Excerpts From Brief Insights On Mastering Biblical Theology - Michael Heiser
Chapter 59: For by Grace You Are Saved By Faith without Works Is Dead
“The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that salvation is a gift. Because we are lost, imperfect beings, we cannot earn salvation by our works. Paul famously wrote, “For by grace you are saved through faith. . . . It is a gift of God, not a result of works” (Eph. 2: 8–9). John 3:16 says that whoever believes in Jesus has everlasting life; it doesn’t say “whoever lives an exemplary life merits everlasting life.”
Christians are, of course, aware of these verses, yet they struggle with believing that it’s so simple. I’ve met many who are haunted by sins of the past or present. The message of the gospel is that we can do nothing to deserve salvation. We cannot earn God's favor. Salvation is a gift from God received by faith. God already loved us while we were lost in sin (Rom. 5: 8) before we believed (John 3: 16). It therefore makes no sense to think that our works ensure that God doesn't stop loving us. The thought is utterly illogical (and unbiblical).
But what about what James says? Many Bible students stumble at his words:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? . . . But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. . . . Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works . . . You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. (James 2: 14, 18, 21–22, 24)
It’s easy to think that Paul and James disagree. But they actually don’t. James isn’t saying that faith is good but we need works to put us over the top and somehow merit salvation. Meriting salvation means that God owes it to us because of what we’ve done. That idea is foreign to James. Rather, James wants to know that a person’s faith is real. Someone can profess faith and then live like a hypocrite. James isn’t saying their works aren’t good enough to put God in their debt—he’s saying their faith is phony. Faith is what saves, but works are crucial to validate the reality of one’s faith.
The right way to understand this relationship between faith and works is to put it this way: Works are essential to corroborating salvation; they are not the meritorious cause of salvation. That statement gives James his due and keeps him in perspective. Works must be there to certify the reality of saving faith; they don’t replace or transcend faith. That’s why I put the words of Paul and James together in the chapter title: “For by Grace You Are Saved through Faith Without Works Is Dead.” Salvation is by faith, but that faith is dead, nonexistent, and without works.”
— Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine: 80 Expert Insights on the Bible, Explained in a Single Minute by Michael S. Heiser
Chapter 60: No One Can Merit God’s Favor
“One of the great misunderstandings about Old Testament theology concerns its doctrine of salvation. Because of certain statements in the New Testament, particularly in the writings of Paul, that no one can be justified by the works of the law (Rom. 3: 20), most Bible students have a firm grasp of human inability to merit salvation.
But it would be a mistake to think that in theory salvation could be merited by perfect obedience to the law. It could not. The reason is simple. One could obey the demands of the law perfectly and still not believe. One can obey rules without having faith and without having faith in the right object. Faith is at the heart of salvation—in both testaments. Given the impossibility of perfect obedience to the law, this makes sense.
Salvation must be extended in grace by God. And it is extended on the basis of belief. This is why Paul makes Old Testament characters like Abraham (Rom. 4: 1–3) and David (Rom. 4: 6–8) the primary illustrations of his teaching on salvation by grace through faith, not of works (Eph. 2: 8–9; Rom. 3: 20–25).
Old Testament salvation was not merited by keeping the law. Rather, Old Testament salvation was about believing loyalty. What did Israelites need to believe? That Yahweh, their God, was the God of all gods, and that this same God had chosen to enter into a covenant relationship with Israel, Abraham’s seed, in love. Those who truly believed would respond with faithfulness out of reciprocal love and gratitude, not in order to merit favor.
God had already favored Israel when he offered them a relationship in the first place. Obedience was the response to God’s love when one believed it, not to convince God that he ought to love. The same is true in the New Testament. There is no possibility of meriting salvation and no need to think that the effort is necessary. No one puts God into debt by their goodness or obedience. God doesn’t owe anyone salvation because of their works (Gal. 2: 16; Rom 3: 20, 28). Those who are self-deceived into thinking they can merit God’s favor are doomed (Gal. 3: 10).
Salvation is a gift available through the death of Christ (Gal. 2: 21). It is offered freely by God in response to our belief in what Jesus did (Gal. 2: 21; 3: 2, 5), which is actually our belief in the sincerity of God’s offer, since it was all his plan anyway. If you’re a Christian, you’re likely thinking you understand all this. Do you? If you feel any impulse—because of current sin or guilt from the past—that your relationship with God needs to be maintained by your good behavior (“ faithfulness”), you really don’t get it. You couldn’t merit salvation in the first place. Christ died for you while you were in sin (Rom. 5: 8). It makes no doctrinal sense that it must then be kept by works. Let God love you and be done with it.”
— Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine: 80 Expert Insights on the Bible, Explained in a Single Minute by Michael S. Heiser
Chapter 61: We Cannot Avoid Sinning, and We Contribute Nothing to Our Salvation
“Earlier I wrote that we didn’t inherit guilt from the fall, but our mortality and life outside the direct presence of God. Those realities, coupled with the fact that we aren’t perfect moral beings like God, means that every human who, under providence, is born and has the ability to choose rebellion will do so without exception, save for Jesus, who was also God.
We inevitably become guilty in the wake of what Adam did, but we are not rendered guilty because of his guilt. This perspective may be new to you, given that Christian history has for so long inserted the inheritance of guilt into Romans 5: 12. But many verses teach that our guilt is earned. • “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23). • “None is righteous, no not one. . . . All have turned aside” (Rom. 3: 10–11). These verses focus on our guilt because of our sin. But our problem is deeper—it is in our very nature to sin.
This does not mean we are guilty because of what Adam did. It means that, like Adam, we will rebel. Adam’s sin didn’t produce our condemnation, it “led to condemnation” (Rom. 5: 18). Further, there is nothing about being human that tends toward holiness and sinlessness. Only God has such perfect quality of character. For this reason, Paul could say that we are “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2: 3). David said the same thing in Psalm 51: 5, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
David is not referring to the act of intercourse that resulted in his conception being sinful. There is no indication in Scripture David was illegitimate. Rather, he is thinking of his own sins and sinfulness. From the moment he was conceived and then born, he was destined to be a sinner. He was living with the guilt of his doings when he wrote this psalm. This is clear from the immediately preceding verses: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. (Ps. 51: 3–4)
David felt the weight of guilt because of what he’d done, acting out his own unavoidable sinfulness, not because of some ethereal guilt he’d inherited from Adam. Another psalm, a miktam of David, is important in this light: The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies. (Ps. 58: 3) This is no indication of inherited guilt in the womb. Neither a fetus nor an infant “speaks lies.” Instead, the point is consistent with that of Psalm 51: humans are born sinners, and they will invariably sin and offend God.
Depravity, then, ought to be understood in terms of the inescapability of becoming guilty before God through our own inevitable rebellions. We can’t blame anyone else for our need of reconciliation to God, including Adam.”
— Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine: 80 Expert Insights on the Bible, Explained in a Single Minute by Michael S. Heiser
Chapter 63: What Isn’t Gained By Moral Perfection Can’t Be Lost By Moral Imperfection
“I’ve already devoted space to the problem of the Christian struggle with works. The flawed theology that so many believers bludgeon themselves with every day is that their standing before God, their very salvation, depends on their performance. So many can’t seem to grasp that our works can’t have anything to do with maintaining the gift of salvation if they had nothing to do with receiving it.
The role of works is to corroborate salvation, not merit it. No one’s performance puts God in their debt. Even as Christians we sin, and the New Testament says that we will. In fact, if we say we don’t sin, the Scripture says we are self-deceived liars: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1: 8, 10)
Time for a lesson on the obvious. All Christians sin. The same letter of 1 John adds that as Christians we shouldn’t be unrestrained in our sinning, perpetually choosing our way against God’s, since we have been born into God’s family: No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (1 John 3: 9)
But now for the equally obvious, and so often missed, correlation. While we were yet sinners, before we trusted the gospel, Christ died for us to reconcile us to God: For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. . . . For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Rom. 5: 7–8, 10)
Rather than feel guilty about how much we aren’t like Jesus, and pledge in our hearts to “do better,” we need to let the blessing of what he did, and will do, rewire the way we think. Don’t turn Christlikeness into a task to perform lest God be angry with us. That’s terrible theology. It turns grace into duty and snubs the grace of God. God is more interested in what you believe than your feats of obedience. To be blunt, to think that you have to maintain something by your performance that you couldn’t obtain by your performance is theological illiteracy.”
— Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine: 80 Expert Insights on the Bible, Explained in a Single Minute by Michael S. Heiser
Chapter 64: If You Believe You Are Eternally Secure, and If You Don’t, You Aren’t
“One of the most misunderstood teachings of Scripture concerns the assurance of the believer—sometimes referred to as eternal security. The modern Christian subculture of evangelicalism has turned embracing the gospel by faith into mouthing an incantation—that thing we call the sinner’s prayer. Once the magic words are whispered, you’re in, no matter what you might end up believing.
That just isn’t how the New Testament describes the faith. I’m not suggesting that someone can lose their salvation by committing sins. I’ve dealt with that in several essays already. Nothing in Scripture says that moral imperfection results in the loss of something (i.e., salvation) that could not be gained by moral perfection. That theology is contrary to grace. Paul addressed this flawed thinking in Romans 8.
The God you fear will condemn you for your sins is the one who forgives and justifies: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. . . . If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. (Rom. 8: 1, 31, 33)
But there’s a corollary to this. God forces no one to believe. Just as Adam was in the place God wanted him, without any sin, God allowed him to choose rebellion. God will not eradicate an imager’s free will to prevent them from turning their back on his grace. This is why Paul and other New Testament writers were so concerned with believers falling into unbelief.
[God] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. (Col. 1: 22–23)
[The Israelites] were broken off because of their unbelief, but you [gentiles] stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then . . . God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. (Rom. 11: 20–22)
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. (Heb. 3: 12) If we died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself. (2 Tim. 2: 11–13 NET) In this last passage, Paul is speaking to Timothy, who is certainly a believer. But Paul’s concern is denying Christ—the rejection of the gospel that must be believed for eternal life. We might be unfaithful in our performance, but God remains faithful in his promise of salvation. It’s not about works, but grace. You can’t sin away your salvation, but you can decide to turn your back on it. If you believe, you are eternally secure. If you don’t, you aren’t.”
— Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine: 80 Expert Insights on the Bible, Explained in a Single Minute by Michael S. Heiser
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