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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Making an effort v salvation by works
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
I'm often subjected to sharp intakes of breath and shaking heads when I suggest in any way that it's a given that we as Christians make as much effort as we can toward our faith, ie (in no particular order) prayer, Bible reading, participation in Church, good works, seeking God's guidance, theological thinking, knowing ourselves better so that we may overcome barriers to faith, co-operation, and fellowship.
I'm usually either accused of subscribing to salvation by works, or of failing to understand that Christians are often looking to receive from their faith, rather than give. (In fact, even when in comes to giving money, the groans may come in thick and fast.)
In my experience, it's through making the effort to give that I'm most likely to receive from God, in any case.
ISTM that the 'salvation by works' counter argument may be used by some as an excuse for making less rather than more effort.
I'm not suggesting that we're saved by works, but that following Christ, loving God and loving others as ourselves, requires a great deal of effort.
What are your thoughts and observations?
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
Paul spoke of working harder than all the other apostles, of speaking in tongues more than anyone in the Corinthian church, of being constrained by the love of Christ, of a deep sense of dissatisfaction if he did not preach the Gospel. If our faith does not motivate us to hard work it is little more than a personal insurance policy - a bar code that gets us through the check out into heaven.
Surely it's more than that.
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Oxonian Ecclesiastic
Shipmate
# 12722
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Posted
For evangelicals, the key text on this issue is 'Holiness' by J. C. Ryle. He was responding to the Holiness teaching which dominated the Keswick Convention, which held that sanctification was a matter of simply yielding to God and did not require effort. ("Don't wrestle, just nestle!")
Ryle demonstrated from Scripture, interpreted through the lens provided by the Reformers and the Puritans, that the result of justification by grace through faith is a holy warfare against sin and its effects. Does this require effort? Definitely.
Posts: 174 | From: London | Registered: Jun 2007
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Paul spoke of working harder than all the other apostles, of speaking in tongues more than anyone in the Corinthian church, of being constrained by the love of Christ, of a deep sense of dissatisfaction if he did not preach the Gospel. If our faith does not motivate us to hard work it is little more than a personal insurance policy - a bar code that gets us through the check out into heaven.
Surely it's more than that.
Yes. Surely faith is more than 'salvation without works!' ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
I think it comes down to motivation. If you are pursuing holiness in order to earn God's love or to earn salvation, that's works righteousness/ Pelagianism. However, if you are pursuing holiness (through the power of the Spirit) because you trust that it is the best life for you, the life you really want to live, then that is discipleship. Bonhoeffer sets it out well in Cost of Discipleship.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oxonian Ecclesiastic:
For evangelicals, the key text on this issue is 'Holiness' by J. C. Ryle. He was responding to the Holiness teaching which dominated the Keswick Convention, which held that sanctification was a matter of simply yielding to God and did not require effort. ("Don't wrestle, just nestle!")
Ryle demonstrated from Scripture, interpreted through the lens provided by the Reformers and the Puritans, that the result of justification by grace through faith is a holy warfare against sin and its effects. Does this require effort? Definitely.
Thank you for the references. It's interesting that some see the effort as 'against' while others see it as 'for', but either way effort is an important element.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Barefoot Friar
Ship's Shoeless Brother
# 13100
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Posted
My reading of Matthew 25 (along with other passages) leads me to believe that doing good works is not just encouraged, but necessary. Jesus tells us that those who give drinks to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and visit the sick and in prison are doing it to Jesus himself, and will be given eternal life, while those who do not will be left out in the cold.
I am very Wesleyan in my theology. I believe that salvation is completely free, but at the same time, God expects us to get up off our butts and do something with it. I also believe that actions speak much, much louder than words, and preaching the Gospel is often most effective when we live it out instead of simply say it. The world accuses the Church of being full of hypocrites, so I see this as being increasingly important.
I believe that if we love God with every fiber of our being (what Jesus told us was the greatest commandment), then we should show that love to others by loving them (what Jesus said was "like unto it").
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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu
Posts: 1621 | From: Warrior Mountains | Registered: Oct 2007
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I think it comes down to motivation. If you are pursuing holiness in order to earn God's love or to earn salvation, that's works righteousness/ Pelagianism. However, if you are pursuing holiness (through the power of the Spirit) because you trust that it is the best life for you, the life you really want to live, then that is discipleship. Bonhoeffer sets it out well in Cost of Discipleship.
Thank you cliffdweller. Not only have you encouraged me to get that book down from the shelf and read it (I've been intending to for some time....), but also you've given me food for thought. I wonder whether a different attitude to our Christian faith is fostered whether we see it primarily as the pursuit of holiness rather than primarily as the determination to follow Christ?
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
If our faith does not motivate us to hard work it is little more than a personal insurance policy - a bar code that gets us through the check out into heaven.
Surely it's more than that.
Not for all of us.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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uffda
Shipmate
# 14310
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Posted
From The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Such grace is costly because it call us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man his only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought with a price." and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.
Written in 1937, Bonhoeffer's words are strangely prophetic.
"But do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard."
Perhaps this might add some perspective to the discussion underway.
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Invincibly ignorant and planning to stay that way!
Posts: 1031 | From: Buffalo, NY | Registered: Nov 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2:12b,13)
St. Paul wouldn't have commanded his readers to work out their salvation if they didn't have to do any work.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2:12b,13)
St. Paul wouldn't have commanded his readers to work out their salvation if they didn't have to do any work.
Part of our problem here is that we have a very narrow view of salvation. We tend to think of salvation as "getting into heaven when I die." In that sense, anything we do through our own efforts to be "saved" is works righteousness, and contrary to the teaching of the NT, especially Paul (e.g. Eph. 2:8-9). "Salvation" in the sense of "getting into heaven" is entirely Christ's work, not ours.
But the Bible often uses "salvation" in a much broader sense. Not just "getting into heaven when I die" but the broader sense of "saved from a fruitless way of life-- here and now". iow, sanctification. It's being saved from the fruitless cycles that lead to the bondage of sin so that we can lead, in this life, a life of freedom, the life we were created for. It's that sense of "salvation" that Paul is talking about here, and that Jesus is talking about with the ethical imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount. These are things we strive for, not to earn heaven or God's love, but to live the life we were created for.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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footwasher
Shipmate
# 15599
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Posted
^^^
Amen!
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Ship's crimp
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I think it comes down to motivation. If you are pursuing holiness in order to earn God's love or to earn salvation, that's works righteousness/ Pelagianism. However, if you are pursuing holiness (through the power of the Spirit) because you trust that it is the best life for you, the life you really want to live, then that is discipleship. Bonhoeffer sets it out well in Cost of Discipleship.
And yet both views have this thought in common "What's in it for me?" The alternative starting point is to follow Paul's advice and '...find out what pleases the Lord.'
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
... These are things we strive for, not to earn heaven or God's love, but to live the life we were created for.
Well said. (all of it)
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
It isn't a choice between salvation by works v. salvation by faith. This is a false dichotomy, not only because there are other possibilities, but because no one advocates salvation by works. Salvation by works is a straw man invented by some of the more conservative protestants in order to ridicule Catholics foe being unscriptural.
Unfortunately for them the straw man of salvation by works, like all straw men, isn't true.
If you want a choice of two, it is between the catholic idea of salvation by faith AND works and the protestant one of salvation by faith ALONE.
Even in the protestant idea works are important, if you have faith and are saved it should show in the way you live. If an extortionist cane to faith I would expect them to stop the extortion.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Correction:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
If an extortionist came to faith I would expect them to stop the extortion.
Previewed the post and spell checked, and still I missed it.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Martha
Shipmate
# 185
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Posted
Of course it is important to be sensitive to a person's situation, too. Sometimes Christianity can feel like too much hard work - you are already burdened with just surviving, and somehow you should be fitting in time to read the Bible, help others and so on. That's not to say that you should never do these things when it is difficult, but there are times to give and times to receive.
Also, some people are more likely to want to sit back and take it easy (I for one) whereas others will be so driven to be "doing it right" all the time that they need to learn how to simply be. I guess part of faith is knowing what kind of person you are and learning to listen to God about what kind of person you need to be.
Posts: 388 | From: in the kitchen | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 makes it clear that we are not supposed to be satisfied with simply being saved.
Verses 14-15 make this especially clear. quote:
If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
What about motivation? I was caught in the "have to" trap for years, being by nature a very overanxious and guilt-ridden personality. I'm not really sure how that changed (reading Luther and Paul, maybe?) but now I do what I do for the love of God (not fear, not reward) and because it comes naturally--not without effort though.
Heck, how do I say this? It seems to me sort of like physiotherapy after a badly broken leg has been set properly. Some of what you do will be easy, some will hurt like hell, most of it will be somewhere in the middle--but all of it is "natural" in the sense that you're doing what your leg was made to do, that with every step you're getting healthier and the effort is getting more comfortable, and in the end, it will be something you do without even thinking about it. It seems to me the life of a Christian is like that.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
If you want a choice of two, it is between the catholic idea of salvation by faith AND works and the protestant one of salvation by faith ALONE.
I don't believe in salvation by faith alone, but neither would I say that I believe in salvation by faith and works because that seems to me to imply that the works warrant some sort of merit or reward. I think that an important part of faith is the acknowledgement that obeying Christ's commandments and living in accordance with his will is inherently a good thing and is what I ought to compel myself to do. Which means that my faith can only be real if I actually try to live my life accordingly.
So I would say that I believe in salvation by faith that is expressed in an attempt to live a good life. Would that be a third choice?
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
I'd say it's more helpful to think in terms of being saved by grace *through* faith. The grounds of our faith is Christ, grace is the means by which we are saved and grace is, in our experience, activated by faith. But grace is more than an attitude of God towards us, it's his active energies at work in and through us. When Paul said he worked harder than any of the apostles he qualified it by saying '..yet not I but the grace of God' working in him. In Antioch, Barnabas saw 'evidence of the grace of God.' Faith opens the door to God's grace in our lives and 'works' are the evidence and practical expression of it. Salvation isn't a number of components that, when added up, get us into heaven, it's a new lifestyle flowing out of a connection to heaven.
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
I think that an important part of faith is the acknowledgement that obeying Christ's commandments and living in accordance with his will is inherently a good thing and is what I ought to compel myself to do. Which means that my faith can only be real if I actually try to live my life accordingly.
So I would say that I believe in salvation by faith that is expressed in an attempt to live a good life. Would that be a third choice?
Exactly. Because faith = trust. So if we truly have faith, then we trust in God. Which means we trust that his ways will ultimately be the best way of life for us.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martha:
Of course it is important to be sensitive to a person's situation, too. Sometimes Christianity can feel like too much hard work - you are already burdened with just surviving, and somehow you should be fitting in time to read the Bible, help others and so on. That's not to say that you should never do these things when it is difficult, but there are times to give and times to receive.
Also, some people are more likely to want to sit back and take it easy (I for one) whereas others will be so driven to be "doing it right" all the time that they need to learn how to simply be. I guess part of faith is knowing what kind of person you are and learning to listen to God about what kind of person you need to be.
When I'm reminded of Mary & Martha, I can see that listening to Jesus is more important than constant busy-ness for its own sake.
While I see your point that people inclined to overdo activity may need to learn how to be still, mightn't people inclined to be still need to learn how to be active in faith?
In order to listen to Jesus we need to make some effort. Not only do we find out the kind of person we need to be, we also find out what kind of service God requires of us.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
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Martha
Shipmate
# 185
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Posted
Yes, that was what I was trying to get at. Perhaps I could have expressed it more clearly!
Posts: 388 | From: in the kitchen | Registered: May 2001
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
What about motivation? I was caught in the "have to" trap for years, being by nature a very overanxious and guilt-ridden personality. I'm not really sure how that changed (reading Luther and Paul, maybe?) but now I do what I do for the love of God (not fear, not reward) and because it comes naturally--not without effort though.
Heck, how do I say this? It seems to me sort of like physiotherapy after a badly broken leg has been set properly. Some of what you do will be easy, some will hurt like hell, most of it will be somewhere in the middle--but all of it is "natural" in the sense that you're doing what your leg was made to do, that with every step you're getting healthier and the effort is getting more comfortable, and in the end, it will be something you do without even thinking about it. It seems to me the life of a Christian is like that.
Thank you LC, I'm with you here.
I wonder whether there's a correlation between motivation and effort. Motivation seems to be key to this question, according to many of the comments.
Could it be that if the motivation for our activity comes from a desire to serve the God we love, whether drawing near or being sent out, following or standing, we're being transformed in Christ and will be energised by the Holy Spirit, finding that in yielding we do receive and with trust live the life we know to be right?
Could it be that if the motivation for our activity comes from a desire to serve ourselves, whether for our own salvation, or social standing, to try to 'earn' brownie points, or to squeeze our own desires from God, that we're less energised and likely to make much less effort?
And yet, many people begin at the latter, and progress to the former..... I think I'd better think it out again.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
What a great thread, especially the bits I don't like.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2:12b,13)
St. Paul wouldn't have commanded his readers to work out their salvation if they didn't have to do any work.
But we are working out what we already have, not working for what we do not yet have. I work out from my gym membership, not for it. I work out my salvation from my salvation, not for my salvation.
Posts: 6976 | From: Southampton | Registered: Jul 2002
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2:12b,13)
St. Paul wouldn't have commanded his readers to work out their salvation if they didn't have to do any work.
But we are working out what we already have, not working for what we do not yet have. I work out from my gym membership, not for it. I work out my salvation from my salvation, not for my salvation.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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'
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
And yet, many people begin at the latter, and progress to the former..... I think I'd better think it out again.
In the New Church, we believe that that is the only way.
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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