Tammy this is a salvation issue. Salvation is the most important thing in anyones’ life. Baptism is seen in the Scriptures as believe and THEN be baptized. Little children aren’t able to believe.
As for salvation you must repent of ALL your sins and trust and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. IT is a free gift to all those that turn from their sin.
I came from a Catholic home some 40 years and you ultimately believe in a system that is man made. It is an old religion but that doesn’t make it right. When I was born again in 1996 my life changed and I know for certain that I will be in heaven one day. No purgatory for me.It’s about knowing that your salvation is a sure thing. The sacraments don’t do anything for you. where do you find the sacraments in the Bible? Oh right the Bible is not your authority. Case closed. I will pray for your salvation

The 10 commandments expose sin(Romans 3:20, 7:7), makes everyone guilty of not being able to keep them perfectly as God requires(James 2:10-11), minister death(2 Corinthians, Romans 7:5, 12-13), can’t justify a lost sinner(Galatians 2:16), doesn’t provide righteousness(Galatians 2:21), can’t give life(Galatians 3:21), and don’t give freedom(Galatians 4:8-10). The Law is simply a condemnation of all mankind…the schoolmaster(Galatians 3:24-26). Only a person in Christ enpowered by Him can begin to keep them…because they are God’s workmanship. Therefore, it is not the keeping that saves…it is Christ’s perfection that is a believer’s propitiation before God.

Ephesians 2:8-10 (quoted above) is highly relevant to this question that Nate B and I are asking. Would you mind answering it?

I’ll repost it here:

To clarify the difference of “works” and “works of the Law,” Ephesians 2:8-10 clarifies the issue.

8For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
10For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

V.9 – not as a result of works.
V.10 – so that we do works.

There’s no difference (if we take the text w/o importing outside [Roman] authority) between the works apart from which we are saved by faith and the works we’re prepared for by Jesus.

What is your answer to that? It looks like your “works” vs “works of the Law” distinction does not hold water in regards to the question of justification.

I must say that you are VERY charitable and ask your questions in a very thoughtful manner..I hope that I may respond in the same way..

You said: Do you think that Clement was speaking of “works of the Law” when he wrote the following?

I say: No, he is speaking to Christians. But you have to look at the context of what he is saying, which is completely in line with Catholic teaching.. Let’s look at what he said:

are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith.

He is saying that we are not justified by any of these in and of themselves..but by faith.. AMEN..which is the Catholic position. You do know that he was a Bishop of Rome (Pope) right?

You also asked me: Out of curiosity, how exactly would you define “works of the Law”? You say that “good deeds are not works of the Law.” But would you consider keeping the Ten Commandments (which is the heart of the Mosaic Code) to be “works of the Law”?

I say: In Matthew 19:17-19, Jesus commands us to keep the 10 commandments..That’s good enough for me..

AMEN brother K.

I appreciate this forum. There is very intelligent discussions and debate without slander from all. May we all continue to walk in the fear of God (fear properly understood biblical).

I don’t mean to recycle my thoughts, but once again, I feel we lose sight of the significance of the Cross and it ineffable significance. Too many debates get into intellectual assent (can be interesting) but I like to bottom line it in all of my apologetical effort centering on the Cross. New life begins here and it is my contention that the church has lost its way because they have lost the significance of the Cross. This makes sense because the Cross convicts man of his unrighteousness and it is much easy to engage in Greek oriented discussion over the Hebrew desire to walk in wisdom. Just my observation.

I don’t usually do long posts, but here goes (sorry for its length, but I will end my part here). I beleive the following will put an end to the confusion about works or any type of effort and show the clearity of justifcation by faith alone.
–Thanks for listening.

Back to the Cross…
Jesus was God’s own son. So who really killed Jesus? God did! It was God’s will to crush His own son. (Is 53:10) God did not spare his own Son (Rom 8:32, 3:25) God planned His own Son’s death by the hands of wicked men.

Jesus was very God of very God. He was the Word, in the beginning with God and all things were made through him and the Word became flesh. (Jn 1:1-3, 14). He was deity that was utterly innocent in his suffering. (1 Pet 2:22). He embraced his own death with authority. (Jn 10:17-18). Jesus chose to die. His Father ordained it. Jesus embraced it. Jesus rose from the dead! His work was finished and the resurrection was proof that God was satisfied.

Jesus Absorbed the Wrath of God-Gal 3:13, Rom 3:25, 1Jn 4:10
God is just. God is loving. His love is willing to meet the demands of his justice. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, and might (Deut 6:5) but all men have loved other things more. (idolatry) This is what dishonoring God is. Thus we have all fallen short of God’s glory. (Rom 3:23) We glorify God when we enjoy Him most, not when we enjoy other things most. The seriousness of the insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted, in this case the Creator. He is worthy of all respect, admiration and loyalty. Failure to love Him is treason, defaming God, which is a crime against God.

God is just and crimes must be punished. He feels a holy wrath against them. For the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23; Ezek 18:4). God in His love sent His son to absorb this wrath and bear the curse for all who trust Him. (Gal 3:13) Jesus removed God’s wrath by being a substitute in our place. He diverted the wrath of God from us to Himself. It is God who first loved us by sending us His Son to be the wrath (propitiation) for our sins (1Jn 4:10).

We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of God’s wrath against us

Jesus Pleased His Heavenly Father—Is 53:10, Eph 5:2
Jesus accepted His mission from His Father in heaven. God planned this from the beginning (2Tim 1:9). Jesus was to be smitten by God in our place (Is 53:4-6). This was all God’s idea from the beginning. It was the will of the Lord to crush Him and put Him to grief (Is 53:10). There is a paradox present here; the suffering of Christ is an outpouring of God’s wrath because of sin and also a beautiful act of submission and obedience to the will of the Father. Jesus cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46) This suffering of Christ was a fragrance to God. Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph 5:2). God did the impossible by pouring out His wrath on His own Son and the Son’s willingness to receive it was precious in God’s sight.

Jesus Learned Obedience & Perfection—Heb 5:8, 2:10
Jesus was made perfect through suffering. He was also without sin. Christ was tempted in every respect, yet without sin! (Heb 4:15) Jesus learned obedience though suffering as he encountered each new trial. He experienced the emotions, appetites, and temptations of life—anger, hunger, grief, pain—and His heart was perfectly in love with God (1Pet 2:22). He was made perfect through suffering and thus gradually fulfilling the perfect righteousness that He had to have in order to save us. He didn’t need to be baptized because He was a sinner, it was to fulfill all righteousness (Mt 3:15). He fulfilled His true humanity making it possible to call us his brothers & sisters (Heb 2:17).

Jesus Suffered & Died to Achieve His Own Resurrection From the Dead—Heb13:20-21
Jesus’ death was the price that obtained His resurrection. God brought Him from the dead “by the blood of the eternal covenant.” This is the blood of Jesus! The blood is His death. Salvation would not take place by mere bleeding, it was His bleeding to death that makes the blood-shedding crucial. He was raised by the blood-shedding. The death of Christ was so perfect and so fulfilling that the resurrection was the reward and vindication of Christ’s achievement in death. This satisfied the wrath of God. The holy curse against sin was fully absorbed. The obedience of Christ was completed to the fullest measure. The price of forgiveness was totally paid. The righteousness of God was completely vindicated. All that was left was the public endorsement and this was seen in the raising of Jesus from the dead.

Was the resurrection the fulfillment for salvation?
The Bible says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1Cor 15:17) The resurrection is not the price paid for sins, the resurrection proves the death of Jesus is an all-sufficient price. If Jesus did not rise from the dead His death was indeed a failure. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father and the success of His suffering and death was vindicated. By the blood of the eternal covenant the Great Shepard has been raised and lives forever!

Jesus Showed the Wealth of God’s Love & Grace for Sinners—Rom 5:7-8, Jn 3:16, Eph 1:7
God’s love is shown by the degree of His sacrifice in saving us from the penalty of our sin and our unworthiness we had when He saved us. He gave His only sin (Jn3:16) as Christ or “Anointed One” or “Messiah.” These are terms of great dignity. The Messiah was to be the King of Israel who would conquer the Romans and bring peace and security to Israel. Christ was the King of the World—this is who God sent to save sinners! The crucifixion Jesus suffered makes this sacrificial love powerful. Our unworthiness makes this love all the more amazing. (Rom 5:7-8) We deserved divine punishment, not sacrifice.

Jesus Cancelled the Legal Demands of the Law Against Us—Col 2:13
To think good deeds can have any merit with God is simply folly (foolishness, idiocy). Good deeds are defective because of their motive—they don’t honor God in the way we do them. Are our good deeds done in joyful dependence on God with a view to making known His supreme worth? It always seems to comes back to the issue of glory—Gods or ours. Do we serve people “by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ”? (1 Pet 4:11)

We are taught that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Rom 14:23). This is extremely humbling to consider. Can our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds? Does God use a behavioral scale towards us? Without Christ-exalting faith, our deeds will signify nothing but rebellion. God does not save by good deeds. We are not saved because of the consequences of our good deeds weighed less than our bad. We are saved because the record of our debt in heaven has been nailed to the cross of Christ! Hope in deeds is foolishness and deception. Our only hope is in the suffering and death of Christ.

Salvation is not by balancing records but by canceling records! Our bad deeds and defective good deeds, along with the just penalties for each that we so rightly deserve must be blotted out—not balanced! The cancellation happened when the record of our deeds was nailed to the cross (Col 2:13). It is the person of Jesus Christ who endured my damnation. Hope is in Christ and faith is the only way to God. Each person must present themselves to God alone. We are free from the law of works and can live by grace if we repent in the most relational sense before God, admitting we are guilty of lawlessness and the debt to be paid. We will never appreciate the work of the Cross until we understand our guilt before God!

Jesus Became a Ransom (payment) for Many—Mark 10:45
Satan was never paid off to let sinners be saved. Satan was defeated when Christ died! It was through death that Christ destroyed the one who has the power of death. (Heb 2:14). Christ did not negotiate. What did Jesus mean when He said He came to give His life as a ransom? (Mk 10:45) Was the focus on who gets the payment? No! It was on His own life as payment. It was on His freedom in serving rather than being served. It was on the “many” who will benefit from the payment He made.

Who received this ransom?
Was it man? Again, no! It was God! Christ gave Himself up for us as an offering to God. (Eph 5:2) He was without blemish to God. (Heb 9:14)

Why did we need a substitute before God?
It is because we sinned against God and fell short of His glory. (Rom 3:23) It is because of our sin the whole world is held accountable to God. (Rom 3:19) When Christ gave Himself up as a ransom for us, we are freed from the condemnation of God. Those in Christ Jesus have no condemnation! (Rom 8:1)

What is the ultimate captivity we need to be released from?
Is it ourselves? Is it this world? Is it our problems? The ultimate captivity we need to be released from is the final judgment of God. (Rom 2:2; Rev 14:7) The ransom price of this release is the life of Christ and His life given up in death. Jesus knew His future. He told His disciples, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him.” (Mk 9:31) Jesus called Himself, “Son of Man” to describe Himself over sixty-five times in the Gospels. This phrase had a ring of mortality to it. Men can die. This is why He had to become a man. The ransom only could be paid by the Son of Man as a life given up in death.

The price Jesus paid was not coerced (forced or pressured) from Him. This is why Jesus came to serve and not be served. He needed no service from us. He was the giver, not the receiver. Jesus said, “No one takes my life from Me, but I lay it down on my own accord.” (Jn 10:18) The price Jesus paid was done freely which brings us back to His amazing love for us. He freely chose to rescue us at the cost of His own life!

How many did Christ effectively ransom from sin? He said He gave His life as a ransom for many. This tells us that not everyone will be ransomed from power of death and the wrath of God. But the offer of Christ is there for everyone. Christ is the one mediator between God and man who gave Himself as a ransom. (1 Tim 2:5-6)

“This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet” De Wette III, 61. quoted in O’Hare, THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER, 208.

“Noblemen, townsmen, peasants, all classes understand the Evangelium better than I or St. Paul; they are now wise and think themselves more learned than all the ministers.” Walch XIV, 1360. quoted in O’Hare, Ibid, 209.

“We concede — as we must — that so much of what they [the Catholic Church] say is true: that the papacy has God’s word and the office of the apostles, and that we have received Holy Scriptures, Baptism, the Sacrament, and the pulpit from them. What would we know of these if it were not for them?” Sermon on the gospel of St. John, chaps. 14 – 16 (1537), in vol. 24 of LUTHER’S WORKS, St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1961, 304.

Jesus says in Matthew 28:

19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit.

It is plain to see that Jesus commands the Trinitarian formula for baptism.. (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)

But some “oneness Christians” look at Acts 2:38 below and say.. ” Peter said the formula is in the name of Jesus so that’s what I’ll do, plus it said “name” not “names” so there must not be a Trinity…doesn’t make sense does it..

38 Peter (said) to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit

Read the link below to a “oneness” sermon against the Trinity.

http://onenesschristian.org/audio/TrinityHeresySermonJNAHC04072007.html

“scripture alone” is obviously not clear or we would not have 30,000 + denominations all saying they are right and preaching something different..

Even Luther was frustrated after he opened pandora’s box on “sola scriptura”…read below in his own words.

Commentary on St. John, “We are compelled to concede to the Papists that they have the Word of GOD, that we received it from them, and that without them we should have no knowledge of it at all.”

Everything appears to be running properly from our end. If you can’t get it to work, email me and we’ll try and trouble shoot.

I’ll be offline now until tomorrow morning. We do apologize for any problems that might be coming from our end.

- NB