"Works to get saved"?
Interesting. That's a first. Persons on here say that works cannot save you.
Can you please give me a list of those "works *to get saved.*"? Thank you.
Sure, Jesus said this...
John 6.27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
The reason you don't hear things expressed this way very often is because there is a language issue involved that can create confusion. And nobody wants to create confusion needlessly.
But in this matter the words cannot be avoided, and I'm not afraid to bring them. The confusion exists over the matter of *earning one's own Salvation,* and that certainly is not what I mean by "working for Salvation."
So let me be clear by using other words, as well. In the matter of "atonement," only Christ could make atonement for our sins. His work of atonement is the exclusive basis of our Salvation. So any work we do in the matter of achieving Salvation is not the same thing as "earning Salvation!"
So then, what do we mean by "working for Salvation?" It is choosing to believe God's word, which itself contains the virtue and atonement necessary for us to obtain, by our choice, Eternal Life.
We obtain Salvation by a *choice,* and not by God simply choosing for us. God chooses to offer Salvation, and we choose to receive it.
This then is the "work for Salvation." It is the choice we make to believe God's word so that we obey it and obtain the Salvation that God would give us.
Once we are saved, we can go on choosing to believe God's word, and enter into His virtue and into the life of Salvation. Christians do continue to work in partnership with God, via obedience to His word, after we've been saved, ie after choosing Salvation.
Can you please show me where you read Apollos "had not yet learned how to live in the Spirit of Jesus".
You already have the passage available to you! Apollos had not fully known the way of Christ, but had only known truths about Christ that he could faithfully teach others about.
To know fully the way of Christ he had to be taught about the Baptism that Jesus came to bring. It concerned matters of repentance, like John's Baptism, but it contained the necessity of conforming to Jesus, which comes by adherence to his Spirit.
And this is different from conformity to the Law, which sometimes consisted of no more than perfunctory performances. At times Israel completely lost the understanding of the spiritual value inherent in the Law. They sometimes lost the spiritual values that had been present in keeping the Law and therefore had become "blind."
Both OT and NT baptisms spoke of more than perfunctory performances. They required *spiritual understanding." The Prophet Isaiah spoke of this necessity in regard to the Law here...
Isa 35.3 Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
4 say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Isaiah was suggesting that lack of adherence to the word of God brought about an empty reliance upon the Law that had created a spiritual blindness. It is obedience to God's word that brings about a full knowledge of Him, resulting in a full understanding of the ways of God.
This is the Spirit Baptism that Jesus came to bring--a full knowledge of God, His word, and the means of transformative obedience. It was not any longer adherence to the Law, but even better, it was conformity to Christ who had already fulfilled the Law. (I'm in particular referring to the Law of Redemption, which required Christ's atonement for our sins.)
Forgive me please. I'm still trying to get used to the many things people say, which I have never read.
Can you explain please, what you mean by "living in the Spirit in accordance with the Law".
The full knowledge of God can be lost with religion. It was that way with me for the 1st couple of decades of my Christian life. I performed what I thought was Christian adherence to the religion. But I lacked the knowledge of God in any depth. I knew God, but certainly not well enough to be aware of His guidance in matters of testifying about Him to others with any great effectiveness.
I had to learn that it requires a greater sensitivity to God's word that enables us to know God better. It is when we specifically obey His impulses to righteous living that we come to appreciate Him better, and understand how we are to live differently than this pagan world. Our testimony, then, consists of this adherence to God's word in contrast to how the world has chosen to live.
So when Israel lived by the Law of Moses, and had lost sensitivity to God's word in their heart, this compromise resulted in a loss of knowing God and His word. The same thing had happened to Apollos, who had converted to Christ, but who had not yet come to recognize more than a rote acceptance of the truths of Christianity.
He had to learn a greater sensitivity to the Spirit of God in his soul so that in living his message he showed the contrast between his renewed life and the pagan life of the world. This was more "exhibiting Jesus" than conformity to rules and a teaching of knowledge.
You don't see?
There were twelve disciples, who were baptized in John's baptism.
They got baptized after Paul explained to them that John's baptism was a baptism of repentance in preparation for the one that was to come, in whom they should believe in.
When the people heard this, they got baptized, after which Paul laid his hands on them and they received holy spirit.
Acts 19:1-7...
1
While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3 So
Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
4
Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5
On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all.
Were these persons required to be baptized in the name of Jesus, even thought baptized by John? Why, or why not?
Please consider
John 1:35-37;
John 3:22-4:3
John's Baptism was pre-Christian, and designed to instigate a better obedience to the Law. Yet it was a baptism of repentance.
In Christian baptism, the "repentance" element remains for those who were pagans or who had been living in sin. They were to show their full conversion from the pagan world by publicly displaying their "death" to the world, and new life in the Spirit.
They were choosing to follow not the Law of Moses but the example and Spirit of Jesus, whose righteousness transcended and fulfilled all that the Law represented on behalf of our redemption. If these people had only been baptized with the Baptism of John, they were still living under the Law, and needed to convert to the Baptism of Jesus, where the Law had already been fulfilled.
We are not talking about a particular baptismal formula in which names are used in a specific liturgical manner. Rather, it is a matter of understanding what the Baptism represents.
Death by immersion to what? We are dying to a sinful lifestyle, to paganism, and rising up to follow Jesus--not the 613 requirements of the Law of Moses. We are changing from conformity to the world to allowing Jesus to exhibit conformity to his word in us.
