Does our ‘faith’ save us? No. We are saved by grace, justified (declared that we belong to God) through faith.
What is faith? Faith is a response to grace. ‘By grace through faith, we are saved’. Our faith does not earn us salvation or save us in any way.
Our faith, which is responding to the wooing and reaching out to us of God, is just that, a response only, not works. God always takes the initiative, and is continually calling our name and drawing us toward him. If we hear his voice and respond with ‘Father’ then we have simply responded to his grace.
For a Calvinist, this response is too much, as it is entirely up to God as to who is saved and who isn’t. Erickson says ‘the recipient is, in a sense, passive in the process’ (Erickson, pp 904) Although I appreciate a Calvinist concern for upholding God’s sovereignty and initiative in salvation, I cannot look past the fact that if God has determined people to remain hard-hearted and not repent why do we continue to see the prophets call people back to God if they can’t really turn from their ways. Faith is a response, but it’s not passive.
This choice is not a source of merit, but an expression of God’s grace: free, universal, and resistible. It is my understanding that the Calvinist position as outlined in TULIP is inconsistent with the revelation of God in Jesus in which grace is resistible and operable in the lives of everyone to some extent, the offer of atonement is universal, election is Christocentric, and perseverance is a call as well as a promise[1]. Maybe my personal experience of a marriage separation causes my biases in this direction to be heightened, but I certainly feel that love is resistible, and so too grace. As I read through the scriptures and come across frequent calls to ‘choose this day who you will serve’, I am only more assured that faith is a badge of justification.
God is a gentleman, he doesn’t come and bash down peoples doors to enter a relationship with them, this is abusive and disrespectful, rather he politely knocks and continues to knock.
A not perfect, but relevant analogy for understanding if our faith can save us is evidenced in the online sensation of MySpace – a network by which relationships and communities are formed. People make up their own space called a profile, which is representative of them and their life.
Imagine for a moment, that ‘God’ has a myspace profile. If He was to invite ‘You’ to be his friend, to join his profile, and his community of friends, then ‘God’ would click on ‘Your’ profile and hit ‘add to friends’. This will then send a message to ‘You’ saying that ‘God has invited you to join him and his friends’. ‘You’ then have 2 choices, to either accept or deny his invitation. If ‘You’ presses the box ‘accept’ then ‘You’ are added to ‘God’s profile and community of friends and ‘God’ is also added to ‘Your’s. This analogy is not perfect I know, but if coupled with the recognition that God has invited everyone to join his profile and that turning to Jesus means a turning away from self, then it is appropriate.
This is evidenced in scripture. In the 1st century, being unclean meant that you couldn’t worship God in the Temple; therefore you were cut off from His presence. The significance then of Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners is that he’s saying that you don’t need to go to the temple to have your sins forgiven, Jesus, God in skin, comes to you.
Salvation is the process by which the Spirit applies the work of Christ to draw us into relationship with the Lord and with each other in community.
It is best pictured as a relationship, entering into and becoming a part of an already established relationship, the relationship of the Triune God. Salvation is not a one off event where, our sins are forgiven and we gain a fire insurance certificate with no continuing fees, into heaven when we die.
This caricature of salvation is not only unbiblical in that it is incomplete, but it is seen as a ‘win win’ situation for many. They believe that they can have their sins forgiven and then do whatever they please on earth because they will go to heaven anyway. But salvation is not an event; it is being caught up into the life of God, united with Him.
Salvation is a relationship, initiated by God and entered into by faith, that is responsively as we love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). So our faith is not what saves us, it is better seen in terms of trust and represented as faithfulness, as it should lead to actions that show our commitment to what we believe to be true.
What is faith? Faith is a response to grace. ‘By grace through faith, we are saved’. Our faith does not earn us salvation or save us in any way.
Our faith, which is responding to the wooing and reaching out to us of God, is just that, a response only, not works. God always takes the initiative, and is continually calling our name and drawing us toward him. If we hear his voice and respond with ‘Father’ then we have simply responded to his grace.
For a Calvinist, this response is too much, as it is entirely up to God as to who is saved and who isn’t. Erickson says ‘the recipient is, in a sense, passive in the process’ (Erickson, pp 904) Although I appreciate a Calvinist concern for upholding God’s sovereignty and initiative in salvation, I cannot look past the fact that if God has determined people to remain hard-hearted and not repent why do we continue to see the prophets call people back to God if they can’t really turn from their ways. Faith is a response, but it’s not passive.
This choice is not a source of merit, but an expression of God’s grace: free, universal, and resistible. It is my understanding that the Calvinist position as outlined in TULIP is inconsistent with the revelation of God in Jesus in which grace is resistible and operable in the lives of everyone to some extent, the offer of atonement is universal, election is Christocentric, and perseverance is a call as well as a promise[1]. Maybe my personal experience of a marriage separation causes my biases in this direction to be heightened, but I certainly feel that love is resistible, and so too grace. As I read through the scriptures and come across frequent calls to ‘choose this day who you will serve’, I am only more assured that faith is a badge of justification.
God is a gentleman, he doesn’t come and bash down peoples doors to enter a relationship with them, this is abusive and disrespectful, rather he politely knocks and continues to knock.
A not perfect, but relevant analogy for understanding if our faith can save us is evidenced in the online sensation of MySpace – a network by which relationships and communities are formed. People make up their own space called a profile, which is representative of them and their life.
Imagine for a moment, that ‘God’ has a myspace profile. If He was to invite ‘You’ to be his friend, to join his profile, and his community of friends, then ‘God’ would click on ‘Your’ profile and hit ‘add to friends’. This will then send a message to ‘You’ saying that ‘God has invited you to join him and his friends’. ‘You’ then have 2 choices, to either accept or deny his invitation. If ‘You’ presses the box ‘accept’ then ‘You’ are added to ‘God’s profile and community of friends and ‘God’ is also added to ‘Your’s. This analogy is not perfect I know, but if coupled with the recognition that God has invited everyone to join his profile and that turning to Jesus means a turning away from self, then it is appropriate.
This is evidenced in scripture. In the 1st century, being unclean meant that you couldn’t worship God in the Temple; therefore you were cut off from His presence. The significance then of Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners is that he’s saying that you don’t need to go to the temple to have your sins forgiven, Jesus, God in skin, comes to you.
Salvation is the process by which the Spirit applies the work of Christ to draw us into relationship with the Lord and with each other in community.
It is best pictured as a relationship, entering into and becoming a part of an already established relationship, the relationship of the Triune God. Salvation is not a one off event where, our sins are forgiven and we gain a fire insurance certificate with no continuing fees, into heaven when we die.
This caricature of salvation is not only unbiblical in that it is incomplete, but it is seen as a ‘win win’ situation for many. They believe that they can have their sins forgiven and then do whatever they please on earth because they will go to heaven anyway. But salvation is not an event; it is being caught up into the life of God, united with Him.
Salvation is a relationship, initiated by God and entered into by faith, that is responsively as we love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). So our faith is not what saves us, it is better seen in terms of trust and represented as faithfulness, as it should lead to actions that show our commitment to what we believe to be true.
1 comment:
?if God has determined people to remain hard-hearted and not repent why do we continue to see the prophets call people back to God if they can’t really turn from their ways."
Because He includes us in his salvation plan.
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