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Originally Posted by shazeep
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The overall bible says salvation is not by our works. .. whether they're in love or not.
yet we have Do not be deceived, little children. So i doubt that we define "love" very well, either, it can seem cruel. Love can also be faked; it is better possibly to say "righteousness."
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yet we have Do not be deceived, little children. So i doubt that we define "love" very well, either, it can seem cruel. Love can also be faked; it is better possibly to say "righteousness."
yet we have Not all who call on the Lord will be saved!
amen, unfortunately, it is all too easy to direct people into an OSAS understanding, creating a faith that finds fault, which doesn't work.
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There is no "faith that finds fault" that we are discussing when that faith without works is mentioned as the means of salvation. The Word of God is the element that found fault. It declared all are unrighteous due to Adam's disobedience. But it also reveals help. Christ's obedience, NOT OURS, makes us righteous.
And "do not be deceived" is written in many places, every instance of which has a context. And the context is not, "No one can know what the word actually teaches, so never apply statements that say the cross is absolutely essential to salvation to people who reject the cross, for those who apply the word as it is written to situations it has already condemned have been deceived."
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The cross. Nothing but the blood.
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yet we have Not all who call on the Lord will be saved!
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Exactly. Because along with the faith in the blood to save, there is the additional follow-up teaching that AFTER we are saved, we need to extend love to all and take up our own crosses and deny self. But it is putting the cart before the horse to say taking up OUR CROSSES saves us and THEN we accept Christ's righteousness as ours due to his proxy death on the cross for our righteousness.
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Works follow. Faith that works is what saves.
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amen, unfortunately, it is all too easy to direct people into an OSAS understanding, creating a faith that finds fault, which doesn't work.
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Not so. It's simple. His work saves us, and we must take our crosses up AFTER we are saved, and if we don't do this AFTER we are saved, we will lose that salvation. Already explained.
That is not an answer.
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Can any religion save anyone?
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Religion does not save any more than our acts of love saves. The work of the cross applied in the heart by faith saves.
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i guess you might say "yes." But many will cry "Lord, Lord," and all who call on the Name of the Lord are not accepted.
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Amen, because after we are saved, we have to take up pour crosses and follow Him. Already explained many times.
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To directly answer your question, i would not want to hazard a guess.
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It's simple. Islam rejects the cross, and since the cross is the only means of salvation, then Islam cannot save.
Again, the BIBLE made that conclusion not me.
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But i suspect the question is naive and irrelevant. God judges the heart, but we insist upon the mechanics of Acts 2:38.
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Strawman. God judges the heart and demands the heart to have the faith that the death, burial and resurrection applied in
Acts 2:38 is what saves, not our works of love.
Acts 2:38 when experienced properly is based on the HEART that has faith in the cross that God sees and requires to deem us righteous.
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What does it matter if you win the argument--say i flip and start agreeing with you, so what--and miss salvation?
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Again, you are hung up on what WE think of each other or consider in each other. This has nothing to do with us. It only has to do with God looking for a heart that believes the work of the cross is our only salvation. If I see someone who CLAIMS they believe and undergo
Acts 2:38, I can only take their word for it. But I do not really know if they had the faith required, because only God sees the heart. So, I leave that up to God.
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I might become accepted for saying the right things in the right places, and go to hell!
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EXACTLY!
All we can tell people is they have to genuinely believe and then proceed to take up their crosses to MAINTAIN that free gift of salvation, or they'll lose it. What they actually believe in their hearts only God can know. We can see fruit, but even FRUIT CAN BE FAKED. So, ultimately, we leave that to God. But that's no excuse to say we cannot know what it takes to be saved.
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One cannot fool God with empty works, either;
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Exactly what I just said.
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Job conscientiously tried. Even being righteous was not good enough for God, who wants a personal relationship.
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Job never had the righteousness which is of God. Different covenant, before the cross. God applied his faith in his then-present covenant to the cross when Jesus actually made atonement, since that covenant pointed to the cross anyway, unlike Islam.
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You could do righteous works the rest of your life, and if you are hoping that you are getting saved by them, your heart is in the wrong place.
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Exactly. But even if the heart was in the right place, those works do not save anyone. Those are works that FOLLOW actual salvation.
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This person would not be humble, could not apologize, etc. so don't get me wrong.
We are really pretty much agreeing i think; i have just lost the need to insist upon a human formula for salvation that may not produce salvation at all,
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Acts 2:38 is not a human formula. It can be faked by lack of actual faith in the cross to save us, which I think some have done. They treat it like others can treat salvation by their acts of love. They can make it a work. But genuine faith in the cross won't let someone do that.
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and likely works more against the Kingdom than for it. And this was not an easy step for me; it was quite scary in fact. I had to admit that either only OPs go to heaven, or everything i had been taught was from men.
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Wadr, I think you got burnt so bad by those whom you loved that you threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Put it this way, I think you saw Muslims love and be kind better than the Christians you knew, and so you thought something was offkey, but got yourself off target, since there are REAL Christians saved with the genuine article of
Acts 2:38 faith and obedience that you did not consider. But even if everyone OP did not have the correct faith that saves and then works later, and more muslims had actual love than they, that still does not save muslims, and there is a real faith in
Acts 2:38 obedience that still is the only way. I really think you need to take a closer look at CONTEXT in an y given statement, by learning the overall truth about any given issue in all passages dealing with it, and realize they're all saying the same thing TOGETHER as a whole.