Ephesians 2:1-10. What Does Paul Say?

I agree.
God's word tells us that we must repent and believe.

But those are good works, and it seems that you've just told us that by the efforts of repenting and believing, that is what God requires and that is what He rewards the person who successfully performs those works, with salvation.

Would you clarify, please?
Do you believe that God's efforts plus our efforts save us, or is it God's efforts alone that save us?

 

Sorry, I thought you would recognize the direct and pertinent reference in Romans 5:12-21 to the significance of Adam's sin, God's call, and Adam's response in Genesis 3. Adam is the first sinner in need of salvation, and God's approach to the first spiritually dead people in history seems worth studying in terms of understanding how God's grace and human response are related.

 

I'm confused?
I'm only asking you to clarify why it is that your mixing man's efforts in with God's grace and you seem unable to tell the difference.
Please allow me to draw it out for you again, since you apparently missed it:

Either our own efforts result in us being saved, or they have nothing to do with it.
You said in your first post, that they did not...
Now you're saying that they do.

All I'm asking for is clarification...
If someone meets God's requirements of repenting and believing in order to gain their salvation, then to me that is clearly based on merit:

" good deeds regarded as entitling someone to a future reward from God."
"Deserving of a reward."
" The act of meeting a requirement so as to warrant what is being promised."
" character or conduct deserving reward, honor, or esteem."
" spiritual credit held to be earned by performance of righteous acts and to ensure future benefit."

Do you believe in that God's gift of eternal life can be merited, yes, or no?

Please believe me when I say that I do indeed "get it".
Obedience to God's commands merits ( results in God granting ) our salvation...that is precisely what you are telling me.

 

Both my question regarding Adam and regarding Lazarus are relevant to Ephesians 2:1-10.

We were dead in our trespasses and sins...
But God...
Made us alive with Christ...

Did God call our name and we respond, or did we call God's name and He responded to us?

Ephesians 2:1-10 shows you the pattern God has used since Adam sinned. Do you not see the relevance and connection?

 

Again, please believe me that I'm standing back and looking at what you're saying, and wondering why you don't see merit for what it really is...
Conduct or actions that are worthy of reward.

I was in the U.S. military for over 10 years...
I know what merit is.

By contrast, salvation from God's wrath and the gift of eternal life cannot be merited...
It's all by grace.

Please see Romans 4:4 and Romans 11:5-6 as well as Ephesians 2:8-9.

 

Adam wasn't saved - how do you figure? "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." "Whereas by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, so that death passed upon all men, for all have sinned." For your claim to be true either Adam never spiritually died "in the day he ate thereof," or he was never eternally saved after his sin (spiritual life, "born again"). Help me out here, I truly do not understand what you're saying about Adam.

 

I think I'm grasping it just fine, SBG.

In your first post you said it was not by our efforts...
Now you're saying that we must meet requirements to be saved.

But don't ask me...
Take a poll of the readers here and ask them if what I'm saying constitutes merit, based on the dictionary definition of the word.
I think that you'll find, if the question is objective enough, that the definition stands.

You don't?
Then why not phrase the things that God says as having to be present in the life of someone who is saved, as "evidential necessities" instead?

Can you not see how easy it is to confuse someone who is paying attention to the details, sir?

 

God made them clothing of skins, a sacrificial covering of their nakedness (lack of righteousness) through death, foreshadowing the work of Christ on the cross as levitical sacrifices would later do. Sorry, I'm still confused by your position. Do you believe Adam and Eve are headed to the lake of fire or not? Do you think someone can possess eternal life without being born again?

 

We can run through it again if you wish.
This will be my final attempt to get through to you, sir.

You said below:

Then you said below:

and here:

Right here you are making the process of the new birth dependent upon our own efforts, SBG, by saying that it's only after the sinner does these things, that they are born again.
You honestly do not see what you yourself have written?

 

My problem is, is that you're making salvation dependent upon the efforts of both repenting and believing,
instead of it being wholly of God by His grace and mercy, and those things being a product of His work in us through the new birth.

There is no merit involved if He grants us the desire and power to repent by changing our hearts first, SBG.

It is, if it's placed before the new birth, which the Lord clearly states is not a product of our own will in John 1:13, and specifically states that we were "begotten" of His own will with the word of truth in James 1:18.
Being dead in trespasses and sins is the complete opposite of being made alive in Christ...
it's that being "dead" that He rescues us from.

Again, if something that we do for God results in our being made alive, then that is merit.
If something that He does results in our being born again, then that is grace, my friend.


Good evening to you, sir.