Is obedience necessary for your salvation?

[VociMike]

Protestants? Catholics?

Please, don’t tell me about the thief on the cross, or about deathbed conversions. I’m asking if you can be saved without obedience?

 

[Tonks40]

Protestants? Catholics?

Please, don’t tell me about the thief on the cross, or about deathbed conversions. I’m asking if you can be saved without obedience?

I think it’s possible for one to be saved at one’s deathbed and with perfect contrition of his sins. But didn’t the Lord want us to obey? That would mean for the true believer in Christ, he would be bound to obey the Lord - for santification, for glorifying, and for preserverence in that obedience.

 

[water]

Through out Jesus’ live, he showed us how He was obedient to the Father in Heaven and also to His Mother and Father on Earth.

Being obedient to our parents, to our Spiritual Director, and to others whom we are supposed to be obedient to is to obedient to God.

If we say we should only be obedient to God, then why should we listen to St. Paul, St. Peter, etc …why should we listen to our parents? They were not God but they were the ones whom God wants us to listen to.

Look at the lives of many great Saints. Their obedience to their superior is part of making them holy.

 

[Bishopite]

Protestants? Catholics?

Please, don’t tell me about the thief on the cross, or about deathbed conversions. I’m asking if you can be saved without obedience?

No one can be saved without the obedience of faith. Paul uses these sort of book end statements in the book of Romans…

Romans 1:5 “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake,”

Romans 16:26" but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith;"

 

[Nicene]

In Acts it was called “The Way” for a reason. Grace is continually poured out for us that we may “walk as he walked” and live in the “law of liberty” which we do if we love him by “following his commands” because we are now “Sons of God” and if we love him we do as he did.

To not follow his commands is to not love him. He died to show us the way of obedience. “Your will be done, not my will.”

Pretty simple.

Is obedience necessary for your salvation? Yep.

(Though it’s probably more accurate to ask: Is obedience normatively necessary for your salvation?)

Peace and God Bless
Nicene

 

[VociMike]

Is obedience necessary for your salvation? Yep.

(Though it’s probably more accurate to ask: Is obedience normatively necessary for your salvation?)

Yes, that’s why I didn’t ask “is obedience necessary for salvation” but rather “is obedience necessary for your salvation” (meaning any person reading this thread). The point being, I’m not asking about any version of the thief on the cross, or a baby who dies or any other limiting case, but rather about the typical Christian believer who will live as a Christian believer for years or decades. The normative case, as you say.

What I’m really after is to see if any faith-alone Protestants are prepared to assert that obedience is not necessary for their salvation. Not salvation in general, but their salvation.

 

[jack_hawkins]

Personally I’m not sure that any Christian would disagree with your statement , but it all depends entirely on what you are meaning by obedience.
Disobedience of God is sin, and becoming a Christian does not stop us from committing venial or mortal sins.

 

[VociMike]

Personally I’m not sure that any Christian would disagree with your statement , but it all depends entirely on what you are meaning by obedience.
Disobedience of God is sin, and becoming a Christian does not stop us from committing venial or mortal sins.

Well, I want to hear how a faith-alone Christian deals with this question. Is it not an addition to the gospel of faith alone?

 

[jack_hawkins]

Well, I want to hear how a faith-alone Christian deals with this question. Is it not an addition to the gospel of faith alone?

No, I wouldn’t say so, having come from a very avowedly faith-alone tradition. None of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/other Protestant believers I know/have known would say that obedience isn’t necessary.

 

[VociMike]

No, I wouldn’t say so, having come from a very avowedly faith-alone tradition. None of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/other Protestant believers I know/have known would say that obedience isn’t necessary.

So “faith alone” isn’t? The real question then is, why are Catholics accused of salvation by works, if obedience is acknowledged to be required of “faith-alone” Christians (in most cases) for salvation?

 

[jack_hawkins]

I think that accusation relates to having to accept sacraments? Pentecostals believe you should be baptised, but communion is generally considered a remembrance and a symbol. They do anoint the sick but it’s not a sacrament as such.

 

[Linkowski]

It depends on how you are looking at it. True faith in Christ manifests itself in works - for in Christ we are a new creation (2Cor 5:17) - and - ofcourse, faith without works is dead. Faith and the result of faith are inseparable.

As long as you are not looking at obedience as the means of salvation as if you were meriting salvation. We are saved on the basis of faith alone but on faith that is living faith manifesting itself in obedience and love.

Those who are indeed born again will bring forth this fruit of obedience as spelled out clearly throughout first John.

Lot is an example, however, of one who was not the greatest example for Christian living, although he was called righteous because he was justified by faith.

2Pe 2:7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:
8 (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds

So, obedience is not a means but is a fruit.

 

[Linkowski]

I think that accusation relates to having to accept sacraments? Pentecostals believe you should be baptised, but communion is generally considered a remembrance and a symbol. They do anoint the sick but it’s not a sacrament as such.

You hit it on the head…plus when speaking with a large percentage of Catholics, they calim salvation by their ggood deeds that they do rather than on the basis of the crosswork of Christ.

 

[VociMike]

You hit it on the head…plus when speaking with a large percentage of Catholics, they calim salvation by their ggood deeds that they do rather than on the basis of the crosswork of Christ.

So when Protestants speak of “salvation by works” they are simply using the wrong words?

Oh, BTW, I’ve never heard a single Catholic who claimed they are saved by their good deeds, and yet you claim that “a large percentage” of Catholics make exactly that claim. How do you explain such a vast discrepancy?

 

[Linkowski]

So when Protestants speak of “salvation by works” they are simply using the wrong words?

Oh, BTW, I’ve never heard a single Catholic who claimed they are saved by their good deeds, and yet you claim that “a large percentage” of Catholics make exactly that claim. How do you explain such a vast discrepancy?

I think you need to come with me to see it. I have met one Catholic that claimed the cross over the 6 years that I have been doing this and that was because it happened in a Baptist church. Sorry but it is the truth.

 

[VociMike]

I think you need to come with me to see it. I have met one Catholic that claimed the cross over the 6 years that I have been doing this and that was because it happened in a Baptist church. Sorry but it is the truth.

Sorry, I can’t decode what you’ve written here.

 

[jack_hawkins]

I have to say that although the importance of the sacraments is emphasised, I haven’t heard a Catholic claim their salvation is from their works - ever.
Pentecostals etc definitely believe that faith without works is dead. When I was a member of the Pentecostal Church I might add I attended 4-5 meetings every week.
Speaking with my ex-Pentecostal/Protestant hat on, most of what I heard said about Catholic doctrine was wrong - not intentionally so, but very definitely misstated.

 

[Truthstalker]

There is a verse in James about “even the demons believe - and shudder.” (James 2:19). When Jesus spoke about the faithful servant, it was not one who simply believed he had a master, but rather one who did all his master wanted him to do.

Obedience is necessary, but it cannot be an obedience on our own strength, under our own power, or anything apart from an act of grace. God must be the one to make us obedient. We cannot make ourselves obedient.

Faith is not an instantaneous intellectual assent, to then be perhaps forgotten. Faith is a lifestyle of obedience. Sole fide to me means “the righteous will live by faith,” and that not of themselves, but it is a gift of God.

 

[VociMike]

Obedience is necessary, but it cannot be an obedience on our own strength, under our own power, or anything apart from an act of grace. God must be the one to make us obedient. We cannot make ourselves obedient.

I agree with just about everything you said, but does God really make us obedient? Does He, that is, compel us to be obedient? Is it even obedience if we are made to be so?

 

[jack_hawkins]

I hope this isn’t too much of a tangent, but I have a difficulty with the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father - where we say “Lead us not into temptation”. I think IIRC some versions say “do not tempt us beyond what we can bear”, which makes more sense as temptation is part of being in the world. It is bearing and resisting temptation that leads us to call for God’s help, who helps us when we choose to obey. No, he doesn’t make us obey, he only helps us to resist the Evil One.