Recently I have been having several conversations on good works vs faith alone for salvation. The more I got to thinking about it the more I thought I would do a post on "GOOD WORKS".

Will "good works" save us or keep us saved? NO! Trying to do  good works as any part of salvation is like the title of the post -

It is putting the cart before the horse!

When you do that it isn't going to accomplish anything. You see it is impossible that we can do good works apart from God. Before we can do good works we need to be cleaned up. The works that we do in our flesh and on our own are described in Isaiah 64:6a, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" Now if the best we can do on our own is nothing more than filthy rags to the Lord - HOW in the world are they going to save us or even contribute to keeping us saved? The answer is - THEY WON'T!

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God in the Flesh. He laid aside the glory He had in Heaven and took on the form of a man. He was born of a virgin. Since our sin nature comes from our fathers and Jesus was the Son of God and seed of the woman - He had no sin. That is important because the Bible tells us that the "wages of sin is death" in Romans 6:23a. That is talking about an eternal spiritual death - one of eternal torment in a lake of fire separated from God as we are told in Revelation 20:14-15.

Because the Lord Jesus had no sin - He did not have to die. So why did He?  He chose to lay down His life, suffer and die for us to take our punishment so we would not have to. Everything that we would suffer in Hell - Jesus suffered on the cross - agony, thirst, separation from God the Father. The Bible reminds us in Heb 9:22  "without shedding of blood is no remission." (talking about remission of sin). Jesus therefore shed His blood to wash our sins away. 1 John 1:7b says "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

On the third day after His death and burial - the Lord Jesus Christ got up. He arose bodily - alive out of the grave. The Bible tells us "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." (Hebrew 7:25)

When you consider who the Lord Jesus is and what He has done for us - HOW DARE we presume to offer Him our filthy rags of supposed good works for any part of our salvation????  The Bible tells us in the last half of Romans 6:23, "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." You don't earn a gift - you have faith and receive it freely.

So do we just throw away good works? NO! They are important, but not for salvation.  We do NOT do good works to be saved, but according to the Bible rather we do them AFTER we are saved because that is what we are created to do. Look at these verses :

Ephesians 2:8 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.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Notice according to these verses salvation is the gift of God not of works - you can't get any plainer than that. Then we keep reading and in verse 10 we find that after we are saved, We are become His WORKMANSHIP, - CREATED unto good works.  We see looking at this verse it is impossible for us to really do good works apart from HIM! 

I sort of picture it like a 4 yr old who wants to draw their parent a picture, but the parent has to help them draw the picture then has to help them color and stay in the lines. AFTER we are saved their is a new desire in our heart - the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.   AFTER we are saved we should be full of love and gratitude to the Lord and want to do good works for HIM!

After that 4 yr old draws and colors his picture he is sooo proud and has forgotten it was only with his parent's help he was able to do the picture. That might be cute in a 4 yr old but it is IMPERATIVE that we remember the ONLY way we can do anything that will really count for the Lord is with HIS HELP!

The WHOLE purpose of any good works we do is NOT for our glory or to earn us any graces but it is for the GLORY of the LORD. Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

Now I would trust it would be clear from the verses we looked at that a person is saved FIRST then good works FOLLOW, but I know there are some who would say BUT WHAT ABOUT the book of James.... especially James 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
 18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Then they would say see -faith in Jesus alone isn't enough it must be accompanied by good works. BUT is THAT what it is SAYING? NO!

It isn't so hard to understand when one rightly divides the Word of God as we are told to do in 2 Timothy 2:15. You see they point out that the chapter says that Abraham and Rahab were justified by their works. But they forget that Abraham and Rahab were not under our time of GRACE, but under the Old Testament economy - a mixture of faith and works, as it will return to after the rapture during the tribulation. And if they will notice the book is written to the 12 tribes of Israel - quite possibly for during the tribulation.

Does that mean we can get nothing from the book? NOT BY A LONG SHOT. The whole book has much we should observe in our life including good works. There are plenty of practical and spiritual lessons we can and should learn from James. The best way to understand about works vs faith though is to look at it like this.

Paul taught in Romans -

Ro 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight
Ro 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.  

Ro 5:1  Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
 Ro 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

We see from these verses there is no way that we are justified by good works. We are saved, reconciled to God and have peace with God only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So how do we reconcile what Paul taught and what James taught? Is there a contradiction in the Word of God? NO!  The two are reconciled when you realize that  Paul is talking about being justified with God which is our eternal salvation. James is talking about being justified before men, which is our testimony. 

That goes right back to Matthew 5 - we do our good works to glorify our Father in Heaven. We do good works so that people will look at us and say there is something different about them and they will want what we have - peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

<GRIN> YOU have been shown and I hope it is clear SALVATION IS BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH in JESUS CHRIST ALONE!

 

Kerri, you pretty much summed up the Catholic doctrine on Good Works, although Salvation isn't one-time thing. You CAN turn your back on the promise of salvation. Good works flow from a soul in a state of grace. Any soul that does not naturally produce good "fruit" is dead. Thank God you finally *get it.*

See also http://members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/salvation2.html

Are you sure you read this right? I had to go back and reread it to make sure I hadn't written it wrong.

You say I summed up RCC belief on good works but from what you have said over several conversations what I have written here is vast different that what you have said especially recently when you said - quote "Only through constant vigilance, prayer, good works, and repentence do we wash our soul of sins." I think I made it very clear that good works canNOT remove sin or save us; NOR do they contribute to keeping us saved. ONLY the Lord does that.

We do good works only with God's help and because we love Him. If you understand and see that - that is good. That means baptism which is a work is not necessary for salvation, belonging to a certain church is not necessary for salvation, taking communion is not necessary for salvation. Can you say that the RCC agrees with that?

Kerri, the gist of your post was that good works come from a soul in a state of grace, which IS what the church teaches. A soul in a state of grace MUST produce good fruits or it will be cut off.

Baptism IS necessary for salvation. "Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of god." (John 3:5. Also see Acts 2:38, Rom. 6:2-6).
http://members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/baptism2.html

The verse that you quote is not talking about baptism. Look at the next verse -Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. When we are born in the flesh we definately come by water. But most in likely what it is talking about is the water of the Word. The Holy Spirit takes the water of the word and convicts a soul of their need of salvation. Acts 2:38 was to the Jews if you look at who Peter was talking to. Romans 6 is not talking about what the baptism PICTURES. Our sins are NOT washed away by water, ONLY by the BLOOD of JESUS. If baptism was necessary for salvation don't you think Paul would have put more emphasis on it instead of saying - 1Co 1:14 I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius and when he told the Philippian jailer in Acts 16:31 how to be saved he just said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ he didn't say they had to be baptized. Of course they were, but THAT was to follow in obedience, NOT for salvation. The thief on the cross was never baptized but was definately SAVED.

Saying that "being born of water" means nothing more than amniotic fluid is insane.

You ignore the rest of Paul's quote and why he said that. He was preaching on divisions within the faith. Paul says, "I give thanks to God that I baptized none of your except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say you were baptised in my name." Paul doesn't the baptism of heretics who place the wrong meaning of the act on his conscious. Nowhere does Paul teach against the sacrament of Baptism.

http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/baptism.html and http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/baptismpage.html

Futhermore, by this assumption, babies butchered in the womb very early will never make it to heaven since many are aborted before the amniotic sac is even formed. (Think, hormonal birth controls, Plan B, RU486, and even early surgical abortion.) Heck, no ... the aborted are never born anyway, so even if they are aborted at 26 weeks, their souls must be denied entrance into heaven ...

You know if you would read carefully you would do better. I said that it was MOST LIKELY talking about the water of the Word.

No, Paul didn't preach against baptism - we are to be baptized in obedience to Christ, but it is not necessary for salvation.

Babies and all children before the age of accountability are safe and if they should die go to be with the Lord. NO LIMBO as the RCC teaches.