SOLA FIDE-WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

People say that they believe in faith alone, but then they will say "well true faith will have works" or saving faith produces works, or evidence for faith is works, or true saved christians will have works or a changed life. That is just backloading works into salvation, it is confusing nonsense. it is either by faith alone or not, you can't add works and it still be faith alone. Holiness movement fails to understand the true meaning of faith alone.

fhansen said:

SOLA FIDE-WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

I recently had some "discussions", to put it nicely, on the forums with a member who insisted that he was perfected in love, apparently perfect in all things, because certain biblical passages seem to indicate that a born again person is promised perfection instantly upon his rebirth. I repeatedly asked if his acquaintances would agree, or if, in any case, he/she was perfectly sinless, no white lies or stray thoughts, etc, ever, every single moment. I never got a direct, straight answer on that but was pointed to certain passages that could be interpreted as to assert perfection now rather than perfection as a goal.

What I came away with, however, reading between the lines, was probably a slightly different position, in truth. It appears that he thought it would be sinful, a denial of faith to believe otherwise, a denial of Christ to believe that we're not perfected as we come to believe, such that if one doesn't claim and continuously appropriate this perfection by faith, they would be outside of God's will. This is a foreign and ugly position to me, to claim to be righteousness when, in fact, one is not. But the doctrine of Sola Fide, with its associated doctrine of imputed righteousness, can be understood to support his view, I suppose.

Anyway, I'm left with the following concepts involving the doctrine of SF:

1. Personal, actual righteousness is no longer required in order to be considered just or righteous in the eyes of God-He sees only the righteousness of Christ in us when we come to believe. That faith is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through faith in His Son and in the forgiveness of sin that He accomplished for us. We simply need to believe-possibly only as a one-time event -or as a continuously maintained act depending on theology.
2. Since justice/righteousness are strictly imputed and not given, there's a question as to whether or not a believer can lose salvation, since his justification is not based on-or results in- his personally possessed righteousness to begin with.
3. Even though man stands righteous before God as a forensic declaration, he may or may not be given the ability to become actually sanctified/holy-and that holiness would only be a sort of "side-benefit" anyway, not required to be saved. Man may or may not be obligated to, for example, obey the law/commandments, even if/when done by the Spirit, now under grace. Some theologies insist that the saved man will necessarily be righteous anyway, sort of covering that base, while others at an opposite extreme seem to almost treat the law as evil, and view any requirement for right living as a denial of grace, some even maintaining that no degree of sin could ever separate a believer from God.

Any thoughts here? I'm not particularly favorable towards the doctrine, as may be obvious. But I'm not sure how to best understand it, either.

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I believe Paul put it this way, if anyone introduces anything beyond what has been given by Jesus Christ of Nazareth and His Foundation, the Apostles, let them be accursed. This is why sticking to the foundational teachings found in scripture is the wisest course of action anyone can take. He said it twice!
Blessings

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. [9] As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

fhansen said:

SOLA FIDE-WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

I recently had some "discussions", to put it nicely, on the forums with a member who insisted that he was perfected in love, apparently perfect in all things, because certain biblical passages seem to indicate that a born again person is promised perfection instantly upon his rebirth. I repeatedly asked if his acquaintances would agree, or if, in any case, he/she was perfectly sinless, no white lies or stray thoughts, etc, ever, every single moment. I never got a direct, straight answer on that but was pointed to certain passages that could be interpreted as to assert perfection now rather than perfection as a goal.

What I came away with, however, reading between the lines, was probably a slightly different position, in truth. It appears that he thought it would be sinful, a denial of faith to believe otherwise, a denial of Christ to believe that we're not perfected as we come to believe, such that if one doesn't claim and continuously appropriate this perfection by faith, they would be outside of God's will. This is a foreign and ugly position to me, to claim to be righteousness when, in fact, one is not. But the doctrine of Sola Fide, with its associated doctrine of imputed righteousness, can be understood to support his view, I suppose.

Anyway, I'm left with the following concepts involving the doctrine of SF:

1. Personal, actual righteousness is no longer required in order to be considered just or righteous in the eyes of God-He sees only the righteousness of Christ in us when we come to believe. That faith is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through faith in His Son and in the forgiveness of sin that He accomplished for us. We simply need to believe-possibly only as a one-time event -or as a continuously maintained act depending on theology.
2. Since justice/righteousness are strictly imputed and not given, there's a question as to whether or not a believer can lose salvation, since his justification is not based on-or results in- his personally possessed righteousness to begin with.
3. Even though man stands righteous before God as a forensic declaration, he may or may not be given the ability to become actually sanctified/holy-and that holiness would only be a sort of "side-benefit" anyway, not required to be saved. Man may or may not be obligated to, for example, obey the law/commandments, even if/when done by the Spirit, now under grace. Some theologies insist that the saved man will necessarily be righteous anyway, sort of covering that base, while others at an opposite extreme seem to almost treat the law as evil, and view any requirement for right living as a denial of grace, some even maintaining that no degree of sin could ever separate a believer from God.

Any thoughts here? I'm not particularly favorable towards the doctrine, as may be obvious. But I'm not sure how to best understand it, either.

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The error that is made in sola fide is applying things past to things future. All of those things you've said -imputed righteousness, etc.- are true, but apply only to previous sins. Through baptism we are cleansed of our previous sins and righteousness is imputed. But our conduct afterwards bears on our ultimate salvation. Those who take sola fide to the extreme use Ephesians 2:8-9 to support their position while completely overlooking 2:1-7. Read in its entirety it is plain that the writer is addressing things past, not things future. That is a misunderstanding that cropped up in the early Church and was addressed by James at James 2 concluding at 2:24, "a man is justified by works, and not by faith only".

In sum, we enter into salvation by faith alone through grace, but it is our works that determine if we remain in that salvation.

fhansen said:

Yes, works such as those mentioned in Eph 2:9-10 say it all:

"...not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

The former works do absolutely...nothing. But the latter are works prepared for us, works driven by the love poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5), certainly not works of the Law. They're the same as those done "for the least of these" in Matt 25, or the putting to death the deeds of the flesh in Rom 8, acts done by the Spirit, under grace, motivated by the same love that moved our Lord. And they're optional for us, but necessary, as the love that drives them is a choice, and yet a necessary one. Or else nothing's changed; the new creation would remain in his sins unless a change, towards real righteousness, not merely declared, is effected in us by God as we turn to Him in faith.

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It's good that you make the distinction between works and works of the law. That's another point of confusion among the sola fide tradition. A lot of the references to works in the new testament are not works "prepared for us" but are the works of the law done away with. We are required to do works such as giving to the poor, helping our neighbors, etc., but we aren't out washing our clothes and standing on the street corner until sundown to purify ourselves.

fhansen said:

SOLA FIDE-WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

I recently had some "discussions", to put it nicely, on the forums with a member who insisted that he was perfected in love, apparently perfect in all things, because certain biblical passages seem to indicate that a born again person is promised perfection instantly upon his rebirth. I repeatedly asked if his acquaintances would agree, or if, in any case, he/she was perfectly sinless, no white lies or stray thoughts, etc, ever, every single moment. I never got a direct, straight answer on that but was pointed to certain passages that could be interpreted as to assert perfection now rather than perfection as a goal.

What I came away with, however, reading between the lines, was probably a slightly different position, in truth. It appears that he thought it would be sinful, a denial of faith, to believe otherwise, a denial of Christ to believe that we're not perfected as we come to believe, such that if one doesn't claim and continuously appropriate this perfection by faith, they would be outside of God's will. This is a foreign and ugly position to me, to claim to be righteous when, in fact, one is not. But the doctrine of Sola Fide, with its associated doctrine of imputed righteousness, can be understood to support his view, I suppose.

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That also appears foreign and ugly to me. The law itself came with instructions for what to do when the people sinned, so perfect obedience was never a requirement. Repentance doesn't change the fact that we have already fallen short of perfect obedience, so either we need to have perfect obedience and repentance has no value or repentance has value and we don't need to have perfect obedience, and the consistent message of the prophets was the call for repentance, not for perfect obedience.

Anyway, I'm left with the following concepts involving the doctrine of SF:

Any thoughts here? I'm not particularly favorable towards the doctrine, as may be obvious. But I'm not sure how to best understand it, either.

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What believe believe about Luther's doctrine of Sola Fide should not be contrary to what he taught:

"Faith must of course be sincere. It must be a faith that performs good works through love. If faith lacks love it is not true faith. Thus the Apostle bars the way of hypocrites to the kingdom of Christ on all sides. He declares on the one hand, "In Christ Jesus circumcision availeth nothing," i.e., works avail nothing, but faith alone, and that without any merit whatever, avails before God. On the other hand, the Apostle declares that without fruits faith serves no purpose. To think, "If faith justifies without works, let us work nothing," is to despise the grace of God. Idle faith is not justifying faith. In this terse manner Paul presents the whole life of a Christian. Inwardly it consists in faith towards God, outwardly in love towards our fellow-men."

Catholics said that if sola fide is true, then you could say, "Faith without works justifies, Faith without works is dead [Jas. 2:17]. Therefore, dead faith justifies." Luther answered:

"The argument is sophistical and the refutation is resolved grammatically. In the major premise, "faith" ought to be placed with the word "justifies" and the portion of the sentence "without works justifies" is placed in a predicate periphrase and must refer to the word "justifies," not to "faith." In the minor premise, "without works" is truly in the subject periphrase and refers to faith. We say that justification is effective without works, not that faith is without works. For that faith which lacks fruit is not an efficacious but a reigned faith. "Without works" is ambiguous, then. For that reason this argument settles nothing. It is one thing that faith justifies without works; it is another thing that faith exists without works."

"Faith is a living, restless thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith."
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Personal, actual righteousness is no longer required in order to be considered just or righteous in the eyes of God-He sees only the righteousness of Christ in us when we come to believe. That faith is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through faith in His Son and in the forgiveness of sin that He accomplished for us. We simply need to believe-possibly only as a one-time event -or as a continuously maintained act depending on theology.

Since justice/righteousness are strictly imputed and not given, there's a question as to whether or not a believer can lose salvation, since his justification is not based on-or results in- his personally possessed righteousness to begin with.

Even though man stands righteous before God as a forensic declaration, he may or may not be given the ability to become actually sanctified/holy-but that holiness would only be a sort of "side-benefit" anyway, not required to be saved. Man may or may not be obligated to, for example, obey the law/commandments, even if/when done by the Spirit, now under grace. Some theologies insist that the saved man will necessarily be righteous anyway, sort of covering that base, while others at an opposite extreme seem to almost treat the law as evil, and view any requirement for right living as a denial of grace, some even maintaining that no degree of sin could ever separate a believer from God.

Click to expand...

There is no such thing as becoming someone who has a character trait apart from becoming someone who acts in accordance with that character trait. To describe God as righteous is to say that he acts righteously, and it would be contradictory to describe Him as righteous is He did not act righteously. Christ expresses his righteousness by living in obedience to God's law, so that is also the way that we live when we have become the righteousness of Christ. Our salvation involves actually being made to be like Christ, not just counted as belike like him when we actually are not, and thinking that it is just about being counted as being like him sells the goal of our salvation far short of its mark.

In Hebrews 1:3, the Son is the exact image of God's nature, which he expressed through living in sinless obedience to God's law, so among other things he is the personification of righteousness, so there is no righteousness apart from the nature who he is, and by doing what is righteous in obedience to God's law, we are testifying about what we believe to be true about the nature of who he is, or in other words, we are believing in him, which is why there are many verses that connect our faith in God with our obedience to Him. Likewise, when we do what is righteous, we are expressing our love for that aspect of who he is, which is why there are many verses that connect our love for God with our obedience to Him.

Our salvation is from sin (Matthew 1:21) and sin is the transgression of God's law (1 John 3:4), so while we do not earn our salvation as a wage by obeying it, living in obedience to it is nevertheless intrinsically connected to the gift of Jesus saving us from not living in obedience to it. So there is no sense in thinking that someone can still have the gift of their salvation while they are rejecting the content of that gift. In Titus 2:11-14, our salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so God graciously teaching us to do what is righteous in obedience to His law is part of the content of His gift of saving us from not doing what is righteous.

Cockcrow said:

People say that they believe in faith alone, but then they will say "well true faith will have works" or saving faith produces works, or evidence for faith is works, or true saved christians will have works or a changed life. That is just backloading works into salvation, it is confusing nonsense. it is either by faith alone or not, you can't add works and it still be faith alone. Holiness movement fails to understand the true meaning of faith alone.

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Luther is the one who coined the five solas, including faith alone, but he held a position that you consider to be contrary to believing in faith alone, so you have failed to understand the true meaning of faith alone.

In Romans 3:28, we are justified by faith apart from works of the law, so there is a sense that we are justified by faith alone insofar as there are no works that we can do to earn our salvation, however, in Romans 3:31, Paul did not want us to conclude that our faith abolishes our need to obey God's law, but rather he said that our faith upholds it insofar as the same faith by which we are justified is also expressed as obedience to it. There can be any number of reasons for doing works other than earning our salvation as a wage, such as faith, so saying that our salvation involves doing good works by faith is not support a works-based salvation.

fhansen said:

SOLA FIDE-WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

I recently had some "discussions", to put it nicely, on the forums with a member who insisted that he was perfected in love, apparently perfect in all things, because certain biblical passages seem to indicate that a born again person is promised perfection instantly upon his rebirth. I repeatedly asked if his acquaintances would agree, or if, in any case, he/she was perfectly sinless, no white lies or stray thoughts, etc, ever, every single moment. I never got a direct, straight answer on that but was pointed to certain passages that could be interpreted as to assert perfection now rather than perfection as a goal.

What I came away with, however, reading between the lines, was probably a slightly different position, in truth. It appears that he thought it would be sinful, a denial of faith, to believe otherwise, a denial of Christ to believe that we're not perfected as we come to believe, such that if one doesn't claim and continuously appropriate this perfection by faith, they would be outside of God's will. This is a foreign and ugly position to me, to claim to be righteous when, in fact, one is not. But the doctrine of Sola Fide, with its associated doctrine of imputed righteousness, can be understood to support his view, I suppose.

Anyway, I'm left with the following concepts involving the doctrine of SF:

1. Personal, actual righteousness is no longer required in order to be considered just or righteous in the eyes of God-He sees only the righteousness of Christ in us when we come to believe. That faith is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through faith in His Son and in the forgiveness of sin that He accomplished for us. We simply need to believe-possibly only as a one-time event -or as a continuously maintained act depending on theology.
2. Since justice/righteousness are strictly imputed and not given, there's a question as to whether or not a believer can lose salvation, since his justification is not based on-or results in- his personally possessed righteousness to begin with.
3. Even though man stands righteous before God as a forensic declaration, he may or may not be given the ability to become actually sanctified/holy-but that holiness would only be a sort of "side-benefit" anyway, not required to be saved. Man may or may not be obligated to, for example, obey the law/commandments, even if/when done by the Spirit, now under grace. Some theologies insist that the saved man will necessarily be righteous anyway, sort of covering that base, while others at an opposite extreme seem to almost treat the law as evil, and view any requirement for right living as a denial of grace, some even maintaining that no degree of sin could ever separate a believer from God.

Any thoughts here? I'm not particularly favorable towards the doctrine, as may be obvious. But I'm not sure how to best understand it, either.

Click to expand...

Found this thread after you wrote such good posts in reply to mine in another thread about the meaning of death (not the OP subject, exactly). And I think the subjects cross over.

I think there are two objectives God has towards us, 1. To have fellowship with us forever, and 2. To allow for that fellowship without hampering our freewill, I.e., that we should want that fellowshio as much as He does, or at least as much as we can in our less-than-godlike selves.

The first thing God had to do was to fix the problem of evil, which is inherent when freewill is involved. You can't really love (part of fellowship) without being able to do otherwise. Part of the problem of evil is that God can't allow evil to continue forever. Thus He both had to deal with evil justly and deal with mankind lovingly (mercifully), which He did by Jesus becoming a man and dying on the cross.

But that only works sufficiently if each person agrees that God's will is loving and wants to follow it. Adam's sin made it impossible to have fellowship with God forever, because death came from even one sin, which death is inherited--there can only be one ultimate authority.

God took away the permanence of death for all men, but allows each person to decide to give God His due honor...or not. Now the penalty rests on each person individually, but it's a much greater penalty due to the nature of the sacrifice.

This fits with the discussion here because the goal is perfect obedience, from love, as a fellowship relationship between God and His creations should be. This perfection has not happened yet, until we are changed, either by death and resurrection or in the twinkling of the eye at Cgrusts coming, when we put on immortality, but with perfect submission. Those who put on immortality without perfect submission face the new kind of death (2nd death).