I'm not pretending.
If you think that ultimately a saved person can have no works and be a saved person then you are wrong. The faith that justifies apart from works changes a person into a new creation who grows up into righteous living. If that isn't happening then that person may not have been justified in Christ at all.
Works are the evidence of justification through Christ. No evidence of justification may well mean exactly that. No justification has occurred. That's why we're encouraged to prove our calling and election, so we can know for sure. The person who does not work can not know for sure he has received God's gracious gift of the forgiveness of sin.
Excuse me.
Romans 5:8-11 (NIV)
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8 [/SUP] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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9 [/SUP] Since
we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
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10 [/SUP] For if,
when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
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11 [/SUP] Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Job 25:4-6 (HCSB)
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4 [/SUP] How can a person be justified before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
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5 [/SUP] If even the moon does not shine and the stars are not pure in His sight,
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6 [/SUP] how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!
Romans 3:20-25 (ESV)
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20 [/SUP] For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
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21 [/SUP] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
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22 [/SUP] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
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23 [/SUP] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
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24 [/SUP] and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
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25 [/SUP] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
Romans 3:28 (ASV)
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28 [/SUP] We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
Romans 8:30 (CSBBible)
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30 [/SUP] And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.
Galatians 2:16-17 (CSBBible)
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16 [/SUP] and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.
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17 [/SUP] But if we ourselves are also found to be "sinners" while seeking to be justified by Christ, is Christ then a promoter of sin? Absolutely not!