Originally posted by Daniel David:
Pinoy, I very much doubt you know greek. I seriously question it based on the above.
In your mind, you have it that faith is fickle, therefore that can't be the INTERPRETATION.
You have already started with the conclusion. Very well played.
Oh, I don't know Greek, Daniel David, nor Hebrew, nor German, nor Latin. If you do, good for you, congratulations.
But I know one thing. If it were my faith that God will honor in order to save me, then my own Creator does not know me.
Prior to regeneration, the lost's faith is at worst non-existent, at best, as I called it, fickle.
When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they displayed not only disobedience but lack of faith in God's Word - "on the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." They had more faith in the serpent, just as many men today have more faith in anything but God's Word.
Yet God, who is perfect and holy, demands perfect obedience, compliance, observance, and submission to the entire Law, not just a part of it. And He required faith for "without faith, it is impossible to please Him."
Many here on this board and elsewhere think that faith is not works. But it is. Faith is a kind of works, because it is something you do. What is it that James said in essence ? Faith and works express each other. By your good works you declare your faith.
You act and put your faith in Christ,which is good works before God, because it is Christ who fulfilled all the requirements of law and faith before God. That is why He is the Cleft of the child of God's rock.
He is the Rock.
In Him and behind Him the elect are spared from God's wrath. Out of Him and before Him, no one is spared, not even one who all his life have been religious and trusting in his personal faith and the body of faith, the theology, he holds on to, for "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."