Featured Many will say, Lord, Lord

No such Bible teaching as being saved in order to have faith.

 

Eph 2:10
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

2Co 5:17
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

1John 3:9-10
No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother and sister. ​

Is repentance the "result" of the new birth? No. We are told to repent and believe (or put out trust in the gospel.) Repentance is turning from our sinful way to God's righteous way. It is choosing the narrow path that leads to life. Acts 20:26 tells us to repent and turn to God. Mark 1:15 tells us to repent and believe.

It is our action to take, to turn to Christ and away from trusting in all the other ways people think they should live. He is the way, the truth and the life.

By the numbers:
1) In order to be "in Christ" God must put the individual into Christ.
2) God chooses for salvation those who believe in the truth and sets them apart in Christ.
3) When placed in Christ the individual is born anew, created for good works.

As far as 1 John 3:9-10, it is impossible for anyone born of God to practice sin, as all their sins, past, present and future have been forgiven. Thus he or she cannot sin. However. we can think and do the things that would be sin, and when we do, we are to repent and strive to live righteously, as a born anew believer. Part of that is to consider and examine our behavior, confess our sinful thoughts and deeds, and commit to do better as to remember Him at communion.

 

Nobody who truly loves the Lord does, Judith. But according to God's word, there is an underlying reason why it is that there are few, relatively speaking, that find it.

I completely agree with you, Judith. That is clearly what God's word says. All of mankind is spiritually bankrupt... and we all, to the last of us, need a Saviour ( whether or not we admit it ).

Amen.

Again, amen...but what I've found is that it is a growth process in the life of one whom God has begun a work in, and not something that "happens overnight".

Yet again, Amen!

 

No, Judith, that is not what the Lord, through His word, teaches His people. But I will tell you that that is what I believed for many years (since coming to the Lord in 1978), as that is what I was taught by men in the Baptist churches that I attended for some 28 years of my life.

What I later found is that they had it backwards, and salvation is not conditioned upon a person's belief or anything else that we, as men and women, do for God...
It's completely dependent upon God's grace and mercy towards a person.

Repentance is a change of heart that leads to a change of mind about sin... and the desire that one experiences to get right with the Lord is, in actuality, the result of God's work at the very foundation of their being. It's called "being born again", or having had a new "heart" given to them by the Lord.
They are already righteous in His sight.

Like David, all of His elect are people after God's own heart... and it is because they are vessels of mercy afore prepared unto glory, and they are a people whom Christ died for and rose again for.


Please read the entirety of Paul's letter to the Romans, for example, and I hope that you will begin to see this for yourself.
In fact, I encourage you to read all of the epistles, as it is my hope that all who read this will see what God ( not men ) has to say about a great many things.

May He richly bless you in your studies.

 

I agree with Judith.