Christian Good Deed

wikey321 · Oct 6, 2022

Protestants believe that faith in God alone is needed to get into heaven, a tenet known as sola fide. Catholics believe that both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/do-y...f58376b-86cf-409b-95f9-7d7951346d01_quiz.html

I understand Methodist and Lutheran Christian sharing similar concept as Protestants.

What is Protestants view in good deed /Charity /Helping others ? Is that a not required in way or life or it's optional ? It sounds compassion is optional then ?

Tolworth John · Oct 6, 2022

Christianity, as found in the bible, teaches that we are saved by faith and that any good works we do is purely an act of love and obedience to Jesus.

timothyu · Oct 6, 2022

We as a species have already been saved but we were told to repent of the self serving ways mankind has lived by since the Garden. We cannot be of the Kingdom by acting in ways of the world man has made in our own image.

dqhall · Oct 6, 2022

Protestants may also find the account of the good Samaritan in the Gospel. A Catholic talked about doing faith and works. Actions speak louder than words.

wikey321 · Oct 6, 2022

hmm.. action speak loader than words. When a super senior protestant's parent in sick, seem like they are reluctant to take them to medical attention but rather more prayers to God. Is that an action too ?

Well, just a few super senior protestants i notice in this way. I m not too close with many of them yet.

Basil the Great · Oct 6, 2022

Some individual Protestants believe that good works are essential to being saved.

Andrewn · Oct 6, 2022

- This is an unusual attitude toward medical treatment that not many Protestants share.

- The kids, in this case, may also have a reason besides theology for their decision not to seek medical attention.

- Regardless of the reason, this has nothing to do with the question about the relationship between God's grace and good deeds.

Maria Billingsley · Oct 6, 2022

Welcome to CF! "Show me your faith by your works", "Faith without works is dead". You can find these two quotes in James. Many have misinterpreted them as delivering a works based salvation however it is actually the " fruits " of salvation. In other words, a regenerated believer will display " good works" therefore living out their faith in humbleness and obedience to our Father. This is the Holy Spirit at work in the beliver.
Blessings.

timothyu · Oct 6, 2022

I know plenty of people of the secular way who naturally live their lives loving neighbour as self.

Brad D. · Oct 6, 2022

Conversion and the lifelong process of working out our salvation are two separate things. One cost nothing the other cost plenty. It was never intended we come to the cross and simply stop at the blood, it was rather intended we would go on from their through the cross and come into all that He intended us to be. So Works are important, but what are the works of God? The Bible is not an instruction book of things to do. This is why it said we can give all we have to the poor, talk in tongues, have faith to move mountains, fathom all mysteries, give our body to the fire to be burned and yet it still profit nothing ( 1 Corinthians 13:1-3). The most excellent way is Love. And God is love ( 1John 4:8). And what is truly of God always comes through the cross. We come through that we come into Love. We come into Love we come into the works that matter. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body(2 Corinthians 4:10).

But I have found the true works of God an enigma to what you would think think they would be. It is no waste to God to take you an empty you on the backside of Midian somewhere. Christ did nothing out of His own initiative. And, If there was anyone who ever lived on this earth who had something to do and something to say it was Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But the Father didn't consider it waste for even Him to sit in relative solitude, silence and obscurity for 30 years. The only thing we really know about Him is from the last three years of His life on this earth, and even then He was sent into the desert alone to be tormented by the enemy. And what did the Father say about these 30 years when He finally came up from out of that place? What have you been doing all this time? No! He rather said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

Soyeong · Oct 6, 2022

Here are some quotes from Luther:

"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."
------------

The issue is that good works can be done for any number of reasons, some of which are correct while others are not, and what is said against our salvation requiring us to choose to works for incorrect reasons should not be mistaken as speaking against our salvation requiring us to choose them. There are many verses that I could cite that speak against earning our justification as a wage, such as Romans 4:4-5 and many other verses that I could cite that our justification requires us to choose to do good works, such as Romans 2:13, so there must be a reason why our justification requires us to choose to be doers of the law other than in order to earn it as a wage, such as faith insofar as Romans 3:31 says that our faith upholds God's law, so the same faith by which we are justified is also expressed as obedience to God's law.

In Romans 2:27, 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 justification, however, our faith does not do away with our need to obey God's law, so there is also a sense that faith is never alone insofar as the same faith by which we are justified is also expressed as obedience to God's law (Romans 3:31).

While it is true that Abraham believed God, so he was justified (Genesis 15:6), it is also true that he believed God, so he obeyed God's command to offer Isaac (Hebrews 11:17), so the same faith by which he was justified was also expressed as obedience to God, but he did not earn his justification as a wage (Romans 4:4-5). In James 2:21-24, Abraham was justified by his works when he offered Isaac, his faith was active along with his works, and his faith completed his works, so he was justified by his works insofar as they were an expression of his faith, but not insofar as they were earning a wage.

The problem is that when Catholics use a set a verses that support that our justification requires us to do good works, Protestants tend to mistake that as saying that our justification requires us to do good works in order to earn it as wage, and respond with the set of verses that speak against doing that. Or when Protestants use a different set of verses that support that we are justified by faith alone, Catholics tend to mistake that as saying our justification just requires us to affirm the truth of certain doctrinal statements and does not require us to obey God's law. 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 the content of the gift of Jesus saving us from not living in obedience to it.

Soyeong · Oct 6, 2022

Hebrews 5:9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,

Obedience to Christ is a requirement for eternal salvation, not purely an act of love.

ViaCrucis · Oct 6, 2022

This is a gigantic topic. And the thing about Protestants is that there's no one "Protestant view".

I'm a Lutheran, so I can talk about what Lutherans believe.

Yes, good works are required of Christians, but not to save us. Good works are required because, as Christians, we were created for good works, to live lives of obedience to God by obeying His commandments, to love our neighbor.

Lutherans speak of two kinds of righteousness. There is that righteousness which is before God, the righteousness which comes by faith alone wherein God gives us--as a free gift--the righteousness of Jesus and so we are considered righteous for Jesus' sake. It's not our righteousness, it's Jesus' righteousness. But we receive it as a gift, and this is what makes us righteous before God. None of our works can add or take away from that. We could live an infinite number of years and never do enough that would actually make us righteous by our own works; but Jesus Christ alone has become our righteousness by His own perfect obedience and work.

The other kind of righteousness we speak of is righteousness before other human beings. This is not righteousness before God, but before one another, before our neighbor. This is where good works count. We see that our neighbor is hungry, and so they need food, and we feed them. That is a good work that we must do because God commands us to love our neighbor. It won't do anything as far as God is concerned, but God has already done everything that is necessary to save us; so there's nothing to add to what He has already done. So the purpose of good works is that there are good works that need to be done. People are hungry, people are thirsty, people are in need and something needs to be done--that's what good works are for.

Before God we are declared righteous because God gives us His righteousness as a free gift, through faith.

Before other people we are called to righteousness by good works, because that's what it means to live as a Christian here in this world.

So good works are absolutely necessary. Just not for salvation, they are necessary because they need to be done, and God says to do them, and from faith flows love and good works done in love.

-CryptoLutheran

timothyu · Oct 6, 2022

Salvation is of course resurrection, previously unavailable and available now only through the grace of God and the sacrifice of the Christ. It is what comes after resurrection that counts, the judgment based on the fruits of the resurrected.

Tolworth John · Oct 11, 2022

Which is what I wrote.

Sir Joseph · Oct 16, 2022

The answers above reflect the continuing confusion and disagreement over the faith plus works issue. Doctrinally, I'd say that Protestants should believe that one is saved by faith alone, with works of good deeds, charity, and helping others being part of the life-time sanctification process that comes afterwards. The Bible commands us to love others, which is demonstrated through works, but the apostles consistently affirm that it's Christ's work on the cross that justifies us before God and gives us eternal life - not what we do afterwards. Jesus' own words to the thief on the cross provides an excellent example of this doctrine. The thief got an immediate pass to paradise with only words of faith.

To many, it just doesn't seem right or fair for a worldly person that does no good in life to join the godly person in heaven who dedicates his time, money, and effort towards helping others. Even assuming both have genuine faith, one may act upon it more or less than the other - for whatever reason. How do we rationalize that? I'd suggest that being saved and going to heaven instead of hell, though wonderful in itself, is not the whole story. Our actions in this life dictate the rewards awaiting us in heaven. That's how "fairness" will ultimately be realized.

Hawkins · Oct 19, 2022

Faith alone is the characteristic of the New Covenant in terms of how the Final Judgment shall be carried out. Faith alone means Jesus will base on one's faith to determine who shall be saved. However, we humans are incapable of measuring faith. We can only estimate where our faith is by means of our behavior. We as humans need deeds in order to estimate our faith, including our own faith and others' faith.

On the other hand, a covenant is made of several parts. Commandments are one of its components. So if you truly love Jesus you will obey His command, that's a behavior reflecting your faith. Humans can thus have an estimation on your faith. That's how it works. Other than loving Jesus, the other most important commandment is to love others as your neighbor. Charity etc., is another behavior on how you follow the commandment of loving your neighbor.

Such behaviors are however not a necessity in terms of how you are saved and pass the Final Judgment. Jesus will judge precisely where your faith is. To put it another way, if you are paralyzed and can do nothing, Jesus can still make a judgment on whether your faith meets the requirement of the New Covenant to be saved.

Soyeong · Oct 19, 2022

In Romans 3:27, 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 not works that we can do to earn our salvation, however, in Romans 3:31, our faith does not abolish our need to obey God's law, but rather our faith upholds it, so our faith is never alone insofar as the same faith by which we are justified is also expressed as obedience to it, which is why Luther said that an idle faith is not as justifying faith.

While it is true that Abraham believed God, so he was justified (Genesis 15:6), it is also true that he believed God, so he obeyed God's command to offer Isaac (Hebrews 11:17), so the same faith by which he was justified was also expressed as obedience to God, but he did not earn his justification by his obedience as a wage (Romans 4:4-5). In James 2:21-24, it quotes Genesis 15:6 to support saying that Abraham was justified by his works when he offered Isaac, that his faith was active along with his works, and his faith completed his works, so he was justified by his works insofar as they were an expression of faith, but not insofar as they are earning a wage.

There can be many motivations for doing works, some of which are correct, while others are not, which is why there are many verses that I could cite that show that obedience to God's law is required for justification, such as Romans 2:13, and many verses that speak against earning our justification as a wage.

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 it is not that salvation comes after having done good works or that doing good works comes after having been saved, but rather God graciously teaching us to do these works is itself the content of His gift of Jesus saving us from not doing those works. Our salvation is from sin and sin is the transgressions of God's law, so while we do not earn our salvation as a wage by obeying it, living in obedience to it is intrinsically the content of the gift of Jesus saving us from not living in obedience to it. Furthermore, in Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to God's law is the way to believe in what he accomplished through the cross (Acts 21:20).

In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him His way that he might know Him, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so knowing God and Jesus is the goal of the law, which is eternal life (John 17:3), which is why Jesus said in Matthew 19:17 that the way to enter eternal life is by obeying God's commandments, not that obedience to God's commandments comes after eternal life.

drich0150 · Oct 26, 2022

Works of the law and good deeds are not the same thing.
Paul in romans 3 and galatians 2 and chapter three says and describes the works of the law and tells us they do not save us.
If you look at the OT law as an OT Jew the law was divided into three sections. The ceremonial law. this told who could be a priest how to dress as a priest what to sacrifice and how (lambs goats first fruits tithing etc) what days to give to god and what you did on this days (sabbath holy-days etc)

Then you had the social law, this covered everything one must do to live as an OT jew in that society. these rules covered day to day life, it set up who was and was not a jew, dietary restrictions, clothing, (no blended fabrics) loans, slavery, marriage, women's menstrual cycles, the men must be circumcised/foreskin of the penis be cut off, how to wash yourself, even what to do when you had mold in your house.

Finally you had the moral law. no lying murder rape incest stealing etc..

Now to the OT jew breaking any part of these laws was a sin, and you had to keep the law all the same.

So in romans gal 2 and 3 Paul tells us Keeping the works of the law, the works being the ceremonial and the social laws did not save you. As for the OT jews if you kept the majority of the law, the law provided forgiveness for minor transgression through the sacrifice of animals.

In Christianity keeping these laws is not what saves you anymore.

Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross saves you because this one acts fulfills all the requirements of the works of the law.

Even you as a catholic follow this teaching as again you do not follow the works of the law in your worship, you do not typically worship on the sabbath (Saturday) you do not sacrifice animals, you do not have a temple or temple priests who must wear certain robes and or jewels, there is no mandate that the men be circumcised..

So many people when they here "works" don't save you they think no good deeds nothing is needed to be a christian. But again if you read the Bible we are told we are not saved by works of the law or rather following the whole Jewish law (which the apostle Peter was infact teaching at the time to his gentile converts) which is why Paul made it such a sticking point in his writings to the romans and the Galatians.

So the question become do we need to do good deeds to be saved?

Technically yes and no.

Because when Jesus was asked 'What must we do to inherit eternal life Jesus responded "Love your lord God with all of your heart, mind Spirit and strength. and the second command it like it. love your neighbor as yourself.

These are the two requirements according to Jesus himself needed to enter heaven. and if you believe No man comes unto the father but by him, then it kinda does not matter what a given church teaches is the way to heaven as we are going by what Jesus directly taught when asked verse what a church doctrine says.

I say that because "forgiveness" specifically the forgiveness we are to offer to our fellow man when they sin against us is an absolute mandate, meaning your sins will not be forgiven if you can not forgive those who sin against you. This is not only something Jesus said we are to pray for in his one and only example of prayer to us, but also manifest in the parable of the unmerciful servant.

mat 18: Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 18 - New International Version

That is tied into loving others how You want God to love (and forgive) you

The no part of it is outlined in a teaching Paul 1 cor 3:10
This basically tells us that out works if built on the foundation of Jesus (meaning your works done peoplerly in the name of Christ) will still be tested 'by fire' meaning harshly scrutinized. and if you did your works 1/2 heartily they will be destroyed by this test by fire. If you build or did you works well/quality work then if it survives the test you will be rewarded in heaven.

If you works are burned up you will still be saved, but enter heaven as a poor man with nothing more than the cloths on your back 'smelling like smoke."

Meaning you will enter heaven with nothing, as a homeless man. and if OT rules still apply then it is likely you will have to sell yourself into slavery to start out your eternity.

10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. 14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

timothyu · Oct 26, 2022

You seem to have purposely avoided the moral laws which of course simply say put God's will ahead of our own.

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