Are We Saved By Faith Alone?

Romans 10:9 …that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven

These two passages seem to contradict one another. Are we saved by believing or are we saved by doing is the heart of the question. I am convinced that contrary to the most popular teachings that we are NOT saved by faith alone and that both faith and obedience (works of love) are requirements for eternal life. The apostate church by and large has been taught that a simple belief in Jesus is the only criteria for salvation and that our deeds matter not. As I have already written about in prior posts, this is part of the false teachings, errors in doctrine and vain worship that Jesus and the Apostles warned us about throughout the New Testament. Looking at the whole of scripture, taking verses in their full context, the bible teaches that both faith and works are necessary for salvation.

 James 2:20-24 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

In my last blog entry, I wrote about the erroneous teachings about what the book of Galatians actually says. That epistle along with some chapters in Romans is used almost exclusively to teach the faith alone doctrine. As I showed the law as referred to in Galatians had nothing to do with obedience to the commands of Jesus. The law Paul wrote of was talking about the Mosaic Law and the added extra things that had become a religious system of dead works.

The faith spoken of in the bible encompasses much more than just a belief that Jesus was son of the God. The doctrine of “faith alone” has some truth in it, otherwise it would be readily identified as a counterfeit gospel and few would be deceived. But sadly many our deceived as most have been taught that sin has no eternal consequences once they come to faith. They are told by some famous and very popular pastors that nobody is EVER righteous and that on judgment day, God will look at us and instead of seeing our personal deeds and sin, instead he will see the righteousness of Jesus Christ His son. But like Jesus, said, a little bit of leaven spoils the whole batch of dough so we must indeed be careful to discern the truth.

1 John 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous

Luke 6:46 But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?

Matthew 12:36-37 But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

There are two time elements to righteousness. How we attain it when we first come to faith, and how we maintain it after that point. When statements are made such as Paul’s quip “there is no one righteous, no not one”, he is referring to our ability to become righteous on our own, in the absence of grace, before we are regenerated and made new by our faith and the promised Holy Spirit. I will save a deep discussion of righteousness for an upcoming study but I wanted to get out the basics of the error as it may help the reader understand the truth about the faith alone doctrine.

Faith is indeed the foundation upon which salvation rests. We are saved by grace, through faith. But most don’t understand that grace is the enabler of our salvation, it is the power given to us from God to be saved, IF we meet his conditions. We are told by Moses and by Joshua that we are presented a choice. We can choose death by disobedience or life by obedience. Joshua goes on to proclaim his choice by stating “as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord“. The truth about our free will and need to choose righteousness or life has been twisted by Satan in order to lead souls away from the true living God into a life of torment in hell. It is true that Paul told us that without faith, nobody can please God. It is absolutely essential that we have faith but there must also be obedience.

 Romans 1:5 through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to faith and obedience for his name’s sake

The faith alone doctrine is a necessary “truth” the teachers of the dangerous doctrines of Once Saved Always Saved, Easy Believism and Eternal Security rely on to promote their false gospel. Just a handful of scripture verses, in a book with thousands of passages are used to justify these beliefs. One needs to ignore the vast majority of the other biblical passages to believe that “faith alone” is the truth. These doctrines have been invented by men and their common element is that they teach that sins that occur after coming to knowledge of the truth about God have no consequences. Another words obedience to the God no longer matters and is not part of eternal judgment on the last day. Do not be deceived my brothers and sisters by the snare of the serpent. This is the same lie told to Eve “disobey God and you shall surely NOT die”.  Jesus said if you want life, obey my commandments!  Who are you going to believe?

A big consequence of the faith alone doctrine is that it encourages and keeps most Christians living in the “world”, looking and acting no different than non-believers. Those taught this heresy see no need to take a stand against sin, or rebuke evil in our society. Instead of seeing rebuking evil as a good thing, they see it as judging people and we aren’t supposed to be doing that. “Just keep the faith and God will work it all out is their mantra”. Sadly they totally ignore what the scriptures actually say. This has harmed the kingdom as people look at those who say they are Christians, yet actually live like the pagans and heathen do and say hypocrites.

The Faith Alone doctrine has now become sacrilegious. Nobody even criticizes the doctrine like I am here anymore; it has been widely accepted for hundreds of years as Christian dogma. If you do criticize it, get ready as people are going to call you a lunatic, legalists or worse. It matters not to me however as the TRUTH must be told or else the blood of those perishing will be on the account of the watchmen that did not speak up. I am afraid the love of most Christians has indeed grown cold, and many are under the God sent delusion

2 Thess:2:10-12 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness because they loved not the truth to be saved.

The truth is as Ezekiel said, “the soul that sins shall die.” But we have a savior you say and you are correct. Praise God for that. Understanding what he died for and how he called us to live as his disciples: to know him, to hear his voice, to follow him, to obey his commandments is critical for us to find eternal life.

To complete this discussion, let’s look at several teachings of Jesus to get what God really said about Faith versus Works.

1. Jesus taught throughout the gospels that we will be known by our fruits. A good tree does not bear bad fruit and a bad fruit does not bear good fruit. In the Parable of the Vine in John 15, Jesus speaks metaphorically of the grapevine and us as the branches. We need to bear fruit or else we are chopped off and thrown into the fire. Simply believing in the vine (Jesus) was not enough, there is indeed a higher standard to enter eternal life. Jesus relays in this parable that we must remain in Him. Jesus ends this parable with a warning for us not to get cocky, stating that if we were grafted in as Gentiles, we could just as easily be chopped back off if we walk in disobedience.
   
2. In the Parable of the Talents in Luke 19 Jesus gives another lesson in doing good works and not wasting his provision of grace to us. The servant that took his one talent and buried it, instead of investing it in producing and multiplying fruit, was condemned when the master return and all that he had was taken from him and given to the other servants that multiplied the talents (faith). The main point in this parable is that if we don’t use our faith and the grace given to us that we will be condemned. If we really love God and he is our Lord, we will want to be a worker in his field, we will seek to do good deeds, not to be saved but because we are indeed already saved.
   
3. In Luke Chapter 12, we see the Parable of the Wise and Faithful Steward. This is the story of a strong believer entrusted to manage the master’s household and oversee the helpers. When the master goes away leaving the servant in charge, the servant eventually stops being faithful and does evil things. As in many of Jesus’ stories, the master returns at a time the servant did not expect. Two frequently overlooked consequences of the servant’s wickedness are 1) he was assigned a place with the unbelievers and 2) his punishment would be more severe since the servant knew the truth unlike unbelievers do. Right here we see that believers will indeed go into eternal condemnation if they do not endure to the end. Secondly, because we knew the truth but failed to obey it, our sins would be judged more egregiously by God. If our obedience did not matter, then there was no reason for Jesus to tell us this parable about how the kingdom of God worked.
   

So while faith is the basic building block of a relationship with Jesus and the catalyst that puts into motion our entire Christian walk, it is not the end all and be all of salvation. We are not saved by faith alone. Neither are we saved by works alone, as without faith it is impossible to please God. So therefore both faith and works are required. John told us that if we do not love, we do not know God.  To Love is the command of Jesus.  In fact Jesus said all the law hangs off of only two commandments.

1.  Love the Lord thy God with all you heart, all your mind and all you soul

2.  Love thy neighbor as yourself

This is obedience to God, that we Love as He showed us how.

We all will stand in front of God some day. Let’s build upon our faith by continuing to strive to enter through the narrow gate and bring forth a harvest of righteous works.

May God Bless You Richly!!!!