Not By Works

What too many are failing to realize is the meaning of the term "works" as it was used back then.

Certain rabbis would concoct their list of "deeds/works" to do in order to secure eternal life.
That is why 'Rabbi' Jesus was often asked by Jews what one must to to inherit eternal life.
Rabbis would gather a following and disciples would learn his prescribed works to do.

That is "works."

A single work of believing?
Now that is not works, but something the Word of God tells us is so.

OKAY... back to the debate.
Knock yourselves out.

So? God jumps in you and does your believing for you!
I see...

Amazing! And, He won't even charge a penny to do so.

The work of God's grace is to make you able to do your own believing.
You do the believing. Not God.

How does God do that?
By the power of His grace he silences your flesh and allows your soul to freely choose.

Too deep?

Tell me what a DEAD man can do?


Ephesians 2:1-2

New King James Version

By Grace Through Faith
2 And you He made alive, who were DEAD in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,

It says what?

Dead in trespasses and sins.
Not simply dead.

Our trespasses and sins are the cause of man's spiritual death.

What causes spiritual death?
The flesh with its fallen nature having preeminence over your soul making your soul blind and deaf to God.
Hence... "Dead to God."

Now?
If your flesh could be removed?
Would your soul still reject God?

If the flesh could be removed?
Would your soul be free to decide about God?

That is what salvation is all about.
Grace places us in the same position the angels were in when they made their choice.

Grace is God's power that SILENCES the flesh and makes a soul enabled to choose for or against God... just like the angels did!!!

Tell me?
Are you dead to what I just said?

Think I hit a nerve.
Maybe your twisting Scripture nerve?

It also says HE made you alive BECAUSE YOU were dead.

I think Jesus knows what “dead” means:

Luke 9:60

New King James Version

60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.

Tell me, if you weren’t dead, why did you have to get born again?

Being born is not a resurrection.
Being born is not bringing something once dead back to life.
The second birth is God giving us a human spirit to make our soul alive to God - for the first time!

Spiritual death we are born into because of the fallen flesh that God can not impute spiritual life to unless the issues of the flesh are abolished by God.. That is what the Cross did for all mankind, not just for those who believe.
Yet?
Spiritually dead.. Physically alive.

What causes the spiritual death???? That is the key.

If the cause for spiritual death can be removed?
What does that leave as an option for your soul?

Salvation is about our soul.
God does not save the body.

It says our body has been crucified with Christ.

Until the resurrection?
There are now billions of souls without bodies knowing God in Heaven.
Why can they know God?


grace and peace ..............

Scripture says we are Spiritually dead.

In fact, That is the WHOLE point and purpose for the necessity of God sending His Son to die for us in the 1st place. To give us NEW LIFE!
By saying we are not dead, we negate that purpose.

So, our FLESH cannot CHOOSE to become spiritually born again. Please think on that a second.

GOD, is the One that has to do a work in us FIRST.
He quickens us, makes us new, by Grace through faith.

And WHERE does this faith come from?
Again, Ephesians tells us it's a gift from God.

Romans tells us this faith is ACTIVATED upon the hearing of the Gospel:

Romans 10:17

New King James Version

17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Greek "comes by"
1537. ek or ex
from out, out from among, from, suggesting from the interior outwards.

We hear the Gospel, the faith GOD put in us is activated, we are quickened, and THEN we choose Him.

Please meditate on this.

the wage of sin is death

The gift of God is life..

Understood.
And, that new life pertains to our mind and thinking.
Having ability to comprehend what we had been dead to before regeneration.

Question:

Was Satan spiritually dead when he chose to reject the Lord?

That was a serious question...

Abraham was sexually dead before Issac was to be conceived.....
He was dead. But, how?

We are not defining well enough what our death before regeneration actually is.
What is being spiritually dead mean?

His body was dead. thats not what I am talking about. the wage of sin is death, period..
Physical death is seperation of the body from the soul or spirit

spiritual death is seperation between us and God.

its not really all that difficult

Spiritual death is finding oneself born without a human spirit.

The be born the first time?
Your mother had to break water. (born of water = physical birth)

To be born the second time?
The Holy Spirit begets your human spirit.



The spiritually dead is someone yet lacking a human spirit. No regeneration yet.

We need a human spirit to be made alive to God by means of his Holy Spirit.

Until we are born again we are spiritually dead.

As well as being eye witnesses of the resurrection.

That was my point.

Or 'ought' to do.
Faith, repent, confess can be argued, are things that God works in His elect children.

Who's boasting if they simply believed? ?

It would be the man who religiously did all the works assigned to him by some rabbi.
That's who's boasting!
Not someone who simply believed, and found himself saved.

Here is the boaster....

There you have it.....

Yes, which is what I have been saying

Not all sin is worthy of death.
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die .Ezek 18:4
So either a person is under the law or they are not under the law. For sin is transgression of the law.

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? John 11:26

If dead a person is dead then they are not alive, A body without the spirit is dead, so if A = B then B = A which represents that if the spirit is dead then body is dead also.

Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. John 8:21

Considering the God rested from all his work which he had made, so if you sought then you worked.
And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Eccl 12:12

So we walk together then!


Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Amos 3:3

I think all of us should be OK with answering "I don't know". Or at least qualify our remarks with saying we are speculating.

Speculation is necessary here with your question because Scripture is silent on his spiritual status. He knew the Lord BEFORE he sinned, in his perfectly made body and being.

He is going to be cast into the LOF. ALL of him. So I don't know if he became spiritually dead after his rebellion. Seems likely to me though.

WE, are descended from Adam. Adam also knew the Lord in ways we can only imagine. Physically walking with Him, in an untainted body and Spirit. Adam had a choice. He had the power to say no to ALL sin. Every Time. We do not in the sense that we are his descendants AFTER he fell.

Genesis 5:3
New King James Version
3 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.


Seth, like every human being born after Adam's fall, was spiritually dead. That is why Jesus had to be sent. To offer us all New Spiritual Life.