Works of Faith is crucial for salvation as opposed to a theoretical, passive belief of something without actions. Works of faith is like someone is drowning in the ocean, and can’t save himself, but God throws a rope at him and tells him to grab on, and God will pull him through to the shore. The Works due to Faith, is your act of holding onto the rope. But the person holding onto the rope who gets to the shore will never say that he saved himself, but rather, that the God who pulled him through saved him. But he did grab onto the rope!
Works of Law – definition of this is that Salvation is due to works alone and nothing on God’s part. This is trying to say that grabbing to the rope is all you need to do, and omits God being at the other end pulling. So you can see the limitations and misconception, and so what if there was no one holding the rope and it was just loose... the rope will drift away, and you holding onto the rope will also drift away as well.
My personal belief is that Salvation is like this: God is the main person who begins, continues and completes salvation, and (within/)in His Work, we are called to respond – by grabbing onto the rope, keep that connection with Him, through His Word (The Christ and written text – Bible- who is Him in Word form) and deep understanding of His Word know Him, and what He is doing and revere Him for who He is (know who’s saving you and at the other end of the rope). Like e.g.--- if I give a gift (chocolate) to some kids, the decision factor whether the gift gets given or not, is my decision (not the kid’s). But one kid takes the chocolate and eats it, one kid doesn’t take it and doesn’t eat it --- and the difference in who actually gets the gift is the kid’s decision to accept and eat it, or not accept and not eat it. However, note that even if the kid wants to get the gift and I have not made the decision to give it, the kid will not receive it anyway!
(~A response after listening to David Pawson in Sovereign Grace & Calvinism part 4, I thought I might use the illustrations he used and expound on it in a bit more detail, 11MAY2012)
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