Living Christ and thinking Christ, the difference

Some say faith is enough. Faith is believing, it is in the mind; can faith be enough or must we live our faith? I am following this question with my scripture interpretation that tells me we must live our faith. What is your interpretation of scripture?

When Christ enters our hearts and minds it changes the way we live. Some say that to live for Christ is works, and works doesn’t save. The Lord does not look at our works to base our eternal life on. We cannot work our way to perfection, our only perfection so we can live eternally with the Lord is through the forgiveness of our sin through Christ.

At the same time, we cannot be a person with a will to sin and also have Christ within. Christ cannot live with sin, Christ cleans us of sin. We can know this, have faith in that this can happen to us, but hug our sin to ourselves so we try to have both Christ within and the sin we want to keep. That is impossible, Christ cannot live with sin.

The Lord knows we are human. Paul explained it in Romans 7:15-20 when he told us he does what he does not want to do. God looks at our repentant, not on our ability to be perfect.

There are people alive today because I’m Christian. That’s no joke.

Faith is not just "in the mind." When we know God personally, it enters into the innermost parts of our being, out of which spring our actions. Thus, we learn more and more to live and walk by faith, and the works we do were prepared in advance by God, Who works all things to the good for those who love Him

Romans 8:28

First we must understand, Who has spiritual faith. The natural man, before he has been regenerated, does not have spiritual faith, as spiritual faith is a fruit of the Spirit, and only comes with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual faith can deliver (save) us as we sojourn here in this world, but it is not the cause of us getting eternal deliverance, but is a product of already having the promise of eternal heaven.

Eternal life is given by God's sovereign grace, without the works of mankind. The good life that we can live as we sojourn here on earth is given by God because of our good works.

Much confusion of God's children comes about by not being able to understand, and separate, these two lives.

Salvation is "a deliverance". There is an eternal deliverance, and there is a deliverance we can experience as we sojourn here in this world.

8But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation

I agree, salvation is the first step and it is so important it is life or death.

I have people say to me, when I discuss scripture with them, that they are only interested in something that saves. Of what importance is living our faith after we are made righteous through Christ? Lots of scripture is about how the saved person is to live, of what importance are those scriptures?

We want to know what this being in Christ life is about ,now we are in him . Every new believer is excited when he is saved and can't wait to learn more about Jesus. But its not long before he is bombarded with the legalists and the Lordshippers telling him how he's not saved until he gets to heaven and he better not mess up in the mean time.

I wish someone would exdplain to me why Christians respond to instructions from the Lord by saying "you say you are not saved until........" There is no words of thiis kind when we discuss how to live after we are saved, yet these "not saved" words are so often inserted it is almost a rule. And sugestons for living are so often labelled legalistic. It is as if everything apart from lawlessness is considered legalistic, yet a legalist obeys the rules without the spirit. A Christian obeys the spirit of the law, and that spirit often corresponds to the rules.

And what of grace ? The bible seems to indicate that its Grace that teaches us to live Godly Titus 2 .11-13 . And Hope of the Lords return purifies. 1 john 3.3 . And that Law was to drive to faith.

Grace and God is in the word. Grace uses the word. The word is for our instruction.

2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;

AMEN, the wall of Jericho fell down by FAITH...

Magenta, you are very wise, Jesus' basic principle is, 'if we want to increase our FAith,
we must increase our Love...
as it is written',
Faith works by Christ's Love...

om gosh,
if hub and I could just grab ahold of you two,
we just might squeeze you both so much that
you would lose your breath!!!

Romans 10:9

True living faith will bear fruit. The fruit issues forth from a good tree by nature, not by force or a sense of obligation. By fruits shall ye know what kind of trees they are. God wants our "want to", not our "I think I have to".

As a man thinks, so he is.
To attempt to create a dichotomy between the mind and the emotions is a foolishness. The pietist made this argument against the scholastic in the 1700, and it's just false.

I don't think anyone who is turly born again actively lives in sin, yes there are certain sins that different people are weakest to and may even struggle for years with but the heart of a believer is what makes the difference. The born again believer recieves a new heart a new mind a new spirit and is likened to how we are born from the waters of the fleshly womb to born of the waters of his spirit so if you are a new creation then that creation does not live in sin and never would because lets be honest here even though sin is pleasing to the flesh the heart of a believer only sees one thing they crave more than their next breath and that is him.

Some poeple try to use his grace as an excuse to sin and do as they please but the thing is you cannot be born of the flesh and be born of the spirit these lukewarm types are at a cross road. The faith of a believer in my opinion is not in the mind because the mind is to easily confused filled with doubt mislead and decieved
The faith of a believer to me lies with the heart I had actually had to go through several months this year where I had to choose to trust him, normally trusting him comes easily to me but in such storms our minds can easily take us down so I had to shut it off forget all my fears doubt worry all of it and hand him the situation and trust him with it

In such storms the heart and mind can often be at odds this is when faith is really tested which voice will you listen to the voice of reason doubt fear and stress or the still small voice inside.