How To Be Saved

[Van]

Where does our faith come from?

Answer: It is a gift from God, given to the elect at the moment God quickens them.

This faith is righteous precisely because it is God who works in it and through it for His glory.

If faith came from us, it would be filthy rags in God's sight and we would be utterly condemned.

Note this fiction is not supported whatsoever by referencing a verse. OTOH,

Rom 10:17 (NASB)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.​

And a more interpretive translation reads:

Romans 10:17
Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.

Thus our faith is based on what we have heard of God's revelation of the good news. If we embrace it fully, then God may credit our faith, flawed as it may be, as righteousness.

Folks, there is zero support anywhere in scripture for the pre-salvation gift of faith (gift meaning God instills faith via Irresistible Grace).

 

[Van]

How to be saved:

1) Recognize your need for salvation from the eternal punishment of God. The dupes of Satan will say you are unable to recognize you are a wretched sinner, heading for Hades and Gehenna. Just as the wicked say, "there is no God" they also say, "there is no Hades and Gehenna."

2) Once you recognize your condition, a sinner heading for eternal punishment, you need to recognize you are unable by your own actions to alter that awful outcome. The dupes of Satan will say if you are good enough, God will be compelled to save you.

3) At this point, you need to take the action of the people described in John 6:28-29.

John 6:28-29 NET
So then they said to him, "What must we do to accomplish the deeds God requires?" Jesus replied, "This is the deed God requires - to believe in the one whom he sent."

4) God sent our Lord and Savior, Jesus as His "Lamb of God."

5) In order to be our Lord (Boss) we need to be committed to keeping His commands and serving Him with our lives.

6) In order to be our Savior, we need to believe that He died to provide the means of our salvation, and that He arose from the dead demonstrating He is the Son of God, and to fully rely upon Christ for our salvation, which is us "calling on His name."

 

[DaveXR650]

3) At this point, you need to take the action of the people described in John 6:28-29.

That is true. And you never want to deemphasize that passage. But if you want to understand you should read the whole chapter. True, you are commanded to believe and you have to believe or you will not be saved. The salvation really is of God and there is a such thing as predestination and election.
"Christ commands us to believe in him, and there is nothing false or contrary to this command in the statement which he afterwards makes: "No man can come to me , except it were given him of my Father," John 6:65. Let preaching then have it's free course, that it may lead men to faith, and dispose them to persevere with uninterrupted progress. Nor at the same time, let there be any obstacle to the knowledge of predestination, so that those who obey may not plume themselves on anything of their own, but glory only in the Lord. It is not without cause our Savior says, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear," (Mt. 13:9). Therefore, while we exhort and preach, those who have ears willingly obey: in those again, who have no ears is fulfilled what is written: "Hear ye indeed, but understand not," (Isaiah 6:9). 'But why (says Augustine) have some ears, and others not? Who has known the mind of the Lord? Are we therefore, to deny what is plain because we cannot comprehend what is hid?" (Calvin)

So you have Calvin, doing a cop-out, saying man's responsibility and God's sovereignty are both in operation. He warns us who believe not to "plume themselves" but glory only in the Lord. None of us can born ourselves again, or make ourselves elect. We can hear the gospel and believe. That is the connection point and I think that's why belief is the thing repeatedly stressed. It seems to me that if you don't ever understand predestination or election there doesn't seem to be any dire warning. But if you don't believe you will perish.

 

[Salty]

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