abraham was justified by obedient works.
Paul speaks of works of merit in Rom 4;4,5 and other places speaks of the works of the law of moses. Neither works of merit or works of the OT law can justify.
So we have:
James is saying faith without obedient works cannot save
Paul is saying (meritorious) works done faithlessly cannot save.
A clear contrast between works of merit and faithful obedient works can be seen in Rom 10:3:
"For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God."
There are two different types of works contrasted in this verse:
1) establish their OWN righteousness (not God's righteousness)
2) submitting (obeying) the righteousness of God.
Paul has sorrow over the fact that fleshly Israel is lost and they were lost for they were "going about to establish their own righteousness" that is, they were FAITHLESSLY doing their own works of merit trying to earn salvation. Paul tells us then what they needed to do to be saved and that being: "submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God", that is, obey God's commandments, Psa 119:172...all thy commandment are righteousness.
So we have in this one verse TWO different types of works being contrasted and we see that one work that does not save and one that does save. And this difference in works is the same difference in the works James speaks of and Paul speaks of.
(2) Eph 2:8,9 speaks of how the Ephesians became saved, that is by grace through faith not by works of merit and verse 10 speaks of the good works the saved have been preordained to walk in.
(3) Christ work is sufficent to save all but allwill not be saved for all will not obey, Heb 5:9, all will not obey when it comes to repenting. Man is NOT toally depraved where he is not able to obey....Rom 2:14 "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:"
So even though the Gentiles did not have the law of Moses as the Jews did, yet the Gentiles did BY NATURE the things contained in that law which would be IMPOSSIBLE if Calvin's total depravity were true.
(4) does not matter what word I used, in Romans chapters 1-3 Paul is speaking of groups not a certain individual. You denied this, so did you ever asnwer my question as to who this particular individual is that Paul is speaking about?
EDIT: I went back to look at post #30 and in that context Paul is speaking to the GROUP Jew when he said "Who will render to every man according to his deeds" So on judgment day God will render to each person (every man) according to his deeds, yet in the overall context in Rom 2 Paul is speaking to the group Jews.
Rom 3:9 "What then? are we (group Jew) better than they (group Gentile)? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they (both groups Jew and Gentile) are all under sin;" The "they" and "all" refer back tothe GROUPS Jew and Gentile, no individuals mentioned in this verse at all.