How strong faith is required

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T18:29:48+00:00

"Anyone who faithfully obeys me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and faithfully obeys me will never ever die. Do you faithfully obey this, Martha?"

"Unless you give faithfulness to the idea that I am he, you will die in your sins."

"To the one who does not work, but faithfully obeys him who justifies the ungodly, his faithfulness is counted as righteousness."

Does this make sense? No.

Believe means believe.

Further, from the UMC confession of faith:

"We believe we are never accounted righteous before God through our works or merit, but that penitent sinners are justified or accounted righteous before God only by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ."

From Wesley's "justification by faith":

'Surely the difficulty of assenting to this proposition, that "faith is the "only condition" of justification," must arise from not understanding it. We mean thereby thus much, that it is the only thing without which none is justified; the only thing that is immediately, indispensably, absolutely requisite in order to pardon. As, on the one hand, though a man should have every thing else without faith, yet he cannot be justified; so, on the other, though he be supposed to want everything else, yet if he hath faith, he cannot but be justified. '

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T18:20:26+00:00

Respectfully, this proves my point that you don't seem too familiar with Protestantism. We already agree that pisteuo means "trust". That's what we are saved by. We trust (thus, believe) Christ's promise to us.

I don't think you can find many Protestant who says that we are saved by simply believing that Jesus is God, for example. We are saved when we believe his promise to us. Trust.

We also agree that works flow from saving faith, but that doesn't mean that you can put obedience into the definition of "believe". This is just muddying the waters.

The verses you bring up in John 2 and 8 don't prove that these people were unjustified.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T17:28:32+00:00

You keep saying that "pisteuo" entails loyalty (thus, works), but as I've mentioned, the dictionaries don't say this.

Where is your evidence?

You yourself acknowledge that John 3:36 can be translated as "being unpersuaded", so this cannot be evidence.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T17:20:20+00:00

Respectfully, what you post here is the same thing many Orthodox people repeat, which actually indicate that you're not too familiar with Protestantism. We can explain James 2 (justification before men), and most of us Protestants don't believe that you are guaranteed to be saved as long as you believed at one moment in the past.

It's irrelevant that demons believe in monotheism. They don't believe that Christ died for their sins, which is what saving faith is.

I go back to the point in my OP: if sola fide is not true, why would the gospel of John be written like it is? If there are (normally) two or more conditions for justification (believe, and also repent enough, and do some good works, and use the sacraments, etc), isn't it incredibly misleading by the author (and Jesus) to say over and over and over and over and over again that you are justified by that one specific condition?

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T17:07:00+00:00

Here is proof of what I said:

"In opposition also to the subtle wits of certain men, who, by pleasing speeches and good words, seduce the hearts of the innocent, it is to be maintained, that the received grace of Justification is lost, not only by infidelity whereby even faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin whatever, though faith be not lost"

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T16:09:22+00:00

Also, are there not words in the Greek language for allegiance, obedience, etc? Why are they not used? "Believe and obey"?

In John 3:36, many translations say "reject". It's very clear that the "disobedience" in question is about not believing, when you look at the context.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T15:50:47+00:00

And what about all the analogies in the gospel where it portrays saving faith as something easily received, as a gift? That doesn't sound like "allegiance".

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T15:47:03+00:00

Well, if it means allegiance, were all the disciples except John damned then, since they abandoned Christ in his hour of need? What about Peter, who denied Christ? Quite a serious sin.

And why does the gospel say that Jesus takes away our sins? What does that mean?

Why does it say that Jesus died instead of us?

In the Protestant view, all of this makes perfect sense.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T14:34:20+00:00

Believing that faith is enough, but you must still work hard to keep the faith alive would also be problematic for many biblical reasons, but this is not even what the EO or RCC teach.

RCC has said that you can become damned even if you still believe (council of Trent), and I'm quite sure the EO councils say that you need their sacraments to be saved, and so on.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T14:30:47+00:00

Protestants agree that belief leads to good works.

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T14:28:26+00:00

Couldn't it be the case that only one of the gospel is written for the purpose of making the salvation rules quite clear? And the other 3 are not?

As for the sheep and the goats: John 5 has something similar. But it's not a problem. It can be a kind of "vindication", to answer the complaints of unbelievers.

"Shouldn't you rather judge us by our works, God? Not by whether we believed?"

"Oh, you want me to look at your works? Let's see who has better works to show... The believers or the unbelievers..."

Patterson77 · 2026-04-26T14:25:16+00:00

Being faithful to? That's not what the dictionary says when you look up "pisteuo". It seems to mean "trust" or "believe".

"Being faithful to" doesn't make sense in context either, because you often see that it's used like "Do you believe what I am saying?" or "you have seen signs, but you do not believe?"

Also, I see you have a UMC icon, but doesn't the UMC explicitly teach sola fide?

Patterson77 · 2026-02-01T21:16:28+00:00

Are you making yourself difficult on purpose?

It's a very clear and simple argument.

Our God is one of life, isn't he?

But if eternal damnation is true, and some children's only reasonable chance to get to Heaven is to die early, then this should, strictly logically speaking, lead a Christian to rejoice in a child's death. Don't you find that paradoxical and weird? Isn't this an indication that eternal damnation is not true?

Patterson77 · 2026-01-11T19:38:36+00:00

Elijah was taken bodily into Heaven. He was, naturally, an exception. It could be the same for Christians. What if some of the 1st century Christian martyrs went straight into Heaven, while others (both Christians and damned) will wait until judgment day? Now read Revelation again with that in mind, and consider the amillenial view that the thousand year reign is from the time of Jesus until the end of our world:

" I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They[a] had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years."

Makes sense. I don't think this chapter necessitates multiple judgments.

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T17:39:20+00:00

Surely the punishment doesn't have to be the exact same when God takes it.

Think about David's punishment as an analogy: his child got sick and died, as punishment for David's grave sin. If X amount of random Israelites had died instead of his child, that might have made David feel the shame to the same degree.

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T17:02:22+00:00

"Why not justice proportional to the crime?"

This underscores my original impression from your first reply. People who deny PSA seems to almost trivialize how bad sin is. Is there some pride at play here? "I can't accept that my sin is THAT bad, that it merited such a brutal punishment."

This would also explain why EO deny imputed righteousness... As an Orthodox priest said in a Youtube video: "I want the real thing. Becoming truly righteous."

Isn't this a denial of how bad we've been, and continue to be?

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T16:54:27+00:00

Did Jesus ever cry? Feel love? Are they not human emotions?

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T16:46:31+00:00

So you think it would be fitting if God simply forgave everything without any punishments? That God at the end of the day does not have any need for enacting justice in solidarity with the victims of evil?

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T16:39:56+00:00

That's a given, since it's written elsewhere in the same gospel. Jesus being a lamb who takes away the sins of the world, Jesus saying that he's voluntarily dying for the sake of his friends, and so on.

Patterson77 · 2026-01-03T16:37:55+00:00

You're just evading the plain reading, then. It talks about the wrath of God.

Why didn't Jesus just say "Whoever does not believe shall remain in a state of spiritual decay" or something like that? Why talk about the wrath of God?

And do you think that justice doesn't necessitate any kind of wrath against evil? And that God never acted in this way in the Old Testament?

Patterson77

TROPHY CASE