Are we goats before salvation, and then become sheep? Or have the sheep always been sheep from the beginning?

Hello Marc, thank you for visiting and leaving your comments.

A few additional thoughts in response:

1. I affirm that justifying faith will produce good works, as I stated clearly in my post:

True sheep will be doing good works. Sheep do sheepy things (baa!) by nature. That is, as James says, faith inevitably produces good works (James 2:17). All that sheep require to produce good works is proper care and feeding through the word of God.

As Paul says, ‘We are For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.’ (Eph. 2:10)

We are created in Christ for good works. We are commanded to do them. Our neighbour needs them. Good works are therefore necessary.

The question I was attempting to address in this post was not therefore whether the sheep perform good works (they certainly shall), but rather whether these works are the basis upon which the sheep enter eternal life (they are not).

1. Even the best of our works are stained by sin, and therefore incapable of earning us merit before God. As the Westminster Confession of Faith (ch. XVI) says of our good works, ‘as they are good, they proceed from His Spirit, and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment.’ Luther, following Augustine, likewise asserted, ‘A pious man sins in all his good works’, and ‘The very best work is a venial sin according to God’s merciful judgment, and a mortal sin according to His strict judgment’ (see Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, 35–37).

Thus, we continually fall short of what we are duty-bound to do. Paradoxically, the more we mature as Christians, the more we become aware of this fact. We dare have no confidence or pride at all in our own works and, indeed, often fail to see how even the best of those works could ever be considered ‘good’ by a holy, righteous God. And so, longing to do the Lord’s will but continually falling short, we come daily in repentance to the cross, relying entirely upon Christ and His righteousness put to our account. There we receive the forgiveness of our sins in Christ.

1. Even when we have done all that we can, we are still able to say no more than, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ (Luke 17:10) Our best efforts afford us no cause for self-glory.

2. Nevertheless, God is pleased to accept and reward our good works – not for their own sake, seeing as they are beset with many sinful weaknesses and imperfections, but for the sake of His Son. God’s acceptance of our works is thus an act of His kindness and grace toward us for the sake of His Son. He accepts our works and counts them good because He has already accepted us in Christ on account of the faith that He has given us. We must never think that God accepts us on the basis of our works.

Both the Lutheran and Reformed confessions are extremely clear on these points. Here is the Confessional Lutheran position, for example, which plainly sets forth the acceptability of believers to God for the sake of Christ as the prerequisite and cause for their good works also being acceptable to Him for the sake of Christ (Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, IV):

Nor is there a controversy as to how and why the good works of believers, although in this flesh they are impure and incomplete, are pleasing and acceptable to God, namely, for the sake of the Lord Christ, through faith, because the person is acceptable to God. For the works which pertain to the maintenance of external discipline, which are also done by, and required of, the unbelieving and unconverted, although commendable before the world, and besides rewarded by God in this world with temporal blessings, are nevertheless, because they do not proceed from true faith, in God’s sight sins, that is, stained with sin, and are regarded by God as sins and impure on account of the corrupt nature and because the person is not reconciled with God. For a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, Matt. 7:18, as it is also written Rom. 14:23: Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. For the person must first be accepted of God, and that for the sake of Christ alone, if also the works of that person are to please Him.

In summary, then, the sheep – those who have already been declared righteousness on account of faith – will produce good works. Their good works are the fruit of justifying faith, and evidence of it. But those good works can never be the basis upon which the sheep merit pardon of sin or eternal life. God accepts the works of the sheep only because He has already accepted those sheep through faith for the sake of His Son. By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone are we declared righteous and saved. Not by works (lest we should boast), not by our merit, nor through any mediator between God and man other than Christ. Our salvation is of the Lord, and it is His work. And what a glorious salvation it is, rescuing us from death and hell and sin, and fitting us for good works that abound to His glory!

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:4–10)

If small acts of kindness are classified “working hard”, then I am guilty, though I can think of worse things to be guilty of.

But these days not many have the love of truth, I can feel the falling away. The Lord revealed Himself to me Nov. 2007, and I have been a totally diferent person since then. It seems the Lord instilled on me things I knew nothing about, I have never attended church or felt the need to acknowledge God. So I cannot claim this view for myself.
In most congregations people want the Love message or Bible stories and so on. But start to bring about truth and you get a whole new view of people. John 15:18 will have a brand new meaning. Who hates you? Ask yourself this. Who hated Jesus? You will find it was “the” organized religion of the day. This is where I find the hatred Jesus spoke of too. It seems that political correctness is above the Lord’s will. How many must go on to hell being led by people who say they are of God?
Daniel, you blogged about discernment before, we “of God” can discern the current moment of people’s state – goat or sheep. The current atmosphere in congegations is “Don’t judge!”! Here is a “Truth…..read on in the bit of wisdom from our Father. He is telling us to judge with His measure I.E.-His Truth. Then Matt 7:5 He tells us to take the beam out of our own eye BEFORE we wilt see clearly to cast out the mote out of the eye of thy brother. WOW, thats much different than most “christian’s” view! This is but a fraction of what I mean by bringing out truths and feeling what Christ talked about.

Thoughts?

Darrell

Hi Steph, thanks for visiting, and for your warm words :-) And thank for for the link on Faith Defenders – very much appreciated.

Mike Ratliff is one of my friends, and one of the good guys. If anyone reading this hasn’t checked out his blog, it is at mikeratliff.wordpress.com. Steph’s blog is surrender-all-jessie.com, and you should go check that out, too :-)

Steph, I would be honoured for you to add me to your blogroll, and you are welcome to post anything on this site to your own.

Grace and peace to you through our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

This message is so needful in the days in which we are living when easy believism and the True Gospel is not being preached properly by a large part of the visible church, if even being preached at all.

I recently added your “The mysterious case of the disappearing Gospel” to a site I am a member of (Faith Defenders) – and just had to come back to have a look around your blog :-D Like Mike Ratliff of Possessing The Treasure, you are are able to open the scripture in such an easy- to- follow way that makes it easy to understand – all glory to God for this :-D

Please may I add you to my” blogs I visit ” on my own blog? and please may I post some of your posts with a direct link to you (of course :-D) I shan’t be offended should you decline this.
To God be all the glory!
Bless you
Steph

What friendly people I am having visit today :-)

Hi! Thank you for stopping by and commenting. I don’t think I disagree with you!

As I tried to make clear, good works will inevitably follow for those who are trusting in Christ alone. And who are those who are truly trusting in Christ? Only those that have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and made into new creatures. True sheep will indeed ‘act like a sheep and submit to the loving guidance of the Shepherd’. It’s not so much ‘they must do this’, perhaps, as ‘they shall do this’, because that is now their inward nature.

If someone claims to be a sheep but does not show any evidence of this (no desire to submit to Christ, no love of His word, no signs of repentance), then that’s a sign of a big problem, and needs to be investigated with the utmost urgency.

But remember, even as Christians, we struggle with our sin nature. Paul, who said ‘I delight in the law of God according to the inward man’, says in that very same passage, ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.’ (See Romans 7 for the proper context.)

In other words, the struggle with sin is ongoing in this life. We are truly declared righteous, and long to do God’s will. But, somehow, we do not find within ourselves the ability to do it. This is the condition that Dr. Luther described as simul iustus et peccator – at the same time righteous and sinner.

The Christian then, needs to be daily reminded of the gospel. The Christian life is one of ongoing repentance and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. But this is our sure comfort and our confidence: ‘He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ’ (Phil. 1:6, NKJV).