How to earn a free gift.

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Gideon300

Gideon300

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Mar 18, 2021
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Of course, the title of this post is absurd. A very quick phrase search on Bible Hub brings up at least 10 results for "free gift". If the giver asks for something in return, it is not a gift, neither is it free. Yet a few too many on this forum do not believe this fundamental truth.

God does not need what we have to offer Him from ourselves. As one man of God said, even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of Jesus. God requires no sacrifice from us. Lord Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. We cannot offer God anything that He does not have already.

The rich ruler asked what he had to do. Luke 18:18. Jesus told him. The price was too high. The one who did get saved was also likely rich. He was a tax collector. Yet he asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner (Luke 18:13). God answered that man's plea.

Zacchaeus was a crook, as most tax collectors were. They were pretty much like modern stand over men, extorting money over and above what even Rome's excesses required. What a contrast! Jesus came to Zacchaeus and invited Himself to lunch. Zac was so touched that he immediately had a change of heart. Lord Jesus placed no conditions on Zac. Yet he gave half his wealth to the poor and promised to repay those he had swindled.

Brethren, God has no interest in your claims about yourself. Many will say, "Lord, Lord, haven't we......" and proceed to boast about their works (Matthew 7:22). Jesus will tell them to depart and condemn their works as lawless.

You may claim that you are a good Christian because you obey the 10 commandments. Real Christianity is obedience to Lord Jesus, not to a set of rules. If you do not see the difference, you have my sympathy. Real Christianity flows from the new desires in the new spirit that God gave to us when we were born again. Love, joy, peace..... there is no law that can produce those characteristics.
 
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If I gave you $1,000,000 dollars and I said in order to have it all you have to do was sign your name on a piece of paper, does that negate that it is free? No. It is still free, just came with a condition. Maybe a better illustration would be if someone gave you 1 million dollars as a free gift, but specified that you had to go to the bank on 2nd street before 5pm today to sign papers for the transfer of money. If you go to the bank and sign the papers, you get the money, but you do not deserve the money, it is still a gift that the rich person gave to you out of the goodness of their heart. You would not go out of that bank and start telling everyone, I just earned a million dollars. That would be ridiculous. You would tell people that rich man who lives in town just gave me 1 million dollars. If someone said, well, what did you do for him? You would say not a thing, he literally gave it to me free of charge. If I say, I have a lawn mower at my house that you can have. I was planning on selling it, but since you need one, I will just give it to you, but you have to come and pick it up. You coming to pick it up did not change the fact that I gave it to you. It is yours, it is free, but to receive the free gift you have to come and pick it up. You gladly do this because you are accepting the gift.

There’s a big difference between meeting conditions and earning.
 
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Thanks a well read analogy of God's free gift of everlasting life, wow, I see it, thank you
Now I want to learn Counterfeit over real
Using a bank teller, that person can count money and by the feel know if the money they are counting is counterfeit by the feel of the paper alone
God has this gift for us each personally first, then loving the neighbor as self becomes real
 
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Blue155 said:
If I gave you $1,000,000 dollars and I said in order to have it all you have to do was sign your name on a piece of paper, does that negate that it is free? No. It is still free, just came with a condition. Maybe a better illustration would be if someone gave you 1 million dollars as a free gift, but specified that you had to go to the bank on 2nd street before 5pm today to sign papers for the transfer of money. If you go to the bank and sign the papers, you get the money, but you do not deserve the money, it is still a gift that the rich person gave to you out of the goodness of their heart. You would not go out of that bank and start telling everyone, I just earned a million dollars. That would be ridiculous. You would tell people that rich man who lives in town just gave me 1 million dollars. If someone said, well, what did you do for him? You would say not a thing, he literally gave it to me free of charge. If I say, I have a lawn mower at my house that you can have. I was planning on selling it, but since you need one, I will just give it to you, but you have to come and pick it up. You coming to pick it up did not change the fact that I gave it to you. It is yours, it is free, but to receive the free gift you have to come and pick it up. You gladly do this because you are accepting the gift.

There’s a big difference between meeting conditions and earning.
Click to expand...

Agree. Workphobes conflate effort with earning. We can't earn salvation, but we definitely can and must make efforts to guard the free gift we've received lest it drift away through carelessness.
 
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Blue155 said:
If I gave you $1,000,000 dollars and I said in order to have it all you have to do was sign your name on a piece of paper, does that negate that it is free? No. It is still free, just came with a condition. Maybe a better illustration would be if someone gave you 1 million dollars as a free gift, but specified that you had to go to the bank on 2nd street before 5pm today to sign papers for the transfer of money. If you go to the bank and sign the papers, you get the money, but you do not deserve the money, it is still a gift that the rich person gave to you out of the goodness of their heart. You would not go out of that bank and start telling everyone, I just earned a million dollars. That would be ridiculous. You would tell people that rich man who lives in town just gave me 1 million dollars. If someone said, well, what did you do for him? You would say not a thing, he literally gave it to me free of charge. If I say, I have a lawn mower at my house that you can have. I was planning on selling it, but since you need one, I will just give it to you, but you have to come and pick it up. You coming to pick it up did not change the fact that I gave it to you. It is yours, it is free, but to receive the free gift you have to come and pick it up. You gladly do this because you are accepting the gift.

There’s a big difference between meeting conditions and earning.
Click to expand...

This is a very good response but i think you can do better than this.
This goes back to cherry-picking the Bible as you've mentioned elsewhere in your posts.
In a 100-part story, some people pick section 58B and build a church around it.

Whereas in fact the story begins with "Love your God and Love your Neighbor".
And of course a lot of this can be a matter of understanding how people say things where you may see agreement.
But a lot of times is : I'm just gonna run over 100 people in the highway so i can pickup my free gift.
 
Eli1 said:
This is a very good response but i think you can do better than this.
This goes back to cherry-picking the Bible as you've mentioned elsewhere in your posts.
In a 100-part story, some people pick section 58B and build a church around it.

Whereas in fact the story begins with "Love your God and Love your Neighbor".
And of course a lot of this can be a matter of understanding how people say things where you may see agreement.
But a lot of times is : I'm just gonna run over 100 people in the highway so i can pickup my free gift.
Click to expand...
Some years ago, brother in Christ messaged me on a social media site and told me if I gave him my mailing address, he would mail a book to me for free of charge. That was grace on his part and it had conditions. The condition was I had to give him my mailing address. The other condition of course would be when it got delivered or brought to me, I would have to freely receive it. Since I had to do those things, did that change the fact that the gift was free? Absolutely not. It was a free gift that he gave to me, and he gave me conditions.

All of these conditions of what to do to receive the gifts did not come from me, but from the gift giver. The giver of the gifts has the right to set conditions.
 
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Blue155 said:
Some years ago, brother in Christ messaged me on a social media site and told me if I gave him my mailing address, he would mail a book to me for free of charge. That was grace on his part and it had conditions. The condition was I had to give him my mailing address. The other condition of course would be when it got delivered or brought to me, I would have to freely receive it. Since I had to do those things, did that change the fact that the gift was free? Absolutely not. It was a free gift that he gave to me, and he gave me conditions.

All of these conditions of what to do to receive the gifts did not come from me, but from the gift giver. The giver of the gifts has the right to set conditions.
Click to expand...

100% correct.
And if we zoom out even more, all the items in the story or, everything in our existence, are a free gift by God and He wants followers who love Him out of free will in order to have the fellowship that we had at The Garden.
 
Solitude said:
The gift of salvation is only for the obedient.
Click to expand...

What scripture are you using to support this?

Continuous obedience doesn't meet the mark of God's requirements. The Pharisees and scribes couldn't keep the obedience although they believed they were made righteous by their obedience to the law.

Here is the Father's will initially for conversion:

(Joh 6:40) And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

The requirement is believing on the Son, Jesus. Not a continuous following of commandments.

(Joh 5:24) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

This says the same thing.. belief on the Lord Jesus Christ and you have everlasting life.

I could go on and on.. not just with the book of John, but with the likes of Romans 5:8, 10:9-10 etc etc..

Following the commandments faithfully is the right response to having received eternal life, not the means of receiving eternal life.
If a believer fails in following the commands, they will received prompting and correction from God, but not removal of eternal life. Eternal means eternal.
 
Gideon300 said:
Of course, the title of this post is absurd. A very quick phrase search on Bible Hub brings up at least 10 results for "free gift". If the giver asks for something in return, it is not a gift, neither is it free. Yet a few too many on this forum do not believe this fundamental truth.

God does not need what we have to offer Him from ourselves. As one man of God said, even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of Jesus. God requires no sacrifice from us. Lord Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. We cannot offer God anything that He does not have already.

The rich ruler asked what he had to do. Luke 18:18. Jesus told him. The price was too high. The one who did get saved was also likely rich. He was a tax collector. Yet he asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner (Luke 18:13). God answered that man's plea.

Zacchaeus was a crook, as most tax collectors were. They were pretty much like modern stand over men, extorting money over and above what even Rome's excesses required. What a contrast! Jesus came to Zacchaeus and invited Himself to lunch. Zac was so touched that he immediately had a change of heart. Lord Jesus placed no conditions on Zac. Yet he gave half his wealth to the poor and promised to repay those he had swindled.

Brethren, God has no interest in your claims about yourself. Many will say, "Lord, Lord, haven't we......" and proceed to boast about their works (Matthew 7:22). Jesus will tell them to depart and condemn their works as lawless.

You may claim that you are a good Christian because you obey the 10 commandments. Real Christianity is obedience to Lord Jesus, not to a set of rules. If you do not see the difference, you have my sympathy. Real Christianity flows from the new desires in the new spirit that God gave to us when we were born again. Love, joy, peace..... there is no law that can produce those characteristics.
Click to expand...
The content of a free gift can be the experience of doing something, such as giving someone the opportunity to experience driving a Ferrari where the gift intrinsically requires them to do the work of driving it in order to have that experience, but where doing that work does not detract from the fact that the opportunity to drive it was completely given as a free gift.

Similarly, the content of God's gifts of eternal life is the experience of knowing Him and Jesus (John 17:3) and the gift of the Mosaic Law is His instructions for how to have that experience, not for how to be good enough to earn it. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know Him, and in Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven in contrast with saying that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so the goal of the Mosaic Law is to graciously teach us how to know God and Jesus, which is His gift of eternal life. The reason why our entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven requires us to do the will of the Father by being workers of lawfulness is not in order to be good enough to earn it, but because that is the way to know Jesus. In Luke 10:25-28, Jesus affirmed that the way to inherit eternal life is by obeying the greatest two commandments of the Mosaic Law, and something that we inherit is a free gift, so Jesus was speaking about the way to experience the gift of eternal life, not about the way to be good enough to earn it.

In Titus 2:11-13, the content of our gift of salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so doing those works in obedience to the Law of Moses has nothing to do with trying to be good enough to earn our salvation, but rather God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of those works is part of the content of His gift of salvation.
 
wattie said:
What scripture are you using to support this?

Continuous obedience doesn't meet the mark of God's requirements. The Pharisees and scribes couldn't keep the obedience although they believed they were made righteous by their obedience to the law.

Here is the Father's will initially for conversion:

(Joh 6:40) And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

The requirement is believing on the Son, Jesus. Not a continuous following of commandments.

(Joh 5:24) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

This says the same thing.. belief on the Lord Jesus Christ and you have everlasting life.

I could go on and on.. not just with the book of John, but with the likes of Romans 5:8, 10:9-10 etc etc..

Following the commandments faithfully is the right response to having received eternal life, not the means of receiving eternal life.
If a believer fails in following the commands, they will received prompting and correction from God, but not removal of eternal life. Eternal means eternal.
Click to expand...
There is no scripture to show that those who are disobedient go to heaven.
 
Gideon300 said:
Which is?
Click to expand...
one must have the kind of belief that obeys the gospel (2 Thess. 1:8), that form of doctrine from the heart which was delivered (Rom. 6:17). How does one obey the gospel..how does one obey that form of doctrine from the heart which was delivered? Does Paul explain it in chapter 6? Does Peter tell how to respond to the gospel call of salvation in Acts 2, which led people obeying from the heart that form of doctrine?
 
Blue155 said:
one must have the kind of belief that obeys the gospel (2 Thess. 1:8), that form of doctrine from the heart which was delivered (Rom. 6:17). How does one obey the gospel..how does one obey that form of doctrine from the heart which was delivered? Does Paul explain it in chapter 6? Does Peter tell how to respond to the gospel call of salvation in Acts 2, which led people obeying from the heart that form of doctrine?
Click to expand...
You've not answered the question. It's OK, I'll leave you to think about it.
 
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