Yet it’s important to recognize that biblical salvation includes both what Christ did for us and what He now does in us through obedient faith. While Christ’s death and resurrection provide the basis for salvation, Scripture clearly teaches that we must respond to that gift—not as a work of merit, but as a faith-filled act of obedience . The same Jesus who died and rose again also commanded His disciples to preach, “Repent and be baptized every one of you…for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38), and “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16).
You say we must respond to that gift as a “faith-filled act of obedience” not to merit salvation, but that this “faith-filled act of obedience” is a thing we do that acquires something–we must do something to get something. Am I misunderstanding? Because if I do something in order to get something, that is by definition merit. When I go to my place of employment, go on the clock, and work my scheduled hours, that is how I earn my paycheck. I don’t get paid anything except for what I’ve worked. If I am required to do something in order to receive something, then I am–even if only in part–earning it by my own merit. It may not be exclusively by my own merit, it may be a cooperative effort–God does X and I do Y, and it is this synergy of cooperation that results in my salvation–but that still involves my doing something in order to get something. That’s merit.
Further, I disagree that Christ’s death and resurrection “provide the basis for salvation”, this suggests an unfinished work. If I might provide another analogy: If I am homeless and need a roof over my head, and someone comes along and pours the concrete foundation for a house, but then I am told that I must then purchase the lumber, the nails, the paint, the roofing tiles and build the house myself on that foundation–the one who poured the foundation cannot say, “Here, I have gifted you a house to live in”, the shelter I need came out of my own resources and I put in the work to have a house, the gift of a concrete foundation is not the same thing as a gift of a house. And if I am homeless, poor, and entirely without means to acquire a home–then telling me I must build my own house certainly isn’t good news to me, a concrete slab isn’t a house, a concrete slab won’t protect me from the elements, when I need warmth, shelter, a place to live.
Christ’s death and resurrection isn’t the concrete slab upon which I must now build my own house to protect myself from the elements, using materials I cannot afford because I am poor and helpless; Christ’s death and resurrection accomplishes everything, He is the Master Carpenter who has built the house, He is the One who takes my trembling weak self and carries me into the house, and He is the Great Physician who nurses me to health, feeding me, giving me clean and new clothes, and provides the medicine to me. He is both the Author of my faith, and He is the Finisher, the One in whom that faith is made perfect and completed because He is the One who has already accomplished the work on my behalf.
Christ has made satisfaction, the work is finished. My faith is not an obedience that builds upon a basis of my salvation; faith receives (like a pair of empty hands belonging to a beggar) the perfect, finished, accomplished, full and entire work of Jesus Christ, so that what He has done can be appropriated to me as pure gift.
There is a place to speak about where, through faith, I respond to God, and where and how my works play a role in my Christian life. It’s Ephesians 2:10, that we are created for good works in Christ Jesus, prepared for us beforehand that we should walk in them. This is the life of discipleship, this is the life of obedience born of faith, of living in accordance with and by the Holy Spirit. Having been united to Christ by grace, and thus having become heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, we are now called to lives which bear Christ in us. That is to say, to live godly, holy, obedience lives as followers of Jesus, equipped by the Holy Spirit to repent, prayerfully resisting temptation, fighting against the old man and all his ways–not because through this I acquire something from God; but because through this we bear Christ and His death and His sufferings in our own bodies, that we may present our own bodies as living sacrifices, that through our good works our neighbor should come to know the same love of God which we have come to know. For my neighbor is hungry, and he needs food; my neighbor is thirsty, and he needs water; my neighbor is sick in need of medicine, my neighbor is naked in need of clothing, my neighbor is suffering, I should love my neighbor. It is not God who needs my good works, it is my neighbor who is in need. For Christian ministry and service is to meet the world in all its pain and hurt and sin with the love, compassion, and Gospel of Jesus Christ; we preach Christ crucified and risen from the dead and we bring food to the hungry, and care for the widow and the orphan. This is the righteousness we are called to exhibit, not a righteousness before God (which we have none, and cannot have) but the righteousness of good works before our fellow man.
There are two kinds of righteousness: Righteousness before God and righteousness before other people. Before God no one, except Christ, is righteous, and thus unless I receive the alien righteousness of Jesus as a free gift, through faith, I am nothing but a guilty sinner before God deserving of death and hell. Before the world, however, I live by good works for this is God’s command, for Christ is Lord and King and He demands that I carry my cross, follow Him, and live according to His way–that my neighbor might see my good works and praise God, that my neighbor should prosper with food and health and good things. And this is good and pleasing to God, that the widow is cared for, that the fatherless are given help, that the poor and the hungry and the needy are provided for, that there is justice for the weak and the oppressed. Even in the imperfect and fallen state of affairs of this world as we have them now. In this way we are salt and light, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. This is the way of the kingdom of God, where the least is called greatest. And thus I flee from idols, worship the true God, not profaning His name, refusing the violence of murder and theft and rebellion against parents and other godly authorities, refusing to bear false witness against my neighbor but instead living honestly and candidly in truth and good will, insisting on the wellbeing of others; not coveting what is my neighbor’s, and in all these things bearing witness to Christ, proclaiming the Cross and Empty Tomb, and living in accordance with justice toward all, in peace, for it is the will of our good and loving Father that we be merciful to all “For He is merciful even unto the wicked and the thankless”–so we turn the other cheek, we love even our enemies, if our enemy is hungry we give him food, if he is thirsty we give him drink, etc.
And in truth, this is precisely the Oneness-Pentecostal view as well.
That is its own particular can of worms. One I do not wish to get into at this particular moment in this post.
> Omega
your statement at the end…but not sure if He meets us, but that we come into what He is doing, sense He is the active force. I agree with somone’s thought that He is the initiator and we are the respondents.
confused about water baptism.