Comments on: Faith and Works http://www.ericpark.org/?p=300 A Cyberspatial Intersection of Culture and Cross-Carrying Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:08:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 By: Cyndi Bloise http://www.ericpark.org/?p=300#comment-45378 Cyndi Bloise Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:39:57 +0000 http://www.ericpark.org/?p=300#comment-45378 Eric - always a pleasure to read your posts! You are so right that faith v. works is not an either/or proposition. We human beings reduce so many things in life to either/or when we don't have to. It is often detrimental to human relations when we reduce issues to either/or, so there is no reason to believe it is not also detrimental to God-human relations when we reduce. Also, with regard to Matt. 25, the people who are given salvation because of their works of faith did not have earning salvation as their goal, as evidenced by their surprise at receiving this gift. Their works were the fruit - the unavoidable outpouring - from a heart full of faith in our Lord. That reminds me of our discussion from the retreat - including statistics - our GOAL cannot be increased attendance and membership. Our goal HAS to be to make disciples for Jesus Christ... and when disciples have been made, the unavoidable outpouring of their works will be the fruit. And didn't we say some stuff about being humble too? Blessings, Brother Eric! Eric - always a pleasure to read your posts!
You are so right that faith v. works is not an either/or proposition. We human beings reduce so many things in life to either/or when we don’t have to. It is often detrimental to human relations when we reduce issues to either/or, so there is no reason to believe it is not also detrimental to God-human relations when we reduce.
Also, with regard to Matt. 25, the people who are given salvation because of their works of faith did not have earning salvation as their goal, as evidenced by their surprise at receiving this gift. Their works were the fruit - the unavoidable outpouring - from a heart full of faith in our Lord.
That reminds me of our discussion from the retreat - including statistics - our GOAL cannot be increased attendance and membership. Our goal HAS to be to make disciples for Jesus Christ… and when disciples have been made, the unavoidable outpouring of their works will be the fruit. And didn’t we say some stuff about being humble too?
Blessings, Brother Eric!

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