Originally posted by Janosik:
DHK,
your salvation as you described it a few pages back is through WORK. Are you going to deny it? How do you keep and grow your faith? Isn't it WORK?
Please, show me in the Bible where it says that to obey God means to leave the Catholic Church.
I have never described salvation as a work of man. It is entirely and wholly the work of Christ. Christ initiates it. Christ performs it. Christ ends it. That is what grace is--God's riches at Christ's expense. It is the grace of God that saves. We accept that grace that provides salvation through faith and faith alone. We are saved by grace through faith and not of works.
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all
our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
--your good works mean nothing to God. That includes baptism. Only faith in the shed blood of Christ can save you.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.
Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
--You can't do good even if you try. You can do no more good than a leopard can change its spots. God doesn't look upon your so-called good. He looks to see if you have put your trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
Proverbs 21:4 An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin.
--If you have not trusted Christ as your Saviour, even the most noblest cause, such as plowing your field, getting it ready for planting corn or wheat, then planting, then harvesting--it is all sin in God's sight. It is evil and wickedness because you know not Christ as Saviour. God does not look upon your works; he looks upon your heart to see if you have trusted in the shed blook of Christ to atone for the penalty of your sins.
Romans 3:10-12 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
--God looks down and he sees none righteous, none good, no one seeking after God, absolutely no one that is profitable or good. Your works mean nothing to him. Have you trusted Christ as your Saviour? That is the question. Have you been born again? Not baptized, but born again--there is a difference.
It matters not at this point about church affiliation, about baptism, about any kind of church rite, ordinance, sacrament, etc. The only question that matters to God: Have you been born again by the Holy Spirit of God? Have you trusted Christ as your Saviour? If so when, and how?
DHK