Context is everything here... the next verse says that it's not through works lest any should boast. In other words salvation is a gift rather than a payment.
Yuppers..... and we need to remember that. Anything that contradicts that is not correct.
If the Spirit gives us the faith to believe do we not still have to respond to it? When Jesus knocks at the door do we not need to open the door? Or does Jesus just kick the door down regardless of what we wanted?
Some thoughts, if I may....
1. Obviously, there is
MYSTERY here.... Maybe God simply chose to not give us all the details (we don't have all the "dots"), maybe we lowly mere mortals with puny, limited, sinful, fallen brains can't wrap themselves around the things of God (thus, some humility is needed, some acknowledgement that God just may know more about the things of God than we do)... But we have truths that our puny brains can't connect. What else is new? How about the Trinity, the Two Natures of Christ, Inspiration, why even God Himself? Until the late 16th Century, we didn't speak of "theology" we spoke of "the Mysteries of God." Scripture commands us to be "Stewards of the mysteries of God" not Correctors of Completers of God. I keep thinking of the quote from Luther, "Humility is the foundation of all sound theology" and Wesley's quote "We must be bold where Scripture is bold and silent where Scripture is silent" and my Orthodox friend's frequent lament about Western Christianity "They forgot how to shut up."
2. To me, the distinction between Justification and Sanctification helps a lot. Justification (narrow sense in soteriology) is the COMING to life, born again, regeneration, the changed relationship with God, becoming a child of God. Sanctification is what we do as a child of God, as one who is justified, as one who is in this new/different relationship with God, one who is alive. The first is monergistic: God's doing, the second is synergistis: God empowers and calls but we do it - becoming more Christ-like, more loving/serving, more moral. Yes, life is a gift.... and yes, it is to be lived.
3. There are some classic/traditional Protestants who would THEORIZE (sic.... STRESS on that word) that PERHAPS (emphasis on that word) part of the workings of justification is that God changes our will. While I don't denounce that THEORY, I don't like it - simply because it suggests we have to tell God how He does things, God MUST submit to what makes sense to me, and it leaves the door at least a bit cracked to the idea that justification is synergistic and that the Savior is not Jesus but my will. I'd rather leave it as God chose to: alone. Seems to ME, any human theory about this seems to at least undermine what we both agree is the point: salvation is a GIFT, Jesus IS THE Savior. See point # 1.
- Josiah
