What is Salvation by Faith?

Salvation by grace through faith is believing that Jesus Christ died and shed His blood on the cross of Calvary in your place as a sinner. He paid the price for your debt.

 

Salvation by faith:

One must define their terms when asking or explaining something these days.

'By faith' simply means that you are trusting in something without the benefit of seeing it.

For example; You walk across the room in your house and flip a switch to turn on the lights 'by faith' because you cannot see electricity. You can see what it does. You can see the results of its effects. You can even use its power but you cannot see it. But until you take some action 'by faith' that electricity will not help you one bit. It will continue to be available to you and to anyone who trusts its power but until you take action upon the offer of its power it is 'dead' or non-existant to you.

In like manner, we are saved 'by faith' in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross on our behalf.

Ok?

 

salvation by faith = salvation that is not biblical

salvation by grace through faith = biblican salvation

 

WRONG!!!

Ro 5:1
¶ Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

 

Read the rest of my post. The illustration makes it clear what I mean. But if you have trouble with that , then try this;

Joh 20:29
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

 

Amen and amen!

 

The question was about salvation, not justification.

 

Salvation IS justification for how does one get 'saved' w/o being justified?

 

Personally I don't think eternal salvation has anything to do with election, but that is another subject. To answer your question yes the possibility does exist that one might believe that s/he is saved, but in actuality not be saved.

There are millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buhdists, Mormans, etc. that "believe" but they "believe" in the wrong thing. There are a number of "Christian" denominations that have questionable at best ideas on salvation.

I was reading through one church's material the other day and it talked about walking forward and expressing one's love for Christ for the first time. That's EXTREMELY dangerous ground if you ask me. If we want to be solid on salvation then we need to be discussing the death and shed blood of Jesus on the behalf of sinners. And that is by God's grace and His grace alone.

 

That depends on whether or not we mean faith as the Bible means it or `believe' as in intellectual assent.

Some people believe that Jesus lived or maybe still lives, but do not do much about it nor see a need to. Such "believe" will not do it.

Now, biblical faith, that is a different matter. That is a faith that believes enough to actually want to do something with it. Galatians 5:6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, |but only | the kind of faith that works through love” (NASB|ESV|ICB).

James 2:14-26 builds on this. Although we are saved by faith before works are completed per Ephesians 2:8-10 and Romans 4:5, the faith must be the kind that would truly motivate us to act.

That being said, we can know if we are saved as 1 John 2:3 says: "By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments" (NASB). If our belief in the Gospel is enough to motivate us to obey, we know that we are saved.

 

You can not know, nor can I know someone else, but certainly you know whether or not you have believed in Christ or not. I know that I have believed that Christ died on the cross in my stead, died and shed His blood on my behalf, because I am spiritually dead and in need of a Savior. I know that I am saved, not based on me, but based on what God has told me through Scripture.

If I can never know for sure whether or not I am saved then what is the point of having Scripture? You just hope you do enough good things and when you die the good outweighs the bad?

That's not how Scripture lays it out. Scripture lays matters out so that we can know. I can know for myself and you can know for yourself and Joe Blow can know for himself, but I can't know for you or Joe Blow or anyone else. Salvation is an individual matter today.

Again it's not a matter of repeating something over and over and over again until you convince yourself of this reality. Faith is about believing what God said about a matter and it's over and done with.

Eternal salvation is not a lingering thing. You are either saved and it's time to move on to other things or you are not saved and you need to believe so that you can move on to other things

Because God doesn't speak in maybes. God speaks in certainties. If you believe you will be saved. Believe in the substitutionary death and shed blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God on your behalf a sinner and you are saved. There's no maybes. No hope sos. No might bes, could bes, want to bes, but believe and you ARE for sure no doubt about it saved.

When talking about eternal salvation the Bible says God's grace through faith is the ONLY thing that saves you. So I would say absolutely.

 

Your examples are talking about a faith that comes after the moment of salvation. It's not speaking to an eternal saving faith. If it is then salvation is not by grace, but by works, which makes the Bible a lie.

 

salvation and justification are different.

yes justification is important.

sanctification is even more important. progressive sanctification. which can only be done as a work of the Lord through us.