freewill and the fairness of Fair part 2

[jars of clay]

I'm begging to understand how long this is going to be.... I am going to have to post part one into three seporate threads, feel free to debate with me or agree in the final installment (but please read it all!)


2. Salvation is a gift from God
The idea of freewill existing in Salvation hinges on the belief that we chose to believe in God. Does this line up with Gods word? In one way it fails and here is where;
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

In verse 19 it says that even the Demons believe in God, and they shudder. Two things about this should be noted, the most obvious is that they have seen God, and because they have seen Him they believe that He exists, what is more, they have seen God work from the creation of the world to today, seeing Christ come to the world and die. This might be a surprise to you, but the demons believe and know that Christ came to die for the world, so why do they tremble? The demons are trembling because they know that God has already won. They go through the days, weeks, years, knowing that God is in control, that He is sovereign and that one day He will make an end and defeat them all. Despite their frantic attempts to stop God, they know that they cannot beat Him.

I would like to suggest to you now that there is a difference between Believe that God is good, that we are sinners and that Christ came to die, and being a newborn Christian. There has to be something different between the two, as someone who has been reborn in the spirit does not live the same way as one who is not been renewed. I would like to go back to the passage I quoted at the beginning of this essay, Ephesians 2:8-9;

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

There is something very significant here that people almost always miss or skip over, and that is the second and third phase; “…It is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God...” This phase is crucial, but so often we miss its importance.

When many theologians look at this verse, their first instinct is to say that this text is talking about Christ’s death on the cross. That for us to be saved, we must choose on our own freewill to accept Him. Of course the question then arises on how do we choose to accept Him, after all, there is no clear cut formula for how to be saved. For this the theologians say that you pray a prayer and ask God into your heart. Again, how do you do that? Or with a more specific question, what words are needed in that prayer so that Christ really does come and your sins are really forgiven. From this, different evangelism organizations and denominations have given different, answers. Usually, they all have several key words in them, one of which again, involves our choice.

But is this practice which is common and easy to spot in the American church in line with Gods word? Let us return once more to Ephesians, and to those two phrases that I said were so critical to our understanding of the salvation offered to us. Start with me at the beginning of verse 8; the first sentence says that we are saved by grace through faith. That doesn’t seem to contradict the passage except for the fact that the theologians we mentioned earlier point to praying a prayer in addition to having faith. Moving on however, Notice that Paul starts with an understood subject in this next sentence. What I mean is that he is assuming that the reader understands which “it” he is talking about. How you interpret that one word, changes the meaning significantly; because if you say the ‘it’ is referring to salvation in general and what Christ did on the cross, then you will agree with the theologians that we must choose to accept Christ. However I believe this is a mistake and that the ‘it’ is the last noun in that first sentence, or faith.

Look at the letter Paul is writing for a second. In chapter one, Paul starts off by stating that God has “…predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ…” (1:5). He goes on to say that we “…were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it…” (1:13-14). Go to just a few verses before the two we are looking at now;

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Paul’s point is simple; we are saved by grace through faith, yes, but this faith is not of our own doing. The faith that we have that we are sinners; that Christ has come to earth and fully paid for our sin, is not our faith. It is not our doing so that we cannot have even the slightest reason to boast. This point leaves not only the theologian speechless, but us too if we consider the full implications. For the main part, the biggest complaint about this teaching (that Paul brings up over and over again in Romans and I Corinthians) is that it dehumanizes us, turning free, independent humans into robots that have no say what so ever into their future. They go on to say that God would not be truly loving if he truly did not allow us to choose Him. This is an interesting point, but again, I believe that it lacks in Biblical truth, and abounds in human understanding.