How do 'Faith Alone' believers understand the Church at Sardis?

[juliamajor]

Good Post.

If God is the LORD of your life, why wouldn’t you want to do the things that He asks you to do? Eph. 8 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.” I believe that works DOES follow repentenace and saving faith in Christ. You can add a whole lot of human requirement that has to be accomplished, but how do you decide what is enough work? Who makes the criteria for what is enough work to save you? Only God sees the heart and know those that truly belong to Him. Many of us will be surprised on the day we enter His gates.

Yeah -what’s your point- Your not saying anything we don’t believe . salvation comes from God.But if you don’t have works doesn’t that witness to a faith that is incomplete.?

 

[MySavior]

Yeah -what’s your point- Your not saying anything we don’t believe . salvation comes from God.But if you don’t have works doesn’t that witness to a faith that is incomplete.?

I don’t have a problem with anything that you’ve written here. Many Catholics that I have talked to believe that you must be baptized to have salvation. Do you?

 

[Ruthie]

The church that you belong to now is also quite judgemental about other’s salvation. They even carry it as far as proclaiming some as being “saints”

Yes, we do.

or condemned heretics.

Not to hell. We may have excommunicated them, but all that means is to be kept from the sacraments until they repent.

Yes, we condemn heresy - it’s serious stuff. We don’t condemn heretics. They can condemn themselves. To make a fully educated, deliberate choice to commit mortal sin condemns us. If we die in that state, we go to hell. But no human can say whether another person chose freely and in full knowledge to commit that sin. We can’t even know that for sure about ourselves.

Only Jesus knows what is in the human heart. Only He can condemn someone to hell.

That’s Church teaching.

If you are referring to “anathema,” that was a special, official excommunication performed by the Pope, and in fact was hardly ever used. It has now been dropped.

God bless you,

Ruthie