Close, but not quite—because that belief (i.e., saving faith) is itself something one receives by what Christ did. In other words, the very act of believing in Christ means that you are receiving what he did for you; God replacing your heart of stone that obstinately refuses to believe with a heart of flesh that humbly wills to believe is predicated on the perfect atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are gifts of grace from the Father in heaven bestowed upon all those who he gives to the Son for his sake and glory. No one can come to Christ unless it is granted him by the Father (John 6:65), and everyone whom the Father gives the Son will come to him (v. 37; cf. John 10:25–29; Acts 13:48; 16:14; 1 Thessalonians 1:4–5; 1 John 5:1; Philippians 1:29, and so on). The very act of believing in Christ savingly means that you are receiving what he did for you.

“If I don’t believe and repent, then I can’t be saved. Correct?”

That is not so. The question of whether or not you can be saved is answered by what Christ did, not by what you do. Because of Christ and his perfect atoning sacrifice you can be saved. So if you do not believe and repent, then you are not saved; but it does not follow from the fact that you aren’t saved that you can’t be saved. You can be, and what Christ did is the reason, not what you do. In Christ alone by grace through faith alone for the glory of God alone.

“So when it comes down to it, I have to do a work in order to be saved.”

Incorrect. To repent and believe is a fruit of salvation, not the cause thereof. It is not faith that saves, but Christ who saves through faith. There is no work you can do in order to be saved; that is the very reason for and necessity of the faithfulness of Christ and his perfect atoning sacrifice, apart from whom no one would be reconciled. It is by grace that we are saved through faith—which is the glorious gift of God, so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8-10). “But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us in full measure through Jesus Christ our Savior (Titus 3:4–6).

“So how am I to truly receive salvation?”

Through the faithfulness of Christ and his perfect atoning sacrifice; “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). If anyone thinks there is even a shred of anything they can do in order to be saved, then that person understands neither the unmitigated holiness of God nor the depth of their own sin and their desperate condition apart from the faithfulness of Christ Jesus. The gospel is not a slogan or a simple decision or a formulaic rite that will only take a minute of your time; it is the consuming fire and everlasting power of God under which we recognize with contempt and loathing the black filthiness of our sinful condition and with unquenchable joy and love the inexpressible beauty and glory of Christ, who he is and what he does. An eternity spent at his feet will not be enough to comprehend the depth and scope of the gospel of our Savior King.

Our salvation must (can) not be by our own effort / act of works, lest we have reason to boast (cf. Eph 2:8-10).

First, thank you very much for taking the time to contribute your thoughts. I really value and appreciate the perspective of godly people whose occupation corresponds to their vocation of advancing God’s kingdom. It’s both an honour and humbling to have you involved in the conversation. (I shall assume as a matter of good form that your comments are representative of you speaking as a private individual.)

Second, the point I was making with Anthony had less to do with the order of salvation and everything to do with the means of salvation, viz. the merits upon which salvation is based. Although God’s electing activity is surely a biblical matter, election in itself is not the means of salvation. What I mean to say is, it’s a theologically instructive truth with a vital and significant place in the ordo salutis, and we do well when we examine what God reveals to us in election; but the merits upon which salvation is based and secured is principally the nature and work of Christ, without which election would be unrealizable (i.e., God cannot elect anyone without sin being vanquished). The Father does choose who he gives to the Son (and all those chosen do come) and his choice is not conditioned upon any human merit, you are right. But election does not pay for sins; justification, expiation, and propitiation are secured by what Christ did, his sinless life, guiltless death, and vindicating resurrection. The entire scope of salvation is rooted in the atoning work of Christ as God incarnate; from eternity to eternity, the entire scope of God’s salvific work looks to first century Palestine and an old rugged cross.

The point I was making with Anthony is that belief does not save. Christ saves, by his paying for the sins of all who repent and believe. Like election, the means and ends of belief also presuppose the work of Christ. We are not saved apart from election, nor are we saved apart from belief, but the means of salvation—the merits upon which it is based, the merits by which it is secured—is found in Christ and what he did, without whom it would all be in vain. Anthony (like so may others) was led to understand that salvation depends on whether one believes. That’s wrong, for salvation does not depend on any human merit, not even belief. It depends on Christ and what he did. God gets all the glory. We can take credit for nothing.

Third, my conversation with Anthony had nothing to do with the question of election, much less whether election is fair or not. However, I know what I would say to him if we did have a conversation like that, because it’s one I’ve had before. My response is always the same: “You’re right, it’s not fair. It’s merciful, a very different thing. If God were to treat us on the basis of what is fair, no one would make it.”

I appreciate your boldness in dealing with Anthony, but I don't think you were being clear. You could simplify your message a bit if you stripped away some of the “Christianese.” In plain English you're basically saying:

1) Everyone sins and deserves the judgment of Hell. 2) In an act of mercy, God unconditionally chooses to save some of us. (By “unconditionally”, I mean that God does not take into consideration any quality or good works of man).

What this means is that:

3) Everyone who has faith in Christ was chosen by God to have that faith. The faith itself was a gift from God, given to the elect (so that no man can boast of his salvation).

Ryft, wouldn't you agree this is a clearer summary of the “doctrines of grace”? I felt like you were watering down the concept of election. It's a very simple concept: God chooses some of us to have faith and thus be saved.

Were you taking that approach to avoid the accusation that God choosing some over others is not fair? If so, then it was neither clear nor bold.

Believing is our part, yes. But his confusion wasn’t found in a soteriological distinction between what God does and what we do in the interplay of salvation. (And I say ‘God’ in order to maintain the fidelity that really the whole Trinity is involved, a liberty I can enjoy here that would have been obfuscating in an atheist environment.) Rather, his confusion was found in a mistaken caricature that believing in Jesus is what saves a person; i.e., your entering heaven depends on whether or not you believed. The reason people think that (on my educated guess) is because in our culture we are constantly told that in order to be saved we need to receive Christ or accept Christ into our hearts or believe that Christ is Savior, etc.

So I was countering two misconceptions. First, there is the stark and complete absence of the repentance part. When it comes to our response to the gospel, the unrelenting drumbeat in Scripture is repent and believe. There is no turning to Christ without a turning away from sinful self. Second, even with the repentance part asserted in its rightful place, so that our response is to both repent and believe, it’s still not something we do in order to be saved. You’re not saved because you repented and believed. You are saved because of what Christ did. My point was to combat the notion that salvation rests on anything we do, directing every last shred of glory to God alone.

“So in order for me to be saved,” he had asked me, “I need to believe that Christ is my personal Savior?” That was the sticking part, and I did not miss it: “So in order to be saved, I need to…” If I had answered in the affirmative, it would have suggested that salvation hinges upon something man does. So I rejected it and put the focus back on Christ. “In order to be saved,” your sins must be paid for, and belief does not pay for sins. The blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross at Calvary did that. We repent and believe as a response to salvation, not as a means of salvation.

Duane,

You raise a very good point, a crucially important point. In matters of salvation, belief is far more than mere intellectual assent (its meaning today); in the language of the gospel, belief carries the vital component of deeply committed trust. To be consistent with Scripture, it plays out like this: we give our intellectual assent (assensus) to the clear facts of the gospel (notitia) with a deeply committed trust (fiducia) in the name of Jesus Christ as our only plea. As any competent theologian will tell you, those three elements in concert—notitia, assensus, and fiducia—is the very definition of faith. And they cannot be separated; remove any of the three predicates and it is no longer faith, becoming instead untrusting belief or blind trust and the like. So faith is the sum of having the information, being persuaded of its truthfulness, and placing complete and utter trust in it.

And just so that you’re aware, I had a conversation with that same atheist previously, in another thread, on the very subject of faith. He had described faith as a blind and irrational leap and I took him to task over that, as you can imagine, explaining both carefully and firmly the true nature of faith (and that it is irrational to knock down straw man caricatures and then pretend you’ve said anything intelligent about your opponent’s beliefs). He conceded both debates to me and apologized, and I commended his humble honesty. He now understands there is an important difference between the faith and gospel described in the Bible and the shrieking nonsense typically found in posts from… well, fundies who learned evangelism from Jack Chick tracts.

There seemed to be a bit of confusion over the word belief and what that entailed, or what it secured. Do you think that trust would be a better word to use? It's not so much that we believe in Jesus or believe in what He did, but that we put our trust in Him – as we do with the the pilot, engineers and maintenance crew whenever we get on a plane – and because He is trustworthy, being able to deliver on His promises because of who He is and what He did, we are rescued from judgment; judgment that we deserve.

Suggested homework: A word study of “believe” in the New Testament as it relates to the concept of trust. For example, in the Gospel of John the translators of my Bible (Holman) place the word “believe” on the lips of Jesus three times in just one verse (John 3:18). This is just after Jesus had told them that “…everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). The contextual usage of “believe” appears to be synonymous with “trust”, as simply believing that Jesus is the Messiah is quite a different thing to putting you trust in Him and I wonder if that is what “believe” really means in these cases. Contrast this with John 3:12 where “believe” appears to mean exactly that?