Oeste
Well-Known Member
Can you have faith and not salvation? Can you have salvation and not faith (dead faith)?
Both faith and salvation are works of the Spirit. Faith is the instrument (work) by which God brings us salvation. We receive faith because of God's grace and mercy. This is through the love of God (Ephesians 4-5) and not because we earned or deserved it (Ephesians 2:5, Ephesians 2:16). This work (faith) comes in the form of a gift. (Ephesians 2:8). Because faith and salvation are of God, it avoids the tendency for us to think more highly of ourselves than we should (Romans 12:3). In other words, it takes away the boast of ourselves (Romans 3:27) and confers all the glory of our salvation to the proper place: God.
How was this glory manifest? Through the cross:
While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn't often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)
Our salvation comes in our faith and regeneration (God's acts, not our own) and for His glory. He has brought the unrighteous into righteousness through the blood of Christ.
Can you have salvation and not faith? I don't see how. If you have salvation you still have the faith (from God) that came with it which brought you to salvation. So your faith can be dead but your salvation... which is in Christ (2 Timothy 2:10)... is very much alive. The only way salvation dies for the regenerate believer is if Christ did not rise on the 3rd day.
But the question here is whether you can have faith without works which is different than one about faith without salvation. The answer to this is yes, you can have faith without works, as the thief on the cross showed. We are saved at the point of regeneration (Romans 5:5). The thief opened his heart to Christ, but he didn't have any works brought out in him through the Spirit.
The ideas expressed by our works based friends here is that faith is insufficient. You either have works to save yourself or God kills you, and while James states "faith without works is dead" he never stated those without works are killed. It is a stark contrast to faith based salvation, where those with faith are saved, and those without faith come to judgement (and possible punishment, rather than blasted into non-existence).