James1979,
Galatians 3:2 is talking about a question that was being asked on how do you received the Holy Spirit? And Paul response to his question was, is it through hearing of the gospel or through keeping the law? This answer can be researched by going the through scriptures how one can become saved as it is shown in Romans 10:17 on how the Holy Spirit begins his work in the life of a new believer and also at the same time is unknown to the saved person at what hour this good work began by God the Holy Spirit in John 3:8
That is very true that no man knows when that work begins. I surely cannot claim an exact date, since it took the Holy Spirit almost 55 years before I was convicted of my errors of faith. I was engaged, but not married to Him. I was flirting with Him but not committed. This is true of any man since God has always worked externally with man, so that man could use the gifts that were given to him to acknowledge God. That starts with Paul in Rom 1:18-24.
There is not a single human being that is incapable of responding to God. Man has been doing it since Adam before and after the fall. Man was created with a soul, a magnet toward God. After the fall, that seeking was corrupted, He did not always find God, the creator but His creation. The NT is no different in how God calls man, the point is that God calls all men. No man will be excluded. All men will make an active choice about God. There is no passivity, there is no exclusion. There surely is no overt or implied condemnation just on the basis of predestination.
We are justified by Christ's death (his soul) and his perfect obedience to the law. The sinner is not justified by through unbelief (before he or she is saved) nor is the sinner is justified by faith (bearing good fruit, belief which is considered a good work, after the sinner has been saved)
We are justified by Christ alone, that is for sure. Man has absolutely nothing to do with the work of Christ redeeming, justifying, reconciling the world. II Cor 5:18, Col 1:20. But your error is that God reconciled all things to God. That includes every single individual that will ever live in this universe.
Every sinner who comes to God, believes, repents, is baptised, has been justified by that faith. It is how one enters into union, regenerated union with God in this life. That is the ONLY way that scripture describes. We better bear good works after being justified, because if we fail to do so, we shall be cut off and burned. One is not justified by a dead faith, or no faith. If one is not going to work with God in what you would call sanctification, there can be no justication either. They go hand in hand.
When it says in Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
This verse above shows that we are entirely justified by Christ alone, his faith is the sinner justified by God, not the new faith, new belief that the sinner's now has/have after the Holy Spirit quicken the sinner's spirit/soul through the gospel.
Yes, it shows that all men were justified by Christ. All we need to do is believe it and we become justified by faith as well.
There are two justifications that take place in the salvation of every believer. The latter, spiritual, cannot take place until the physical has first occured. In other words, the fall needed to be reversed. The world which was condemned with Adam, needed to be justified to God. Christ did that by His Blood and resurrection. Col 1:20 and I Cor 15:22.
Once man has an eternal physical existance God can again join with man for the purpose for which we were created. A freely entered union now and for eternity. A union which was always based on faith. You could say before the fall, and surely after, OT and NT. Man indiviudally has never been saved differently.
A simple confession or a simply intellectual decision on accepting Christ for what he did, is not a cause for the Holy Spirit to save you or the means to become saved. The evidence will show up in the sinner's life that he or she finds themselves being obedient to the law of God more often than they did before when they were unsaved. Also their is a delight in the saved person's new heart and soul in which they find themselves at joy and happiest when they are obeying God. From that standpoint, with self assured confidence as the Holy Spirit bear witness with the saved individual spirit through the word of God, working out their salvation with fear and trembling as its stated in the bible, then they can confidently say that they are a child of God and God saved me in the past prior to me knowing at what hour God saved them at.
It is the only cause for the Holy Spirit to be indwelt in you. You take possession of your eternal salvation with your repentance, and baptism. That is what makes you a believer. The evidence is just that. Evidence that you do believe and desire to remain a believing Christian. That is why we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We succor the mercy of God that we remain faithful.
You don't believe in losing your salvation do you?
Absolutely, just as scripture clearly points out in very explicit terms. If we are both justified by faith and saved through faith, then quite obviously, if we lose faith, we are no longer possessor of that salvation. We will not inherit the promise that awaits those that endure to the end.
Your bank theory is really off. God doesn't make the payments for you, you have to make the payments by doing your part. That sounds like you can lose your salvation, inheritance, possession if you don't do your part. That's silly. This is the understanding I get from the bible as use in the very beginning in Genesis with Adam and Eve.
The bank analogy is right on. You just totally misunderstood it. Never said God made the payments unless you think the bank makes the payments for you. And it is all about making those payments. Adam and Eve were required to bring the entire creation and themselves back to God as a living sacrifice. That takes work. They had a job to do as creatures. So do we, in fact the very same one.
Adam and Eve had an inheritance from the beginning when God was in their presence and had a relationship with Adam and Eve. God gave them dominion over the whole entire earth. That was a blessing from God, while Adam and Eve didn't do anything of themselves to earn it nor had to work for the inheritance.
It is true that they started on the other side than we. But the requirements are the very same. Adam was not created immortal. If he was it would have been impossible for him to sin. Adam was created good. He was given the option of attaining immortality, working with God, or He could die if he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil and die, become mortal. he had a commandment to follow. he failed in his faith.
We have a commandment as well. We are asked to join with God, to become like Adam working with God as the requirement for our very existance. We can believe, accept that offer of fellowship, or a relationship with God, or we can reject it. The penalty is not physical death this time around, but spiritual death. We cannot die physically twice. But our spiritual relationship is all about enduring, being faithful. God did not prevent Adam from falling, He will not prevent you from falling either. It goes against the very purpose of His creating you free in His IMage.
In essence you want God to save you from a relationship with it requirements that was the whole purpose of man being created, then man being redeemed from the fall.
Once they had sin, Adam and Eve lost their inheritance and at the same time as we came out of the loins of Adam and Eve, we as the whole human race lost that inheritance too.
Exactly. But the problem is that man cannot save himself from that fall. The fall precluded that union and communion from being eternal. There was no purpose for God to have a union with any man as long as death endured. As long as man would simply die and cease to exist. Which is why Christ was needed to overcome death and sin.
But Christ did not save us from the purpose of our existance. His salvation of the world makes it possible again for man to be joined with God for the present and for eternity. But we need to believe. It is OUR choice to do so. God does not decide who will believe. He created all mankind to be in union. But He also gave man a choice to make that union or relationship real, mutual and because man desires to have that relationship. God did not create us as trees to do his bidding by decree instinct or determinism.
But since God knew the fall would occurred, God prepared a way for his elect (Christ as the lamb of God, without blemish, without spot, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world) to get the inheritance back the same way that Adam and Eve received, without working for it nor earning it.
Exactly, but all mankind, the world recieved that inheritance. Rom 11:32, Rom 5:18, I Cor 15:22. Christ reversed the fall, the reason we lost the inheritance. Why would He only reverse it for some, when He is the creator of all, all bearing His Image. God did not create man to be particular and assign most of them to hell which is impossible anyway, considering that all men were already condemned to death.
without working for it nor earning it. It's really that simple but at the same time, God has to open the ears and eyes of an individual to truths, I simply don't have the power to do so.
No man needs to work for it. All men recieved it equally. We lost it equally, we regained it equally. It is why Christ became man, the Incarnate Christ. When you refer to God opening ears, all men have their ears opened. Men shut their eyes their ears so that they do not hear. It is not God that does that. It is man.
But you as well as any other man does have the power and capability to respond to God's call. He made sure that you have that ability. Denying it simply means you really do not blieve Christ came, died and was resurrected for our salvation. Opening the way for us to be rejoined with God to recieve the inheritance established from the foundations of the world. It is why we were created, all men.
When the saved received their gift from God, eternal life they will begin to do good works as this was ordained in them before the foundation of the world.
It is not ordained in them to do the good works, the good works were ordained for them to do. A vast difference in meaning.
God is also the author and finisher of the elect's faith. So they will continue to bear fruit so long as they lived on this cursed world until they are received in the glory forever more, they're not gonna stop bearing good fruit and began to bear bad fruit, not when you have the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit abiding in you. This will be done through chastisement from God so that his people will continue on track to bearing good fruit until they go to be with the Lord.
which is a direct contradiction with scripture.
God is the author of faith period. He is the finisher of that faith IF man desires to work with Him to finish it. God works through our faith. If we lose faith, we also lose the cooperative work of the Holy Spirit. We can quench the Holy Spirit. We also bear bad fruit. We will be cut off just like the disobedient Jews were cut off. If we repent, if we confess our sins, we will be forgiven.
There is absolutely nothing in scripture that man will promise to remain with Christ once he enters that relationship. If it was so concrete, then Adam would never have sinned and left the relationship in the beginning. We are just as free as he was, it is why we were created.
Not only scripture but reality does not bear out you last sentence. Faithful, fruit bearing believers have rejected God in the end. Man just does not have a guarantee that he will remain faithful. Adam was not even a sinner as yet, but he still left that relationship on the temptation of Satan. What makes you think that you, a fallen individual, still living in this perverse generation, with Satan still out there seeking to devour you, that you cannot in any shape or form fall?
