Perplexed Protestant

[Peace-bwu]

While waiting in my van tonight I was listening to a protestant radio station. I wanted so badly to call in and say “You’ve got it, you understand the Catholic doctrine on ‘salvation by faith working in love!’”
They were talking about three paths of a Chrisitian: Complacancy, indulgence, and influence…How some Christians hear the word of God and think it’s enough to go to Church every Sunday and go to Bible study, yet become complacent in their faith ( I would say, yes, faith without works is dead!) they wander around feeling no purpose etc. The next path, of indulgence, is when a person tries to feel satisfaction and happiness by indulging in material things. By buying the next great thing, car, computer, vacation… but never feeling fully happy or satisfied… Then there are the people who are (sometimes after a struggle through the other paths) on a path of influence where they seek and know their purpose in life and are finally giving and seeking to influence the live of others with their faith (basically doing good works) and how these people are happier, spiritually, in their relationships etc.
This is so close to Catholic doctrine… they would probably be shocked to hear that, but it actually made me smile because, although they are attempting to “reinvent the wheel” these particular people understood that “faith working in love” is what matures our faith and brings us into a closer relationship with Christ… it circumcises our hearts, so to speak. It made me feel hopeful for unity. I would guess that if someone asked these speakers about eternal salvation and faith alone, they would say something about how Catholics believe they can earn their salvation through works… same old, same old… but if they bothered to actually understand what the Catholic Church teaches on this topic and why… and where Scripture clearly states the same… The sum of their talk could fall under the Scripture we have quoted several times throughout this thread ** “See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone… so also faith without works is dead.” James 2:24,26 **
** There would be no conflict on this matter. **

I have a very difficult time understanding how our devout Protestant brothers can arrive to the theology of “faith alone” and be yet profess that they base their beliefs soley on scripture, because this theology conflicts Scripture. I understand the position, and have discussed it to exhaustion, but don’t understand how they can maintain the theology of “faith alone” and protest “faith working in love” so forcefully.

God wants so much more from us, we are capable of more than we can imagine with His grace. Let Him work through us by using our gifts, talents, and suffering for His kingdom and glory. There is no conflict here… just hardness of heart.

I know, its sounds so simple.

 

[Peace-bwu]

Socrates4Jesus:

Peace be with you:

You left out the rest of St. Paul’s words. The full quote is:

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having hope of eternal life.” (verses 4-7)

."

Just to make sure you understood why I was quoting this scripture in the first place. The part I was trying to highlight was the last line "having HOPE in eternal life. It does not say we already know we have eternal salvation, but that we HOPE for it.th

also what do you consider “works?” Do you consider the sacraments such as Baptism “works?” or only the works of charity we do? Is the act of Baptism falling under the category of “works” because this passage is very much talking about the waters of Baptism. Do you consider going to confession or receiving the Eucarist “works?” because it is something we choose of our own free will to do. It takes a conscious effort to do this things, yet they give us sanctifying Grace, which in turn helps us on our path to salvation. Is following God’s law included in the term “works?” Does reading Scripture?

We are not capable of “earning” our Salvation, it is too great a price… yet we owe a debt to God for our life. We owe it to God to put Him first in our lives and serve Him, we owe Him everything we have and will have. He paid the price for our heads. We owe it to Him to love our neighbors as ourselves as Christ commanded. It can never be repaid, Christ already paid in full…but we are required to give a response of thankfulness and praise, required to Love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, soul and Love our neighbor as ourselves… I guess the question about works in this sense is “how can I love this neighbor today, what do they need?” Faith working in love. He sacrificed for our salvation, not so that we can become slaves, but the children of God. How beautiful is that love? unfathomable! All we need to do is pick up our cross and follow him. What do we do to pick up that cross? the cross is suffering, giving to our brothers and sisters, to the point of sacrifice… and carrying that cross right up to our death. That is what being a Christian is about. The closer we get to Christ the closer we are to pain and suffering, yet the closer we are to Christ and His Mercy.

We aren’t God’s slaves, forced to do works… but we are His adoring children, looking up, asking what we can do, because we love Him. We are desparate to know Him, and love Him.

Kind of like a little child asking mommy to help make cookies, the mother is fully capable of making the cookies, she has made them hundreds of times… but this loving mother lets her child pull the chair up to the counter as she teaches that child to make cookies.

Do we love Christ enough to say “I am willing to die for you? I am willing to suffer for you!” I will lay down my life for a friend! I will do your WILL, whatever it may be! I will do your works! I will love you with my whole heart!

A Christian really can’t separate his faith from his holy life. If we become complacent and discontinue “working out our salvation in fear and trembling” we risk having a dead faith.

 

[Pax]

Socrates4Jesus,

I do not believe that a man can be God, but I do believe that God can become a man. I would not believe this except for the fact that God said it and did it. Jesus, as we know, is both God and man. This is nonsense to a non-believer. It is as Paul puts it in
1 Corinthians 2:14, "The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Now if we can have faith that there is one God that created all things, and that He sent His only begotten son, born of the Virgin Mary, to die for our sins on the cross and bring about our salvation, then why should it be so difficult to believe the whole package? If we are told by Jesus himself, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and if we are told in the book of Hebrews to “strive for the holiness and peace with all men without which no one will see God,” and if we are told that “nothing unclean will enter heaven,” then we have to believe these things.

God the Father does not fib to His children. This Father keeps his promises. He will perfect us.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

Matt16_18:

…Obviously, when Jesus speaks of the evil thoughts in the heart he doesn’t mean that the muscle that pumps blood through the body contains evil thoughts. Jesus is speaking about the corruption that lies within a man’s spirit

– his heart. I think that you misunderstand the scripture verses that you quoted because of a Calvinist/Gnostic view of sin residing in the flesh of the body.

Matt16,

Sorry, careless choice of words. What i should have said was that we have sinful human natures (which includes, of course, our spirits or souls). I think the propensity to commit some sins may made worse by our physical bodies. There is good scientific evidence, for example, that some alcoholics may have genetic “data” that makes them more prone to become alcoholic. But don’t worry, i used to be an agnostic but never a Gnostic!

Matt16_18:

…You are trying to be sinless, and you are making some progress. That is good! But you seem to lack faith that God’s grace is sufficient to bring you to a state of perfect holiness.

I know that His undeserved love & power can, if i’ll allow it. The problem is i don’t know if i’m capable of allowing it consistently, perfectly, every moment of every day. There are not just sins of commission, but also sins of omission. As James writes:

“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” (James 4:17)

And there are sins of thought, word & deed. The cards are stacked against me.

It’s not that the Holy Spirit does not have the power or the desire, it’s that i do not. And, as the church father Irenaeus (sp?) reasoned, without the freewill do disobey we would not be free to love God.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

Matt16_18:

…Yes. We know that this is true because scriptures tell us that this is so.

But nothing unclean shall enter it, nor any one who practices abomination or falsehood … Rev. 21:27 We cannot enter heaven until we are purged of all inordinate self-love, which is the root of the abomination of sin. If we don’t learn how to love perfectly in this world, we will learn selfless love in purgatory (unless of course we are one of the damned – in that case we will never become holy).

Fascinating, Matt. Protestants understand Revelation 21 to speak of the time in the future when God will resurrect the dead & they shall be given bodies without the sinful nature. For our Lord said:

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out–those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.” (John 5:28)

They reason that God will create a new heaven & a new earth, “For” wrote St. John, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the fist heaven and the first earth had passed away…” (Revelation 21:1) & Christians will have resurrected, perfect bodies reunited with their souls for the first time since death, as St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15.

I’m really not sure what the Catholic teaching is on this. Are you saying our physical bodies will not be resurrected & we will not live on earth afterward?

Matt16_18:

…Life on earth can be our purgatory, if we allow it. With the grace of God we can indeed love as Jesus loved.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. John 13:34

Yes, Jesus commands us to love one another as He loved us. There are times when i’ve witnessed such love shown to me by those who are His own. Several of them were Evangelical Calvinists!

The problem for me is not that i can never obey our Lord’s command. The problem is that i can never do it consistently. Each time i fail to do it consistently, i sin. Hence, St. John’s words

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8)

are certainly are true of me. If i were to say to you i do not sin, i’d certainly not be deceiving you or me. St. John’s words mean that if he were to say he no longer sins he would be telling a lie.

So, i believe Jesus was telling the truth when He taught us, “No one is good–except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

But are you saying that there has been a Catholic who has reached a point where he has sincerely said, “I am now without sin” & he was telling the truth?

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

Hey, all.

I’m not feeling well today & have also run out of time, but you have given me much to ponder. I’ll try to respond to your posts within the next few days.

I’d still like to know what passage of Scripture each of you believes gives the strongest evidence that our good deeds done in the power of the Holy Spirit somehow help to merit our salvation.

Blessings!
Christopher

 

[Greg_McPherran]

Socrates4Jesus:

I’d still like to know what passage of Scripture each of you believes gives the strongest evidence that our good deeds done in the power of the Holy Spirit somehow help to merit our salvation.

Folks, that’s why I bowed out and said these things go an ad infinitum. Three pages of posts and you’re back to square one. The faith vs. works argument is a diversionary red herring of philosophy that sidetracks the truth of the authority of the Catholic Church and other obvious reasons why Protestantism is in error. Many Protestants themselves may not be aware of this error and they are victims of the same trap. When you find someone in a trap, don’t go into the trap and then both try to get out. Rather, stay out of the trap and pull the person into the light of truth so that they will see the trap for what it is.

Greg

 

[Matt16_18]

Socrates4Jesus:

The problem for me is not that i can never obey our Lord’s command. The problem is that i can never do it consistently. Each time i fail to do it consistently, i sin.

As you grow in the Spirit, you learn to become more consistent - that is what conversion is all about! The Apostle John is not making excuses for sinning, he is addressing a problem that had arisen in a particular Christian community. A problem caused by false teachers whom the Apostle John calls antichrists. These antichrists were the Gnostic Docetists, and they were teaching a form of OSAS long before the Calvinists began to teach their version of OSAS. The Docetists believed that they already possessed the resurrection from the dead through Christian Gnosis. The Docetists believe that the resurrection from the dead was striclty spiritual, and that if you were an enlightened Christian, you would know that you were already resurrected from the dead. The Docetists believed that matter was evil, and that the “inwardly regenerated man” was trapped inside sinful flesh. Some of the Docetits beleived that sins committed through the flesh (e.g. sexual sins) could not affect the inwardly regenerated man (their version of OSAS). Paul had to deal with these same heretics, and that is why he excommunicated Hymenaeus and Alexander who had made a shipwreck of their faith by rejecting conscience (1Tim. 1:20), and this is why Paul had to chastise the Corinthian men that were having sex with whores.

The Calvinists that you have gotten yourself mixed up with have fallen into a variation of the errors of the Docetists. You seem to believe that it is futile for you to even think that you can be set free from sinning because your “inwardly regenerated man” is trapped inside sinful flesh. That is why you believe that unless you have a resurrected body, that you will never be able to live a life without sinning.

Protestants understand Revelation 21 to speak of the time in the future when God will resurrect the dead & they shall be given bodies without the sinful nature.

Human beings have human nature, and we will always have human nature. Original sin has wounded our human nature and infected us with concupiscence - the Catholic Church acknowledges that obvious reality. We can never raise ourselves from our fallen state apart from the grace of God. That is why is essential that we become born from above through the Sacrament of Baptism. This Sacrament removes all sin, infuses sanctifying grace into the soul, and brings to the Christian the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. By partaking of the Divine nature, and cooperating with the grace that God gives us, we learn to overcome our concupiscence. Holiness, says Pope John Paul II, is the vocation of all Christians.

• I’m really not sure what the Catholic teaching is on this. Are you saying our physical bodies will not be resurrected & we will not live on earth afterward?*

Of course Catholics believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, we confess that in the Nicene Creed (a creed that Catholics wrote). Some Calvinist sects also confess the Nicene Creed.

Can you tell me why you left the Catholic Church to become a Protestant before you ever understood what it was that you were rejecting?

 

[Matt16_18]

Socrates4Jesus:

The problem for me is not that i can never obey our Lord’s command. The problem is that i can never do it consistently.

That is not surprising. You understand that your own human effort is incapable of overcoming your sinful inclinations. Good! That is what Catholics believe too. Being reborn through the Sacrament of Baptism is not and end to conversion, it is only the * beginning* of conversion. A newborn baby must suck milk to stay alive, and the scriptures portray new Christians as little milk-sucking infants. But just as a baby grows up and begins to eat solid meat, so too must a Christian put away childish things and mature in the spiritual life.

Paul makes several analogies of the Christian as an athlete. The athlete must train the body through discipline before he can run the race to victory, etc. So why do I say that it is not surprising that you are inconsistent in you attempts at holiness? I say that because you are eating spiritual junk food as a Protestant, and that is not a healthy diet, less yet a diet for a Christian athlete that is seeking to obtain the prize. Protestantism may give you some baby formula, but it cannot ever give you the food that you need to eat as an athlete straining for victory. Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
John 6:53-55

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

Philthy:

…Who cares about the “evidence” of our faith? Does it do anything for anyone? Why would it even be mentioned? If it has no real purpose towards salvation then why would God have incorporated it into Scripture? …

Good question, Pax!

My dictionary gives four meanings for the word faith:

1. allegiance to or duty or a person (loyalty)
2. belief and trust in God
3. complete trust
4. a system of religious beliefs

Now, if i were to say, “I have complete faith in Pax. Come hell or high water, i’d follow Him anywhere!” What i would mean is that i believe in you, Pax, that i have complete trust in, & allegiance to, you.

But how do you know if i’m lying? How do you know if my trust in you is the real deal? How do you know if i will really follow you through any danger? I think you will know it if the danger comes & you look behind you & see if i’m still there! If i flee, i never really was loyal to you at all.

So St. James was dealing with the same question: How do we know who has genuine faith & who is a fake? His answer: We know it by those who remain loyal to, & continue to trust in & follow Christ no matter what.

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:18) I smile whenever i read that. It is as though he is saying, “You have faith in Christ? Then prove it!” and the only way one may prove it to others is by the good deeds he does.

“By this all men will know you are my disciples,” Jesus still says to us today, “if you love one another.” (John 13:35) How do we know if someone really has turned from a life devoted to sin to a life devoted to Him? How do we know if someone really has complete trust in Him? We know by the love the person demonstrates in his life.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” St. Paul tells us. This fruit is the product of true Christian faith, not the faith itself. This fruit is not faith, but love. It is the evidence that someone is a true follower of Jesus. Does he love the unlovely? Does he take up his cross to suffer to meet the needs of his enemies. Does he love those who loath him? Love & not hate? Does he overcome evil with good? When i am willing to choose pain that others may profit–even those who are the cause of my pain, only then do i begin to know Christ.

“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” St. Paul explains, “for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

And he goes on to say:

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8-11)

Knowing Him more & more is what it’s all about, & you or i cannot know Him without knowing what it is to suffer to love, as did He for you & me. That is why i desire to avoid the plague of sin & live the life for which He has given me power within: Not so i may somehow merit salvation, but because i have already received such a great gift & want nothing more than to please Him. My life’s one goal is to hear Him say on that day, “Well done, good & faithful servant; you have truly show yourself to be my son.”

 

[Matt16_18]

Socrates4Jesus:

How do we know who has genuine faith & who is a fake? His answer: We know it by those who remain loyal to, & continue to trust in & follow Christ no matter what.

IOW, those with fake faith produce no good works, and those with fake faith should not expect to be saved.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

Amen, Matt.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

(1 Corinthians 13:13)

 

[Steve_M]

Socrates4Jesus:

Not so i may somehow merit salvation, but because i have already received such a great gift & want nothing more than to please Him.

We don’t merit without Gods grace. God views our faith through his grace. That’s also how he views our works. Paul says it himself in the passage from Romans we discussed earlier.

Here’s a way I heard it put the other day. We’re saved by grace, by doing the work of faith.

 

[Matt16_18]

Socrates4Jesus:

Amen, Matt.

Are you still perplexed?

It seems to me that you fully accept the truth that those who possesses saving faith will perform good works, and that the mere intellectual assent to a series of theological propositions about Jesus’ atoning sacrifice does not constitute saving faith.

 

[Pax]

Socrates4Jesus,

You seem to have pretty much embraced the entire package of faith, hope, and love. All of these are supernatural gifts of God. They are given to us as part of God’s lavish gifts of grace. Believing, trusting, and loving are all things that we do. God’s grace is everything, but it is not an inert gift and we cannot treat it as if it were inert.

We are told in 1Cor 8:3 that “…anyone that loves God is known by him.” If you are not known by God then you are not saved. This is given even greater emphasis in 1 Cor 16:22 where Paul tells us, “Let anyone be accursed who has no love for the Lord.” In James 1:12 we are told that “…the crown of life is promised to those who love him [the Lord].” This same statement is repeated in James 2:5.

And the apostle, John, defines for us what love of God is when he says in 1Jn 5:3 “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.” And Jesus, Himself, says in John 15:10 that “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Obviously, if we do not abide in God’s love we are not saved.

In John’s vision in the book of Revelation, Jesus warns members of the church at Ephesus that they might be destroyed if they do not repent and return to the love they once had. This is very clear in Rev 2:4-5 where Jesus says, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” Then again just before addressing the transgressions of the church at Thyatira, Jesus says in Rev 2:19 that, "I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.” These verses are significant in two ways. They show the necessity of love in the plan of salvation, and they show that both love and faith are referred to as works.

This is why James tells us that faith without works is dead, and compares it with the relationship of the human body and spirit. Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also the faith without the works is dead. [James 2:26]

 

[Pax]

There is one additional point to made here. Even the apostle, Paul, refers to faith and love as works. This is made abundantly clear in 1 Thessalonians 2-3 where Paul says, "We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father **your work of faith and labor of love ** and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

[Philthy]

Socrates4Jesus:

The flower analogy gives me an idea.

I suppose if we say that eternal life is a tree of life (like that which Adam & Eve enjoyed in the Garden of Eden), & if we say that what makes it a tree of eternal life is the Holy Ghost (for He is the one who is the seal that shows we have this life), as St. Paul wrote:

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession–to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)

If that be true, then this is also:

The good works are the evidence that we have the Holy Ghost & eternal life. For St. Paul writes: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…” (Galatians 5:22-23).

For what i’m asking are Scriptures that say that this fruit of the Holy Ghost is more than just mere evidence that we have life. Does the New Testament teach that these good deeds done by God are what merit eternal life for us?

Soc - I think the parable (Matthew) that Jesus gives of the goats and the sheep of Heaven answers this directly. Those who do good deeds go to Heaven, those who don’t do not go to Heaven. And I’ll also through in that the latter group “believed” in Jesus enough to call him “Lord”. All this posturing on who is doing the good works, us or God, is useless - all praise and honor is His. As we approach everyday situations we must act in accordance with our conscience in what appears to be a voluntary manner. We choose to obey or disobey. The act may have been “predestined” by God, but we don’t have access to that knowledge. We must approach each moral situation we encounter as if our eternal salvation were contingent upon successfully obeying the will of God.
Another way of approaching your original question (bolded above) is to rephrase it as: Does scripture anywhere say that failing to do good deeds (or doing evil deeds) can condemn us to hell after we’ve been regenerated (ie "born again)? I’ll only provide one as others (Steve, Matt, et al) have already provided you with plenty:

1 Peter 2:11 “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires which wage war against the soul”

“Beloved” = community of believers (regenerates)
“Worldly desires” = sins (see 1John 2:15-16)
“Wage war against the soul” = capable of causing spiritual death

 

[steve_b]

Socrates4Jesus:

I’m so confused!

I’m a Protestant who left the Roman Catholic Church as a teenager. Since then i’ve gotten married to my wonderful wife, became the father of two wonderful sons, & wandered from one Protestant church to another. I’m familiar with much of the Bible, especially the New Testament.

I’ve just had a long discussion with a thoughtful Roman Catholic who brought two Scriptures to my attention:

" God ‘will give to each person according to what he has done.’ To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life." (Romans 2:6)

and

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7)

I’m having trouble reconciling these passages with the following.

“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:4-5)

and

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

and

“… God … has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. …” (2 Timothy 1:8-9)

and

"… God our Savior … saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy… " (Titus 3:5)

The first two passages of Scripture seem to say that the good things we do somehow contribute to our salvation, while the last four passages seem to contradict this.

I’m a firm believer that “contradictions” in the Bible are not real but only apparent. However, i don’t know how the last four passages may be interpreted any other way than to mean that the good things we do do not contribute to our receiving eternal life.

I tried reading as many of the posts as possible, but not all of them. If I repeat what has already been said, please excuse.

The reason the first two passages you quote say a man will reap eternal life for doing good, is because

"we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" [Eph 2:10]

---

When God rewards us with eternal life for doing good, He rewards in us HIS own work that HE did in advance, that He created us to do. He crowns His own work in us. That’s why Paul says, it’s no longer me, but Christ in me doing the work.

We must do good works. If we don’t, we don’t live up to why we were created. It’s like the fig tree that doesn’t bear figs in the gospel. Jesus cursed it because it wasn’t producing what God made it to do. To God, the tree was useless. If we don’t bear fruit, we will be the same to God. Refer also to Mt 25:31… to see what will happen at the last judgement for those who don’t do good works.

Read properly, there is no contradiction with the other passages Paul gives. It’s also important to know what Paul means by Good works vs doing works of law (doing the 613 Mosaic laws). They aredifferent concepts.

BTW, your tag line, “In essentials unity, …” is commonly attributed to Augustine. He never said that phrase. It was a Lutheran (whose name escapes me) who said that. I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow, Augustine got the credit for it.

 

[Pax]

Steve,

Your post is right on target

I believe that Ephesians 2:10 is a pivotal verse connecting the teachings of Paul and James concerning faith and works. Why more people do not make this connection is beyond me.

 

[Maccabees]

Pax:

Steve,

Your post is right on target

I believe that Ephesians 2:10 is a pivotal verse connecting the teachings of Paul and James concerning faith and works. Why more people do not make this connection is beyond me.

Becuase of the selective quotation used by protestants who out a cut and paste to the Bible without a context.
You can prove hundreds of doctrines by selective quotation. Just look at how may protestant churches there are!