Salvation And Faith
The Holy Spirit guided the apostle Paul to write; "For by grace are you saved through faith..." (Eph. 2:8) In this same connection he taught that salvation is not of man, nor of the works of man, but it is a gift of God. The Father is the source of salvation, the only begotten Son of the Father is the agent, and the gospel is the means of saving the believer. (Jno. 3:16; Tit. 3:4-7; Rom. 3:21-28; I Tim. 2:3-7; Rom. 1: 16, 17; I Cor. 15:1-3) Without faith in God and his Son and the power of the Gospel no sinner can be saved. (Heb. 11:6; Jno. 8:24; 20:30, 31; Ac. 4:10-12)
Salvation of necessity is "by the faith of Jesus Christ, and not by the works of the law." (Gal. 2:16) Even those who had accepted Christ and had been saved by the Gospel and then sought justification by the works of the law were told: "Ye are fallen from grace." (Gal. 5:1-10) Faith on the part of man brings peace with God and access to his grace. (Rom. 5:1,2) The fact of salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is established by inspired testimony time and time again throughout the New Testament.
However, mistaken, misguided, and even deliberately deceptive men have perverted the simple story of salvation by faith. Passages have been isolated or taken out of context and erroneously applied to a false theory of salvation by faith which is not even akin to that taught in the Sacred Scriptures. Preachers because of their zeal for a false system of salvation by faith have wrested certain passages to their own destruction.
Men have been guilty of reading their own ideas into certain passages rather than bringing out the true teaching of the inspired writer. Because of this we are continually faced with the doctrine of salvation by faith only, or salvation by faith before and without further acts of obedience, or salvation by faith before and without water baptism. Men have reasoned (without reason to do so) that at the very point of faith (mere mental assent), at the point when they believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior, they are saved; and to be required to do anything other than this takes the matter out of the realm of grace, destroys the force of God's promise that salvation is a gift, and relegates it to the realm of debt and salvation by works.
While the Bible affirms and re-affirms again and again that salvation is by grace through faith, and not of the works of man, but a gift of God, it nowhere teaches any system of salvation by faith alone. According to inspired writers, the faith that saves is an obedient faith, an active faith. And anything short of this is a dead faith. (Gal. 5:6; Heb. 5:8,9; Mt. 7:21; Lk. 6:46; Jas. 2:14-26; Rom. 1:5; 16:25, 26; 6:16-18)
Abraham is pictured as the father of all them that believe, and as an example of salvation by faith as a matter of grace and not of debt. (Rom. 4:1-17) And the Galatian Epistle declares, "they which are of faith, the same are children of Abraham," and "they which are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." (Gal. 3:7,9) Yet James cites Abraham as an example in an argument to prove that faith alone is dead. (Jas. 2)
If you want to be saved by faith like father Abraham, then you must have the faith he had. His was an active, working, obedient faith. He believed without hesitation or doubt and obeyed sincerely everything God told him to do. On the basis of such faith he was blessed. Now if you have the faith Abraham had you will not hesitate to accept what the Lord said about salvation by faith, you will not quibble about a mere act of faith being salvation "by works of righteousness which we have done," nor will you ridicule the Lord's commands to the believer by calling it "water salvation."
The Lord says faith gives one the right to become a child of God. (Jn. 1:12,13) He also says the believer must be baptized and places salvation for the believer after baptism, not before. (Mk. 16:15, 16) His apostles, by his authority, preached the gospel as God's power to save the obedient believer -- the baptized believer. (Rom. 1:16,17; 6:1-18; Ac. 10:41- 48; 22:16; I Pet. 3:21; 1:22-25; Ac. 2:36-38)
Do you believe it? Will you obey it? If you do then you will enjoy salvation by faith. And it will still be a gift of God's grace, not of works.