How do we judge "kind" of faith?

James 2:14-26 provides the basis in the court of human observation for evidential justification by faith before God. A lost professor sooner or later is exposed by their life because they have no power to live the Christian life. Church discipline is the response of Baptist Churches to evidential lack of justification by faith. If chastening returns them to repentance that is evidential of true justification by faith and their baptism remains valid in the eyes of the congregation. However, if chastening does not bring repentance, then their baptism as well as their profession is for all practical purposes discounted as genuine and valid.

However, I am not convinced that the Russian Orthodox Church defines justification by faith in a Biblical sense. I believe they confuse regeneration with ordinances and thus with justification.

 

Can you give me a couple more sentences to explain this?

 

I have explained this in detail in many sentences to you in the article that you never responded to. I refer you to that thread.

 

How do you differentiate between a person who backslides, a person with no power, or a person who has power but is not willing to to become more santified because of their assured position. Observationally, it all looks the same to an outside observer. BTW Orthodox, Just Orthodox, Russian is a region, churches do not confuse regeneration with ordinances.

 

Articles take more time to reply to. By the time I was working on my reply, the thread was closed. I presumed the opportunity to reply had passed. I was hoping here that you could be a bit more succinctly so that I could address that more specifically. I guess that just won't happen. Perhaps the only things that I can get in short replies from you are short scripture references that don't directly answer questions or create two thoughts that aren't just quotes from scripture.

 

Most of the churches in so-called "Christendom" confuse them.
A good example is the RCC. They believe in Baptismal Regeneration, that is that baptism saves. Even in their catechism it says that baptism is the new birth. Baptism is an ordinance (but to them a sacrament), and therefore salvic. Thus they confuse Biblical regeneration with what should be an ordinance.

The same thing is done in the "celebration of the Mass," where the wine becomes the actual blood of Jesus and the bread, the actual body of Jesus. Superstitious, yes. But from a Biblical standpoint salvation is mixed up with the elements of the Lord's Table. Many other churches under the umbrella of Christendom have similar heresies.

 

That is about as logical as the Hindu's belief that when he baptizes himself in the polluted waters of the Ganges River, all of his sins are being washed away. It is the same concept. Water washes away sin.

 

Doesn't 1 Corinthians 10 tell us the intent of baptism?

1Cr 10:1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;

6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.​

Isn't it a symbolic, outward expression of our repentance and submission to the law?

Mar 1:4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

Eze 18:21 But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.
22 All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.​

 

Baptism identifies them with Moses but their life did not identify them with Moses. Their life identified them with lusts. Later, in the same chapter he would make the same argument in regard to the Lord's table. Partaking at the Lord's table identified them with Christ but their practice of going to the pagan feasts identified them with demons.

One of the earliest uses of "bapto" was in the dyeing industry. The material was immersed into a dye until it identified with the color of the dye. Hence, "bapto" suggests a secondary idea of identfication with something or someone. Paul's point is that what Israel symbolically identified with in baptism was not what they literally identified with by their practices. The same was true with the Corinthians. What they symbolically identified with in the Lord's Supper was not what they literally identified with when they attended the tables of the pagans.

The short response is No! Baptism does not symbolize OUR submission to the law but symbolically identifies us with Christ's satisfaction of the Law in our behalf. His death satisfies the full penalty of the Law for our sin. His resurrection declares the satisfation of the law's righteous demands for our justification. Baptism does publicly identify us with the life and doctrines of of Christ just as baptism unto Moses symbolicaly identified Israel with the doctrine and practice of Moses (type of Christ).

New Testament baptism is the baptism "of repentance" as it is the public symbolic act of identification with repentance toward God and faith in Christ. John preached Christ (Jn. 1:29; 3:36; Acts 19:4) and there is no "good news" about Christ until first you deal with the bad news about your own sinfulness.
Jesus preached repentance (Lk. 13:3,6) and the Great Commission to ALL NATIONS is that of "repentance" (Lk. 24:47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.)

 

I have a point of contention with this. I don't think His death satisfies the full penalty of the Law on our behalf, else we would not experience death.

Rom 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.​

Does the scriptures say that the law is fulfilled in us? In fact, isn't the death of our flesh the fulfillment of the law? There are two ways to fullfill the law; do not sin and live, or sin and die - both fulfill the law. Isn't that the point of Romans 7:1-3 that we are free from the law because the law has been fulfilled in our death... and now that we are dead, the law no longer has jurisdiction over us? Doesn't this verse say that God condemned sin in the flesh, so that it would die with our sinful flesh though our spirit would live on in Christ?