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Mailman,
Can we not say that they are united because one causes the other??
We are saved FOR good works, not by good works.
OK.
But if good works MUST follow as even a sign, as some will say, then could we not say that God requires also the good works?
Faith is the root of salvation and good works are the fruit. No fruit at all would demonstrate there is no root.
Did Jesus not speak about being cut off of the vine of it does not bear fruit?
I fail to grasp the difference between what you are saying and what I'm saying.
In John 15, Jesus mentions branches that
bear no fruit and branches that
bear fruit (vs. 2) but Jesus says nothing about branches that bear fruit but then later stop bearing fruit.
When Jesus spoke these words in John 15, how many people at that time, prior to Him being glorified, had received the Holy Spirit and were baptized by one Spirit into one body? - "the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 12:13).
John 7:38 - He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom
those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. So "in me" is part of the metaphor of the vine, (in the vine) and not in the body of Christ under the New Covenant which was not yet fully established.
So in John 15, we see
two kinds of connections with Christ as the vine (the merely cosmic which bears no fruit and the spiritual and vital which bears fruit). Without that vital union with Christ, there can be no life and no productivity. Those who profess to know Christ but whose relationship to Him is self-attached, He neither elected them, nor saved them, nor sustains them. Eventually, the dead self-attached fruitless branches are cut off.
It seems like we're saying the same thing, but then you seem to put works down in some way...
I only persist because I think this is dangerous for some out there who want to be Christian and do what they want, or do nothing, and still be a member of the Kingdom. So this is more for those following along than for you. Fran
I'm not putting works down, just clarifying that we are saved FOR good works and not by good works (Ephesians 2:10). Titus 3:8 - This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should
be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.
I don't promote a license to sin either:
1 Corinthians 6:9 - Or do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Such
were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
Galatians 5:19 - Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that
those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
1 John 3:9 -
No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.