[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
. Water baptism: for me, the last of the great Mohicans as regards my works salvationist upbring. I believed that works AND faith carried equal weight. That changed shortly before I came to this list. And at the time I came onto this list, I believed that God had two considerations in His thinking on salvation: 1) that the condition of the heart carried more weight in the soteriological sense that any other consideration --- that salvation occured apart from obedience.
DAVEH: ??? Do you believe one can be saved without obedience to repentance?
John David Smithson
Pastor and Bishop of Caleeeefornia
Aaahhhhh. My first real question after stating that I know what I believe.
What we might call "obedience", which would include repentance, doing good, confession, visiting the widows and the fatherless, taking communion and the like, are things we do because we have been saved -- because we are already involved with God. That passage in Philip 2:12,13 is critical to me. The notion that "no man comes to the Son except the Father draw him" ( a paraphrase of John 6:44) is explained in this passage --------------- "work out your salvation in fear and trembling for it is God at work in you both to will and do His good pleasure." BOTH TO WILL AND TO PERFORM.
There is a sense, a very real sense, that God is a part of our lives already. When Chrsit speaks of the children, he says ".... for such is the Kingdom ......." God is already there.
He created us, He draws us unto Himself, if you believe that Christ is God Manifested and Defined; He is the influence that wills good works, He is power that performs those good works. What we are doing when we repent or confess or feed the poor -- is this: we are responding to the God within. In view of the scriptures above, how could we not think and believe that our actions or God's actions. I am not saved by that response -- rather, I am saved by that relationship. The reponses just happen.
An obedience to repentance? If you mean, by that, actions that demonstrate a change of heart/mind, my answer is the same. The prodigal son demonstrates this obedience to repentance, does he not? But why did he turn around? Two reasons. 1) he was headed in the wrong direction -- leaving his community and moving away for the expressed purpose of serving himself. Correct? 2) He turns around because there is a reason to turn around -- a father who is already there. A home. An inheritance. A life. Acceptance without question. Forgiveness without reservation. He is 'saved" when he stops serving himself and begins the quest for expressed community and all the benefits that are associated with community.
It just dawned on me -- the child is not lost at birth, born into sin and all that; rather, he is saved and then lost in self serving crap, and then saved as he responds to what is already his, crucifies himself, and chooses to live the life he was created to live.
What do you think about THAT !!!! ??
I could be wrong, but probably not.
Your friend
Smithson
