Queen's Road Cell

Selwyn raised the apparent difficulty posed by Phil 2:12-13: are we saved by faith alone? Or by faith and works (as James 2:14ff also seems to suggest)? We affirm that we are indeed saved by faith alone (Rom 4:1ff), but not by a faith that "is alone" (i.e. the faith that truly saves must be manifested in works). This saving faith is living, not "dead". When Paul uses Abraham as the model of saving faith apart from works he goes to Abraham's trust in God's promise in Genesis 15. When James answers the question, "How do we know that we have saving faith?" he goes to Abraham's response to the call to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22. So Abraham's obedience was rooted in his saving faith. Phil 2:12-13 does not tell us to work for our salvation. The example of Christ in obedience is held as our example, then we are asked to work out our salvation, i.e. to let saving faith express itself in daily obedience to God's commands. Paul then immediatel...

We noted that, as in the previous study, growth in Christian discipleship is not a linear progression. In the Acts 2 passage we see two fundamental principles: the fact that growth comes from God ("the Lord added to their number", v 41, 47), and that growth happens in a community of believers. The truth that comes from integrating these two things is that community is the God-ordained way of keeping us in faith and growing in Christlikeness. That is why the writer to Hebrews in 10:24-25 tells us to go on meeting together. We stay in the faith because of one another. Disciplemaking is an integral part of what it means to be a Christian disciple. The implication of this is that even young disciples can be involved in disciplemaking. "Disciplemaker" is not a special category that only a chosen few reach. All Christians then are called to participate in disciplemaking, although it is true that we cannot lift others to levels of character and truth that we ourselves do...

We talked about two recent sermons in church. In the first, the preacher spoke about 'hell' and mentioned that Christ in His resurrection set imprisoned spirits in the part of Sheol (death, the grave) free. There is certainly evidence that there are two separate areas where the dead go in the OT (Lk 16:19ff): "Abraham's bosom" for the saved, and..somewhere else for the unsaved. We may take Abraham's bosom as a way of describing the complete happiness and satisfaction found when the righteous leave the world to be with God. So descriptions of Sheol in the OT where we are told that "in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise" (Ps 6:5) or "there is no work or thought or knowledge of wisdom in Sheol" (Ecc 9:10)are best seen as descriptions of the inability of the dead to participate in the course of events contrasted with the ability of the living, rather than statements of Sheol as a limbo-like state without awa...