James 2:24, Works, and Salvation

[robbyyoung]

So, just to be clear, you would opt for Jesus not really being dead for parts of three days, but rather having died for a split second and immediatley being in Paradise (whatever that means) with the thief on the cross?

Hi Brenden,

Considering the views on this matter, JR may very well be asserting what you've questioned. Here's a brief article concerning the matter.

by Matt Slick

The Bible does not specifically state what happened to Jesus immediately after He died on the cross. Because of this, there is debate surrounding the answer to the question of where He went and what He did. So, I will present differing views so you might know the scope of the answer and decide for yourself which position is preferable.

Perhaps the best-known scripture that appears to deal with this issue is found in 1 Pet. 3:18-20,


"For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water."

When Jesus was made alive in the spirit, it is not saying that His spirit died, and then it became alive again. "Made alive in the spirit" is contrasted with "put to death in the flesh." He first lived as mortal men but " . . . He began to live a spiritual 'resurrection' life, whereby He has the power to bring us to God."1 Furthermore, some Bibles (NIV, KJV, and NKJV) render the verse as "made alive by the Spirit" referring to the Holy Spirit's work with Christ. “By the Spirit” translates one word, pneumati, which could refer to the third Person of the Trinity as the agent of Christ’s resurrection.2

One view where Jesus was and what He did before His resurrection is that He went to Hades (the place of the dead) and made proclamation to those who were in spiritual prison. The word "proclamation" in Greek is kerusso. It means to proclaim and is a different word than "euaggelizo" which means to preach the gospel. Therefore, it is most probable that Jesus was not preaching the gospel to those in Hades/Spirit prison so they could be saved but was instead proclaiming the truth to them. After all, the Bible says, "And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment," (Heb. 9:27).

But who were the ones in spiritual prison? Some believe it is the people who were alive at the time of Noah's flood and who were killed in the flood. Others believe it is all humanity who died before the time of the cross. There seems to be support for the former position in 2 Pet. 2:4-5,


"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly."

Needless to say, this passage also raises many questions and much debate can be found as to its precise meaning. Nevertheless, as far as the other option goes, that Jesus simply presented the facts concerning His work on the cross to those in spiritual prison, we can look to Eph. 4:8-10 for possible support.


"When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men. 9 Now this expression, 'He ascended,' what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things . . . "

Some theologians believe that during the three days between Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, He descended into Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:19-31),3 proclaimed to them the mystery of the gospel, and then led them into heaven to dwell with God. The belief is that they were not permitted to enter into the presence of God in heaven until after the atonement. Once that had happened, Jesus, who had died, descended to Abraham's bosom, proclaimed the gospel, and then led its residents into heaven.

So, even though we cannot precisely determine where Jesus was and what He did during those three days, it seems apparent that He presented the gospel message (not to have them get saved) to those in spirit prison and possibly also to those in Abraham's bosom.

--------

God Bless.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[TheEditor]

Hi Robby and Dizerner,

Good thoughts both. Robby, I will have to say this regarding the article you shared; I have always taken the "spirits in prison" with the backdrop of the 1st Century Jews acceptance of 1 Enoch as canonical. The "spirits in prison" therefore could be rebelious angels. Secondly, there is no "time stamp" (as you are fond of saying) on when this "being made alive in the spirit" took place. I maintain that it took place upon his resurrection on the third day, not in any intermediate state one second after his death until the third day. Whatever limitations Jesus had while in the flesh were done away with when he was made alive in the spirit; his resurrection body being suitable to access both the physical as well as the spiritual realms.

Dizerner, I believe the Western mind tends to be a bit more rigid regarding words, etc. We have a legal approach, dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s. I have to read this verse as referring to the certainty of his words rather then the time, due to the fact he was dead until the third day. This rendering of placing the comma after "today" and how it effects the thought is not a modern invention, but dates back to the 5th century.

Regards, Brenden.

[Paidion]

I wish the above discussion about Jesus and the thief on the cross, and where and when they went to paradise, or if they are there yet, were relegated to a different thread.I think this very important discussion on works and salvation should not be diverted.

Still I notice Paidion teaching a works salvation, injecting his covert ‘enabling grace’ doctrine into this (Nov.19)

"Teaching a works salvation" is a very common misunderstanding by those who advocate a doctrine of easy grace which carries them to heaven regardless of whether they are righteous or unrighteous. Tell me how an unrighteous person can receive eternal life in view of what Paul says in Romans 2:7,8

To those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, He will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking and are not persuaded by the truth, but are persuaded by unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

Paul doesn't say that God will give eternal life to those who have faith, or those who "accept Christ as their personal Saviour" (a clause found nowhere in the Bible). Paul says God will give eternal life to those who persevere in well-doing. As for "salvation", from what are we saved? The easy-grace crowd believe we are saved from eternal Hell. I know; I used to be one of that crowd. The whole point of salvation for them is self-serving—to escape hell. But the angel told Joseph to call his name "Jesus" (Saviour) because He will save His people from their SINS." To be saved from sins is to escape those sins, not to be counted righteous when you are not. Suppose you were in a forest and a bear was about to attack you. What kind of saviour would you prefer? a hunter who shot the bear so that you could escape its teeth and claws? Or a bystander who told you are actually saved from the bear because he will regard you as having been saved from the bear.

God is not at all interested in regarding people as rightous because they accepted Christ, and therefore taking them to heaven at death while casting everybody else in hell. Consider the following scenario. At judgment day, God deals with two sinners, Jack and Tom. "Well Jack," says God, "I see you have committed murder, adultery, and theft throughout your entire life. To hell you must go for ever and ever. Okay, Tom step up to the throne. I see that you also have committed murder, adultery, and theft throughout your entire life. But I see also, that on March 23, 1997, you accepted Christ as your personal Saviour. That qualifies you for eternity in heaven, no matter what you have done."

Now please don't misunderstand this. If Tom had truly repented (had a change of heart and mind) and appropriated the enabling grace of God to live righteously at some point in his life, and did so thereafter, his past would not have been counted against him. But he didn't repent. All he did in 1997 was go forward during an "altar call" by an evangelist, and repeated the "sinner's prayer" which the evangelist encouraged him to pray. But he went right back to his usual lifestyle thereafter.

No one will ever be saved from sin and thereby qualify for everlasting life with the Lord, unless he truly repents and submits to the Lordship of Christ, so as to be delivered from his sinful way of life. God will not impute righteousness to Him just because He accepted Christ, or trusted in the finished work of Christ. God isn't interested in imputed righteousness; He is interested in actual righteousness.

It is not through self-effort. We cannot become righteous that way. Nor will we become righteous by God thrusting it upon us—imputing it to us. No, we cannot do it, and God will not do it. But TOGETHER, it can be done!

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. (2 Cor 5:21, 6:1)

If we coöperate with the enabling grace of God, we can, through faith, become righteous. If we try to receive the grace of God in any other way, it is in vain. It will have no power to deliver us from sin—no power to enable us to be righteous. To be merely counted righteous is of no value to us. We must actually become righteous as God desires. And this can be done only through God's enabling grace coupled with our coöperation through faith. Faith is an essential element to make it possible.

He himself endured our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (I Peter 2:24)

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[robbyyoung]

Hi Robby and Dizerner,

Good thoughts both. Robby, I will have to say this regarding the article you shared; I have always taken the "spirits in prison" with the backdrop of the 1st Century Jews acceptance of 1 Enoch as canonical. The "spirits in prison" therefore could be rebelious angels.

Hi Brenden,

I'm glad to hear that you hold 1 Enoch as relevant scripture.

[Paidion]

In the case of the two people you specified, who both broke the law and yet one believed on Christ: in this case God says to the believer "I see your debt has been paid in full and that your faith has placed you inside my Son: when I look at you, all I see is Christ."

Typical easy grace teaching. Do you think God does not see the sin of the Christian? As you pointed out, He sees in one's heart what one often does not himself see.

Please read carefully the following condensation of George MacDonald's "Salvation from Sin:

A Condensation of “Salvation from Sin”
Which is Chapter 1 of The Hope of the Gospel
by George MacDonald

The wrong, the evil that is in a man; he must be set free from it. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done: that will follow; I mean the sins he is doing, or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his nature, the wrongness in him, the evil he consents to; the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does.

He will want only to be rid of his suffering; but that he cannot have, unless he is delivered from its essential root, a thing infinitely worse than any suffering it can produce. If he will not have that deliverance, he must keep his suffering. Through chastisement he will take at last the only way that leads to liberty. There can be no deliverance but to come out of his evil dream into the glory of God.

The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while those sins remained. That would be to throw the medicine out the window while the man still lies sick! That would be to come directly against the very laws of existence! Yet men, loving their sins, and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have (consistently with their low condition) constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins. This idea (this miserable fancy rather) has terribly corrupted the preaching of the gospel. The message of the good news has not been truly delivered.

He came to work along with our punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins.

Not for any or all of his sins that are past shall a man be condemned; not for the worst of them does he need to fear remaining unforgiven. The sin in which he dwells, the sin of which he will not come out. That sin is the sole ruin of a man. His present live sins, those sins pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, but to which he clings instead, the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it --- these are the sins for which he is even now condemned.

It is the indwelling badness, ready to produce bad actions, from which we need to be delivered. If a man will not strive against this badness, he is left to commit evil and reap the consequences. To be saved from these consequences, would be no deliverance; it would be an immediate, ever deepening damnation. It is the evil in our being (no essential part of it, thank God!) from which He came to deliver us --- not the things we have done, but the possibility of doing such things anymore.
As this possibility departs, and we confess to those we have wronged, the power over us of our evil deeds will depart also, and so shall we be saved from them. The bad that lives in us, our evil judgments, our unjust desires, our hate and pride and envy and greed and self-satisfaction ---- these are the souls of our sins, our live sins, more terrible than the bodies of our sins, that is, the deeds we do, because they not only produce these loathsome characteristics, but they make us just as loathsome. Our wrong deeds are our dead works; our evil thoughts are our live sins. These sins, the essential opposites of faith and love, these sins that dwell in us and work in us, are the sins from which Jesus came to deliver us. When we turn against them and refuse to obey them, they rise in fierce insistence, but at the same time begin to die. We are then on the Lord's side, and He begins to deliver us from them.

From such, as from all other sins, Jesus was born to deliver us; not only, or even primarily, from the punishment of any of them. When all are gone, the holy punishment will have departed also. He came to make us good, and therein blessed children.

Evil is not human; it is the defect and opposite of human; but the suffering that follows it is human, belonging of necessity to the human that has sinned. While evil is the cause of sin, suffering is FOR the sinner, that he may be delivered from his sin.

A man may recognize the evil in him only as pain. He may know little and care nothing about his sins. Yet the Lord is sorry for his pain. He cries aloud, “Come to me all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He opens His arms to all weary enough to come to Him in the hope of rest.

I certainly do not disregard understanding. The New Testament is full of urgings to understand. Our whole life must be a growth in understanding. But I cry out about the misunderstanding that comes of man's endeavour to understand while not obeying. Upon obedience our energy must be spent; understanding will follow. The Lord cannot save a man from his sins while he still holds to his sins.

If a man wants to be delivered from the evil in him, he must himself begin to cast it out, himself begin to disobey it, and work righteousness, and the man should look for and expect the help of his Father in this endeavour. Alone he could labour to all eternity and not succeed. He who has not made himself, cannot set himself right without Him who made him. But his maker is in him, and is his strength.

The sum of the matter is this: ---The Son has come from the Father to set the children free from their sins. The children must hear and obey Him, that He may send forth judgment unto victory.

[Paidion]

Jesus Himself gave laws to obey in Matt 5, 6, and 7. The apostle Paul called these instructions "the law of Christ". (1 Cor 9:21, Gal 6:2). After giving these instructions, Jesus Himself said some powerful words concerning those who hear and obey versus those who hear and do NOT obey:

Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?" And then will I declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness."

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. (Matt 7:21-27)

[Homer]

Hi Paidion,

You wrote:

I wish the above discussion about Jesus and the thief on the cross, and where and when they went to paradise, or if they are there yet, were relegated to a different thread.I think this very important discussion on works and salvation should not be diverted.

I agree. And I mostly agree with you regarding the necessity of good works, but I do not see good works as salvific, but evidence of being in Christ.

First, I think we must define what we think is meant by good works. Jesus said "apart from me you can do nothing" in regard to the vine producing fruit. But if good works are done by unbelievers, and we must admit they are, then how do they do them? I must conclude that the fruit Jesus seeks if of another kind.

I am currently reading an interesting book on ethics from a Christian point of view. The book is "The Shape of the Good" by C. Stephen Layman. His view he calls the "Christian teleological view". His view is that "An act is right if and only if it promotes the kingdom of God". This means it must promote harmony with God and harmony with our fellow man. In trying to fit this in with Jesus' words in the preamble to the SOM:

Matthew 5:16 (NASB)

16. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.


I would say that good works that glorify self would not count anything with Jesus as they have nothing to do with promoting His kingdom.

In regard to Jesus' death saving us from sin it would seem that if this was so we would be completely sanctified and sin no more. If a man was an adulterer and routinely carried on affairs, cheating clandestinely on his wife on a continuous basis, and he became a Christian, could we say he was "saved from his sin" if he only committed adultery once a month? Once every three months? How often? It should be never. But as has been pointed out, how often do we sin in thought?

It seems to me when the scriptures speak of being saved from sin that often the consequences of sin (death) is what is meant.

I must add that I do agree if we keep on willfully sinning we are not saved.

Thoughts of anyone wishing to chime in are welcome.

[Paidion]

I also agree with most of what you have written above, Homer.

The only part with which I strongly disagree is the statement:

it seems to me when the scriptures speak of being saved from sin that often the consequences of sin (death) is what is meant.

Can you quote any passage that speaks of being saved from sin which unequivocally means the consequences of sin?

I recall as a teenager when I was a youth leader in a local Baptist church. I don't remember what I said, but the pastor realized I had a problem in my understanding of salvation. He asked me, "Don, what are we saved from?"

Well, I knew the answer to that. I said, "From sin."

"And what does that mean?" the pastor asked.

"That means," I replied, "that we are saved from the consequences of sin."

"Don," the pastor said. "Nowhere does it say that we are saved from the consequences of sin. It says that we are saved from SIN!"

I thought he was wrong at the time. But throughout the years, I discovered that he was absolutely right.

In regard to Jesus' death saving us from sin it would seem that if this was so we would be completely sanctified and sin no more.

Not if salvation is a process—and I believe it is.