Hey zoe, nice to get your comments. Allow me to respond.
zoe wrote:The author and finisher of our faith
23May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. 1 Thess 5
Phil 1: 5-8 3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus
Christ certainly is the author and finisher of our faith. But it doesn't necessarily follow from that that we will necessarily do good works in this life.
On 1 Thess 5, if you aren't careful, you'll end up with sinless perfectionism. After all, if our WHOLE BODY is kept BLAMELESS until Jesus comes, and that is based on His faithfulness, well, there's no option other that sinlessness. If I sin, I am no longer blamess, and therefore, since Jesus didn't do it, I must not be saved.
The easies way to take this is that "He will do it" includes an understood contingency, as in John 15. So long as we do what Paul is saying in this chapter (this is found in a series of exhortations about righteous living) then Christ will sanctify us. Such is perfectly consistent with the rest of Scripture.
Oh Phil 1, we have a mistranslation. Let me offer mine:
- I thank my God upon every mention of you*; always in all my prayers concerning every one of you*, with joy I make my prayers on the basis of your* fellowship in the Gospel, from the first day you* heard it until now. I am confident that the One who began a good work by you* will bring it to maturity until the day of Jesus Christ.
Notice how often he uses the word "all" (it's bolded). It's very inclusive and meant to set up a call to unity, which is the theme of the book. Also, notice that the "you" is always plural. Paul is speaking to the church as a whole, not to the individual members in it. Thus, when Paul says that God began a good work through them, he's talking about through them
as a church. Finally, note that this work will continue
until Jesus comes back. After that, His work will stop. Surely you don't think that God's work in our lives will cease when Jesus returns.
More simply, the idea is that the good work began by the Philippian church is their financial support of Paul, enabling him to share the gospel message throughout the world. They will get a reward for investing in Paul, then, and, as Paul noted, we are STILL receiving the benefit of their work. This has nothing to do with individual salvation.
Good grief since when does the fact that we become Christians mean that we are fully sanctified?!?! He is the FINISHER of our faith. He who BEGAN a good work will CONTINUE....
Of COURSE we will miss opportunities. In fact there are times when we will flat out rebel and skip opportunities.
However, Jac, who is to say that those good works that we do aren't the ones that we are called to do? If He has made us ready, then those are the ones we do.
It seems to me that you are looking at this from a finite perspective.
Ignoring the comment about the work He continues to do being the work of salvation (see above), then the rest of this comment means that there are two types of good works I do. The ones that I do on my own, and the ones I was predestined to do. I can NEVER miss the ones I was predestined to do, so you say. So if I miss a good work, then I just wasn't predestined to do it.
Well, that makes it very easy to justify not doing good works. If I miss one, no big deal. I just wasn't predestined to do that one, right? And if I do a good work . . . well . . . who know? Maybe that was a predestined one, but then again, maybe it wasn't!
The practical result is that no amount of good works can ever be attributed to predestination. Or, you can take it in the more obvious sense, that God prepared good works for us to do, and sometimes, we miss out on those opportunities. I must confess, though, it's amazing that anyone could hold to a doctrine that seems to say that if I sin by not doing a good work, it is only because I wasn't predestined to do that particular good work . . . odd.
;ve just found three in just five minutes of searching....I'll gladly find more....but can't right now....that was just a quick search....alongside wvery one of those verses are exortations to continue to increase in loving the brothers and sisters in Christ as well as increasing in Godly speech, good works.....etc
Find more, because none of the ones you pointed to said that we will NECESSARILY do good works as a result of our salvation.
NOw Jac, I've been following and I can say that that is not at all what B.W. is saying. If course unsaved can be show morality, of course you can find people doing good deeds before being saved. (but surely you aren't saying their good deeds aren't as filthy rags? )
However, it doesn't mean that those very same people wouldn't increase in their loving attitude towards those around them were they TO be saved, were they to believe. Were Christ to transform them, their lives would show change.
And again, this renders this a practical nothing. If a "good" unsaved person gets saved, then they'll be "better"? Come on. Really. People get "better" all the time without getting saved. There becomes absolutely no difference in attributing the improved character of a person to their own moral reform and to God's work, in this view.
To be honest, why is the world does it matter IF we can tell? The point is that there is scripture declaring that God works in a believer's life. Whether or not this works equally in all believers life is only something that God could tell and ordain.
First, no one has shown any Scripture that says that God will cause a believer to do good works. But beyond that, it matters a great deal if we can tell. The entire point of this is that those of you who believe in the final perseverance of the saints actually believe that you CAN tell, that believers WILL do good works and stay in the faith until they die, backsliding notwithstanding. If, then, I am not capable of telling whether or not my works are the works of my flesh or the works of the Spirit, then I have no way of knowing whether or not I am saved. After all, I could be chock full of good works, but if those good works are indistinguishable from those of the flesh, then I have absolutely no assurance.
It is not up to us to tell. It isn't up to us to sit there and proverbially examine our navals and wonder "have I done enough?" That is clearly not what scripture teaches us. And it seems that PAul teaches that as we grow in Christ we become more and more aware of our sin even as we grow more and more. It's like our eyes are opened and that veil is lifted we see our depravity more and more clearly and are repulsed by it.
First off, show me Scripture for any of this. It isn't there. Second off, this makes assurance impossible. When you first "got saved" at whatever age or time in your life that was, you didn't have any good works. And unless you believe you were completely sanctified unto sinless perfection at the moment of salvation, there was also still sin in your life that you weren't yet aware of, and thus, weren't repulsed by. And so, you couldn't know you were saved until you started getting repulsed by that sin and until you started having good works.
But then, when do you have enough to know? You can say all you want that we shouldn't ask, but the question forces itself. You can throw up your hands and say, "Well, I don't know whether or not I'm saved. That's in God's hands!" which is exactly what most honest Calvinists I've talked to end up doing. They just admit that they have no assurance. Now, if that's the position you take, then fine, we can talk about its ramifications. But let's not pretend like the question doesn't matter. It matters a great deal.
No one is disputing that works doesn't save. It seems to me that all B.W. is saying, after all this, is that CHrist does not let us stay where we are. We are in the process of dying to Christ. The process of sanctification is slow, sometimes quickens, sometimes seems to have stopped altogether. We are, after all, incredibly stubborn. (all we like sheep)
And if sanctification is a NECESSARY result of getting saved, then you CANNOT KNOW you are saved unless you find yourself going through that sanctification process. Then, if you hold that view, you have to ask HOW MUCH of the process you have to go through until you CAN know. And you've made it a bit worse, I think, by saying that we may not be able to distinguish our growth as either simple moral reform or Spirit-guided sanctification. Well then you REALLY can never know. That's a problem, my friend. A serious problem.
I sometimes think of the growth of believers and invision a set of graphs, each slope representing the growth with an entire set of factors involved in that growth. There are some beleivers like PAul, for whom the transformation was quick. Others would be painfully slow and perhaps, from our eyes, we wouldn't see a difference.
I wonder, for instance, what we would think of David or Jacob had they been recorded in the New testamet. Surely God was working in their lives! We know it to be so!
If we extend the parable of the soils, can't we see the idea that some seeds fall on fertile soil and we see that tranformation immediatley, while others, that transormation would be slow due to the tilling required to soften the soil to allow the seed to grow.
At some may not grow at all, according to the parable of the soil. Only the last group bore fruit. The logic on this is inescapable. If growth is a necessary result of the Christian life, then you CANNOT KNOW you have believed until you grow, and since by your own admission, some may not grow for a long time, that means they can't know for a long time. And surely you would admit that there are some people who profess faith and have a huge moral reform and it turn out the whole thing was only of themselves--they didn't really believe. And therefore, even those who grow quickly can't really know unless they maintain that growth over a long period of time.
In any case, assurance of salvation is utterly impossible.
In short:
Christ justifies and santifies. His grace transforms. I will find more scripture. Gotta get some sleep!
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Feel free to find more Scripture. At this point, I'd be happy about a single verse.
Seriously, Scripture teaches that we will grow if we abide in Christ, not that we will grow if we believe. Just the opposite, Jesus Himself said that some would believe but fall away and bear no fruit. I've given you both Scripture and basic logic to back this up. Go back to the thread that started this. John 3:16 says that EVERYONE who believes has everlasting life. It does not say that everyone who believes and bears good fruit. Surely you recognize that there are some who believe but then fall away. The Bible says as much. But according to the Bible, even they are saved, for the believed, even though they didn't persevere.
God bless
