Eph 174 12/15/85, 485 2/22/87, 757 2/28/88

DOCTRINE OF SALVATION BY WORKS

A. Definition.

1. Salvation by works is a false doctrine which rejects God’s grace policy in the provision of eternal salvation for the human race.

2. Salvation by works rejects the total helplessness of mankind under real spiritual death. Real spiritual death not only means separation from God at birth and total depravity, but it also means helplessness to do anything about our status quo.

3. Salvation by works makes the distinction between Christianity and religion.

a. In Christianity, mankind is eternally saved through the work of God. God the Father planned it, God the Son executed it on the cross, and God the Holy Spirit reveals it.

b. However in religion, man seeks to gain the approbation of God through some category of human works, self-sacrifice, personality, or energy of the flesh. Christianity is not a religion. In Christianity, God does the work and man is the beneficiary apart from any merit or any works.

4. There are at least seven categories of salvation by works rejected by the Word of God, as in Eph 2:9, “It is not by works.”

B. Verbal Works.

1. “Repent and believe.” Repent means to change your mind about Christ, as occurs under the Holy Spirit’s ministry of common grace. This word has been misinterpreted. No one is saved by feeling sorry for his sins.

2. Confession of sins: this is only for the believer in rebound.

3. Begging God to save you. This is ridiculous, coming from one who is spiritually dead.

4. “Inviting Christ into your heart” is total nonsense and blasphemy. A spiritually dead person cannot invite eternal God, the Lord Jesus Christ anywhere! Not into his heart, his home or his life. This is stupidity, asininity, emotion, and works. You believe in Christ! Do what the Bible says, not what some jackass evangelist says.

5. “Acknowledge Christ publicly.” This is not effectual for salvation. This is a distortion of Rom 10:9-10 which is about cause and effect: the cause is faith; the result, as the believer matures, is to witness, to acknowledge Christ. But you’re saved only by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

6. All this can be called the “magic word” system. People are very superstitious, and look for the magic word, e.g., “plead the blood of Christ.” Nor do you ever “pray for strength.” You receive strength by combining spiritual self-esteem with providential preventative suffering. There’s no such thing as good or bad luck. This is a myth in the mind of imbeciles. So we carry our superstitions into the Christian life by trying to be saved by the “magic word.”

C. Ritual Works.

1. Circumcision was the favorite of the Jews. Galatians was written to correct this. The Galatians were typical Gaelic people. They were very excited about Paul’s ministry and responded and became believer. But after Paul left, the Judaizers counteracted, telling these new believers they could not be saved until they were also circumcised. These Gentile believers swallowed this. So Paul wrote Galatians, a letter telling them they’d gone astray from the Gospel. Not only that, but Paul likened them to the priests who had mutilated themselves to impress God, and it didn’t work.

2. Salvation by baptism is prominent with us today. This was started by the Lutherans in the Reformation, copied from the Catholics; a heresy that has always existed in the Church Age. Baptism was a testimony to retroactive positional truth and current positional truth before the completion of the Canon.

3. Muttering such repetitious words or phrases as, “O God, O God, O God save me!” or “Hail Mary” do not impress God.

4. Partaking of the Eucharist.

D. Psychological Works.

1. “Come forward” in an invitation at the end of a service.

2. “Raise your hand” during prayer.

3. Walking down the isle.

4. Give public testimony to your faith in Christ.

5. These are jumping through psychological hoops; it’s psychology and not salvation. These make an issue of yourself and call attention to yourself. But salvation is designed to call attention to Jesus Christ!

E. Corporate Works.

1. Join the church; if you don’t join, you’re not saved.

2. Tithe. This was commanded in the Mosaic Law as a 10% income tax for the client nation Israel. Tithing has no spiritual connotation, either for salvation or blessing. Giving is a matter of the privacy of your own priesthood. The amount you give is based on your own self-determination and has nothing to do with any blessing.

3. Church-related works. Just work faithfully around the church and God will save you. This becomes more popular at certain times.

F. Religious Works.

Religion is the devil’s ace trump. Satan counterfeits Christianity through religion. Religion is one of the greatest systems of both moral and immoral degeneration.

1. Keep the Mosaic Law. This is a result of the Reformation. It started out with justification by faith, but it gradually moved to the works of keeping the Law and eventually developed into the Galatian compromise: First you have to believe in Christ; then you have to keep the Law.

2. Do penance.

3. Practice the “Lordship of Christ.” This refers to the false doctrine taught by the stupid that “if Christ is not Lord of all He’s not Lord at all.” This is a failure to understand one of the forty things done for us at the moment of salvation. By the baptism of the Holy Spirit entering us into union with Christ, He is our Lord at the very moment of our salvation. Whether we recognize this or not is a matter of cognition of pertinent doctrine. But you do not have to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord for salvation. It’s believe in Christ only.

4. Practice asceticism. What you give up at any time is inconsequential! People want to take what they have given up in their lives and compare it with the work of Cross! But the work of salvation was provided en toto on the Cross.

5. Self-denial.

6. Maintain a healthy body. To associate salvation or spirituality with health foods and vitamins is ludicrous!

G. Behavioral Works.

1. Salvation by morality. Morality has to do with establishment; it is not the Christian life. The Protocol Plan of God is higher than morality. Moral degeneracy is very prominent today, where Christians in their arrogance self-righteousness are trying to straighten everyone out, to superimpose Christian laws and standards on everyone.

2. Salvation by personality change. Although a change in your personality may be desirable, is not the means of salvation.

3. Salvation by keeping taboos. Many think you can’t really be saved if you drink, smoke, dance, wear makeup, swim in mixed company.

H. Emotional Works.

1. Salvation by ecstatics.

2. Salvation by speaking in tongues. No one has legitimately spoken in tongues since August of 70 A.D. The gift of tongues was a temporary spiritual gift at the beginning of the Church Age to evangelize Jews in Gentile languages, as prophesied in Isa 28, a warning of the fifth cycle of discipline to come. Where people allege that speaking in tongues, or the “second blessing” is necessary for salvation, they are either very emotional or demon possessed.

3. Salvation through “feeling” saved, having the “rosy glow” experience, singing “Do Lord” until you’re flushed and excited.

4. Salvation through weeping tears at the altar.

5. Faith has nothing to do with emotion. Rom 3:20-28 summarizes, “Therefore by the works of the Law no human being shall be justified in His presence, for through the Law is a knowledge of sin. But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been revealed, being confirmed by the Old Testament Scriptures [Law and the prophets], that is, the righteousness of God which comes through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe; for there is no racial difference between Jew and Gentile. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, receiving justification without payment by means of grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God the Father has publicly displayed by His blood as the mercy seat, [the One who satisfied the righteousness of the Father], through faith, for a demonstration of His integrity because of the passing over of the previously committed sins, because of clemency from God; for the demonstration of His integrity at the present time of crisis, in order that He might be just even when He justifies anyone who has faith in Christ. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what principle? That of works? Definitely not! But by the principle of faith. Therefore, we conclude that man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law.”

I. Salvation by Invitation.

1. We don’t invite Christ anywhere. He doesn’t come to us; we come to Him by believing in Him.

2. Remember our Lord’s invitation in Mt 11:28, “Come unto Me, all you who are laboring and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

3. Jn 6:35, “Jesus said to them, `I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.’”

4. Jn 6:37, “Him that comes unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.”

5. Jn 6:47 explains what it means to come to Christ: “Truly, truly, I say unto you, he who believes in Me has eternal life.”

6. So always in the salvation invitation, you go to Jesus Christ; He does not come to you.

7. Therefore, note there are two blasphemous invitations. We do not invite Christ to come to us. Rev 3:20 is addressed to believers. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man will open, I will come in to him and sup with him.” That is a rebound verse and has nothing to do with salvation.

a. Inviting Christ into your heart is wrong.

b. Inviting Christ into your life is wrong.

c. Jer 17:9 teaches about our heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” We do not invite Christ into a garbage dump.

d. Rom 5:12 teaches about our life. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all men for all have sinned.”

e. The unbeliever is under spiritual death, which means total depravity, being completely cut off from God. You don’t invite Jesus Christ into the state of total depravity. You do not invite Jesus Christ into spiritual death.

8. In salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, He invites you outside of total depravity and spiritual death. Rom 6:23, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

9. We make no invitations to Jesus Christ! If that’s all you’ve ever done, you better believe in Jesus Christ or you will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire!

10. In salvation through faith in Christ, He invites you to come to Him; we don’t invite Him to come to us.

11. In conclusion, inviting Christ into your heart or into your life is not the way of salvation, but an emotional form of legalism. Salvation is by faith in Christ, tantamount to coming to Christ, not Christ going to you.

J. Commitment salvation.

1. This is closely related to verbal works. It is putting the cart before the horse.

2. Commitment confuses the salvation work of Jesus Christ on the cross with the believer’s dedication, noted in Rom 12:1. Therefore, it makes Rom 12:1 and similar commitment passages a condition for salvation.

3. Actually, commitment is a function that occurs after salvation.

4. So distinction must be made between the mandate for salvation, which is faith in Jesus Christ, and commitment, which is actually a number of post-salvation decisions.

5. When commitment is added to faith, there is no salvation. The ministry of the Holy Spirit in efficacious grace does not make commitment effective for salvation.

K. Lordship Salvation.

1. This is actually another verbal work, in which recognizing the lordship of Christ is added to faith.

2. This false system of salvation uses an false epigram that says, “If Christ is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.”

3. This statement ignores completely the Lordship of Christ as a result of the baptism of the Spirit.

a. Jesus Christ was Lord in eternity past, is Lord now, and always will be Lord.

b. The moment we believe in Christ, the baptism of the Spirit enters us into union with Christ. Therefore, we share in His Lordship, and therefore He is our Lord. Whether we know it or not is not the issue. He is our Lord whether we know it or not.

4. You do not make a commitment of lordship for salvation; that cancels your salvation.

5. No one can make Christ Lord; only God the Holy Spirit can do that; and it is accomplished by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit must never be confused with the salvation ministry of the Holy Spirit in efficacious grace. Logically, efficacious grace comes first.

6. Lordship salvation is salvation by works, and therefore is not salvation. The spiritually dead person does not have the ability to make Christ Lord of anything. All he can do is believe in Christ, and then the Holy Spirit makes his faith effectual for salvation.

7. The volition of the spiritually dead person cannot make Christ Lord or make any commitment.

L. Works are arrogance.

1. Why is salvation by grace through faith and not by works (Eph 2:8-9), apart from the fact that God is perfect and His perfection demands He do all the work? And because salvation by grace eliminates arrogance.

2. Arrogance and grace cannot coexist.

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R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740

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