The Real reason why one cannot be saved by faith alone.

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Someone put faith&works thingie so simply in this analogy:

It’s like sailing. We put **faith ** in a good wind. The wind is like God’s grace. But the boat will not sail without our works, cooperating with that wind (grace), by raising the sail itself and readying it to receive the blow of the wind. 👍
 
Peace be with you!

People here are talking about Life as if Life is just nothing…

I asked once, and I ask again: can you do good deeds if you don’t have life?
Let me quote what I previously wrote by His Grace:
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!

To my question: Can you do good deeds if you don’t have Life?
beng3000:
No, because you would not exist without life.
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Interesting answer, although I was asking about the Life Jesus gives, and beng3000 seems to have answered another question about existing…

But in fact it is the same with the Life God gives to those who believe. You can’t do good deeds if you are dead in sin. And salvation from sin is in fact spiritual resurrection to LIFE.

How can a dead in sin do good deeds? So he must have Life BEFORE he can do good deeds. And those good deeds will be the FRUIT of that Life.

Having Life = Salvation from sin.

You can’t tell a dead man: do good, and I will give you life.

But those who have the Life of Jesus in them, they naturally LIVE by Faith.

A dead man can’t do anything.

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” ( Ephesians 2:1-5 )

Do you have Life?

In Love,
Yaqubos†
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Jesus didn’t bring another Law that cannot make us alive. He brought Life ( in fact HE is the Life ), and a living human can do the Commandments by Grace. And Jesus looks to the fruits of that Life in us.

Let us think well about these questions:

Can you do good deeds if you don’t have Life?

How can we have Life?

In Love,
Yaqubos†
 
This is my first post here. I am enjoying the postings by YAQUBOS, because he speaks my language. However, there seems to be a communication gap here between opposing parties. Both are using the word grace with two different meanings. Let us define the word. GRACE-undeserved, unmeritable, gifts from God (getting what you don’t deserve). R.C.'s definition of grace is meriting the gifts of God or (getting what you do deserve). YAQUBOS uses the definition correctly. Christians are given grace to to first save them then equip them to do Gods work for the purpose of bringing salvation to those who are lost. Not for the purpose of making us worthy of salvation. Paul spoke of working “out” his salvation not “for” his salvation. The basic difference in the two views is christians are secure in their salvation while roman catholics are not, because they must finish what Christ only started. They misunderstand the difference between fellowship and salvation. One can fall out of fellowship with God the father without falling out of salvation. True faith brings one instantly into salvation while continued faith brings one into closer fellowship with God. You may lose your fellowship but never your salvation or Christ would have come to earth and continue to die on a cross every time we sin. Let us liken this to our earthly father who bore us physically. He can never say “you are no longer my son” when we do wrong. Likewise our heavenly father who bore us spiritually can not say “you are no longer my son” you have done wrong . We must repent as believers to regain our fellowship so we can finish the race and be judged for our works to receive rewards not salvation. Faith alone is the agent of justification( being made positionally righteous in Gods eyes) through an undeserved gift (grace). When works are added in ANY way to justify ones self, grace is nullified and self righteousness and arrogance are set in its place. Therefore, works never justify , they are only used by God as a means of showing unbelievers that he is real and can save them from their unbelief. In Love ex-catholic Dan!
 
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exrc:
…
Let us define the word. GRACE-undeserved, unmeritable, gifts from God (getting what you don’t deserve). R.C.'s definition of grace is meriting the gifts of God or (getting what you do deserve).
…
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*1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. *Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help ** that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.
-- The Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1996.​

You were saying… ?
 
Peace be with you!

I thank the Lord for you, exrc! The Lord bless you!
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exrc:
The basic difference in the two views is christians are secure in their salvation while roman catholics are not, because they must finish what Christ only started. They misunderstand the difference between fellowship and salvation.
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“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” ( Hebrews 12:2 )

Some people dismiss the word “author”, others dismiss “perfecter”…

In Love,
Yaqubos†

theophilus_agape@hotmail.com
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!

You don’t want to see the clear teaching of God.

“There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death.” ( Proverbs 16:25 )

Be sure you are not walking in the way of death.

If you don’t want to see the sun, even if I tell you “look, this is the sun”, you will say: “No, this is not the sun! Where is the sun?”

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

If it is not by faith, then no one can be saved.

In Love,
Yaqubos†
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I am glad you provided the verse from Ephesians. But doesn’t it state that it is grace that saves us?
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!

I thank the Lord for you, exrc! The Lord bless you!

“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” ( Hebrews 12:2 )

Some people dismiss the word “author”, others dismiss “perfecter”…

In Love,
Yaqubos†

theophilus_agape@hotmail.com
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Again, I tell you: we have no difference in this: I stated earlier we have no contradictiong view on grace and here we have no contradiction interpretation of the verse! Bishop Fulton Sheen once said, “there are really few who hate the Catholic Church. There are many, however, who hate what they think is the Catholic Church.”

“The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” and through Baptism:[34]
But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
-- Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1987.​
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!

You don’t want to see the clear teaching of God.

“There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death.” ( Proverbs 16:25 )

Be sure you are not walking in the way of death.

If you don’t want to see the sun, even if I tell you “look, this is the sun”, you will say: “No, this is not the sun! Where is the sun?”

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

If it is not by faith, then no one can be saved.

In Love,
Yaqubos†
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I am glad you provided the verse from Ephesians. But doesn’t it state that it is grace that saves us?
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” ( Ephesians 2:8-9 )If it is not by faith, then no one can be saved.
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Et cum spiritu tuo. Scripture says “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” and “Faith without works is dead”.The question is not whether you have to have faith or not, you most certainly do need to have faith. The question is whether faith alone enough. Nowhere is Scripture does it say that you are saved by “faith alone”. Of course you must have faith, but that is not all that scripture says. Jesus also said that “not everyone who cries ‘Lord, Lord’ will be saved, but he who does the will of My Father in Heaven”. Jesus also says that you will be judged acording to what you have done.

May the peace of Christ, the Love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.
 
Peace!
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RBushlow:
Of course you must have faith, but that is not all that scripture says. Jesus also said that “not everyone who cries ‘Lord, Lord’ will be saved, but he who does the will of My Father in Heaven”. Jesus also says that you will be judged acording to what you have done.
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Do I have to repeat the question many times to get an answer? My question is clear:
Can you do the Will of the Father if you don’t have Life? And how can you have Life?

By the way, “no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” ( 1 Corinthians 12:3 )

So, of course, those who don’t have the Spirit are dead. And the dead cannot call Jesus Lord in the right manner.

In Love,
Yaqubos†
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace!
Do I have to repeat the question many times to get an answer? My question is clear:
Can you do the Will of the Father if you don’t have Life? And how can you have Life?

By the way, “no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” ( 1 Corinthians 12:3 )

So, of course, those who don’t have the Spirit are dead. And the dead cannot call Jesus Lord in the right manner.

In Love,
Yaqubos†
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Hi Yaqubos, please show me in scripture, where it says that faith alone by itself gives you life. This is simply not in scripture. Thank you.

May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you. May the Lord be gracious to you. May He give you His peace.
 
Works alone cannot save. (Rom. 4:3-5)

Faith alone cannot save. (1 Cor. 13:2,13)

The Grace of Jesus Christ Our Lord, and this alone, is where we find salvation. (Eph. 2:8)

And I believe as the Church believes, that this Grace is gained first in Faith and Baptism, and sustained through hope and love (which means obedience to the commandments and good works).

All the Sacraments necessarily follow.
 
Chris W:
Thanks but I can’t take credit. As with most of what I know, I did not think of it. I wish I could remember who I heard it from… :cool:
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I think I saw that on the Catholic Answers web-site www.catholic.com if not there then it was in a book by Peter Kreeft or someone like that.

RS
 
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YAQUBOS:
Peace be with you!

Friends, it seems you are here to show how much you are intelligent, right?

If this is the case, know that this is not the case with us, Christians. We have Life, and we like to share the good News about Him with others.

I see very clearly that few of you know the real teachings of the Church, and all are discussing as if they know everything.

My friends, the consistency of the Bible can’t be clear for you unless you have the Holy Spirit, and you LIVE!

Vain discussions lead nowhere. The philosophy leads only to despair:…

What does it profit you if you come to this forum, and you discuss and discuss and show your vain human wisdom, and then go and find yourself so weak before sin, and dead in your carnal nature?

What good is there if you can convince your mind by your vain arguments, and then go and find that all your arguments do not work in real life: they are just vain human PHILOSOPHY, NOT according to Christ!,…
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It is unfortunate that most of this post is nothing more than a list of insults directed at those that disagree with your understandings of scripture.

Many points have been made and questions have been asked of you that you have no answer for. These inquiries and statements are not vain or ill informed. I doubt strenuously that people are on this forum to demonstrate how smart they are. Catholics are on the apologetics forum for the express purpose of defending the faith.

We fully expect you to defend your positions as vigorously and intelligently as possible. We make no assumptions about your motives or intention of the heart. Please reciprocate in kind.

You asked a question about doing good works without faith. The answer is “yes,” someone can do good works without faith but they are of no value before God. As believers we can please God because, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will do everything we can to conform ourselves to Jesus Christ. We are, as believers, God’s “…workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[Eph 2:10]

You asked whether or not Adam was supposed to do good works before the fall. The answer is obviously “yes.” The book of Genesis tells us that God saw that “everything” He created was good. By definition every good thing should produce good things and avoid evil. In Genesis 1:27-28 it says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” When God gives an instruction to do things (works) he directs us to do “good works” because God is good. When he gave Adam and Eve the aforementioned directives He was telling them to do good works.

Likewise, God directed Adam and Eve to avoid evil by instructing them not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They “disobeyed” God and thereby did an evil work and this sin brought about the fallen nature of the entire race. Take note that Adam and Eve were in a perfect state of justification prior to the fall. Their sin broke the “at one” relationship that they had with God, and that is the reason for the “atonement” [at one ment] by Jesus death and resurrection. While we are then brought into a renewed state of friendship by Christ’s sacrifice and by God’s mercy and grace, we can again break that relationship through sin and we must repent and reconcile ourselves again to God. Forturnately, the once for all sacrifice by Jesus makes that reconciliation possible. The Old Law could not accomplish this.
 
beng3000:
Sir, are you a Catholic or Protestant?

Why are you using Protestant argument and defend blasphemous Protestant doctrine?
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I am Protestant. Please tell me how this is a blasphemous doctrine.
 
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CAtoIL:
I am Protestant. Please tell me how this is a blasphemous doctrine.
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It’s never believe by the Early Church and It’s not in the Bible.
 
Karl Keating – the founder of ‘Catholic Answers’.

The magical beginnings of his ‘battle for faith’ are that he came out of a Catholic Church one Sunday after Mass and found anti-Catholic literature on some of the car windshields in the parking lot.

He went home and wrote an answering tract and distributed it at the church that papered the cars in the church parking lot.

From there this lawyer (now preacher) went on to write and distribute tract after tract. He became so involved in this (and so successful) that he quit his job as a lawyer and opened up his own publishing business.

His ‘Catholic Answers’ company cranks out books and bible tracts at an enormous rate.

The problem with all this activity is in the man himself.

Going from a worshipper of Christ to an evangelical minister his organization boasts of sending out ‘their ministers’ as if they were cut off from Catholic Church and operating on their own.

In fact, they are operating on their own.

Without a true set of moral principles to guide them and a fat check book the group has muscled aside the message of Peace proclaimed by the Catholic Church and has involved itself in spiritual brawls with every bizarre religious group in the United States.

His close association with Deal Hudson points to a character flaw in Karl Keating that in my opinion shows a lack of wisdom.

His association with the Knights of Columbus alone, in my opinion, is a marketing ploy to increase the KofC Insurance Company’s financial interests. That company holds more than 5 billion dollars in assets and insures over 50 billion dollars worth of property.

This plastic Catholic and his manufactured ministers are a disgusting outgrowth of American political thought. Unfortunately they have been financially successful with their self-serving propaganda.

Thankfully God is alive in the world and to all things done in greed and without faith come a bad end. Catholic Answers has no answers for that.

A few links on the ‘CatholicAnswers.com’ include contacts for ‘Christian Jobs’ which will put in touch with the ‘Campus Crusade for Christ’, ‘Secrets of Success’ - a business person’s evangelistic website.

www.catholic.com

http://forums.catholic-questions.org

www.catholicanswers.com
 
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YAQUBOS:
You don’t want to see the clear teaching of God.
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Your implication here is that what is clear to you is necessarily true. Do you have anything objective to support this claim?

Thanks!

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
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YAQUBOS:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” ( Ephesians 2:8-9 )

If it is not by faith, then no one can be saved.

In Love,
Yaqubos†
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No one said it is not by faith. What was said was that it’s not by faith alone. Quite a different thing.

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
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