The Work of God
By
Shelby
G. Floyd
Man is Not Saved by Faith Alone
“Man is saved by faith alone,” is one of the most popular
doctrines of the religious world, but it false to the core. Baptism is a condition
of salvation, but the religious world largely rejects it because they say it is
based on “works,” even though the plain command of Jesus before he left
the earth was, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who
does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). Faith and baptism stand or fall together!
Is Faith the Work of God or the
Work of Man?
The question one must ask is this: Is
baptism for the remission of sins (Acts
Believing is “the Work of God”
Faith or believing is an act of man and
it is also “the work of God.” People from the area of the Galilean lake
asked Jesus about the works of God,
“What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in
Him whom He sent” (John
Jesus explicitly said that when a person believes in
Christ that person is working “the work of God.” Therefore, faith or the
act of believing is a work that man does, yet it is “the work of God.”
Faith is Conviction Conjoined with
Obedience
In John 6:29 believe is a verb
from pisteuo and is used here “to believe,
to think to be true; to be persuaded of; to credit, place confidence in;
of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain
inner and higher prerogative and law of his soul; a conviction, full of
joyful trust, that Jesus is the Messiah—the divinely appointed author of
eternal salvation in the kingdom of God, conjoined with obedience to
Christ.”—Thayer, page 511.
Where there is no obedience,
there is no saving faith. According to Thayer’s definition, believing must be
conjoined with obedience to Christ (Hebrews 5:8-9). Faith or believing without
works is a “dead faith”—the faith of devils (James
“The faith that saves is the faith
that obeys.”
Just
as faith is “the work of God,” so are
repentance, confession and baptism. We are saved by all these works, for they
are not the works of man, but “the work
of God.” For example, Paul declared to Titus that we are saved by the “washing of regeneration,” which clearly
is a reference to water baptism for the remission of sins:
“But when the
kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our
Savior, that having been justified by
His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus
3:4-7 NKJV).
Take note, that even though Paul affirms that God “saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy
Spirit,” in the same context he emphatically declares that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have
done.” Faith, repentance, the good
confession and baptism are all mental and physical actions of man, but they are
“the work of God.” And since all of the conditions of salvation
are the work of God, our salvation originates out of “the kindness and love of
God our Savior,” “His mercy,” and “His grace.” (Titus 3:4-7).
When we have done all
of these things, let us be “confident of
this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). Amen. Copyright © 2007