Gift of faith?

Nomes · 02-26-2002, 12:23 AM

Are there any other verses other than:

Ephesians 2:8 that "say" God gives us faith?

Blindman · 02-26-2002, 12:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nomes
Are there any other verses other than:

Ephesians 2:8 that "say" God gives us faith?

Extraordinary faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit which is given to some people (1 Cor 12:9) but that's different from / more than the faith by which we are saved.

Blindman · 02-26-2002, 12:42 AM

What is faith? Is faith to intellectually believe / know that God is real, or is faith based, not in our heads, but in our hearts? Just something to discuss...

When I think of "my faith," what I really mean by that is not my knowledge that God exists, but rather my continuing sense of God's realness and His prescence. So for me "faith" isn't based in my mind, but in my heart. Does that make any sense? Knowing that God is real is not the tough part; rather, trusting in God is what is difficult, and it's that trust that I'm really thinking about when I talk about "faith."

Nomes · 02-26-2002, 12:49 AM

I agree Blindman! Faith is one of the gifts of the spirit!

....coz I'm thinking....
Ephesians 2
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--

...It's not saying that faith is the gift...GRACE is the gift! It's by GRACE that we are saved, which is God's gift to us, for us to freely recieve. So that no Man can bost. Why would we bost because we had faith? We would bost if we were saved through works, because then we could say we had saved ourselves! But it's through faith! And GRACE is the gift that that verse is talking about!

....COOL!
I spent the day studying my bible and a few other books. Man I love God's word!!

Nomes · 02-26-2002, 12:51 AM

Hey you posted while I posted!

Yeah I agree with you! Faith is all about following God, not just knowing he's there or believing he's real. But doing what he says and stuff!

Luke · 02-26-2002, 01:35 AM

Faith is not listed as a gift of the Spirit (that I can recall). And Ephesians 2:8-9 isn't referring to extraordinary faith, it's referring to saving faith.

Nomes · 02-26-2002, 02:25 AM

I didn't say Ephesians 2:8-9 was refering to the gift of the spirit! I WAS talking about saving faith! Blindman just took a tangent from what I was saying!

So what I'm saying is
Grace = God's gift to us
Faith (of the saving grace variety) = our consious decision/change of heart/obedience to God. NOT the gift of God!

Now Faith (of the spiritual gift variety), must be distinguished from saving faith, (you can't please God without saving faith Hebrews 11:6) In 1 Cor 12:9 the word used means a special endowment of the power of the spirit. So that's like when you need more faith than is humanly possible for you to have, much more than just your normal faith in God.

Dice · 02-26-2002, 02:48 AM

Hebrews 12:2
2 Peter 1:1
Jude 1:3

And while you're at it, why don't you look right after those verses in Ephesians 2 and check out verse 10. Which starts out "For we are" meaning as a conclusion, the statement, being the latter, is the purpose and cause of the former statement. And what is that? That we are his workmanship created for good works which He made beforehand for us to walk in. And now when we jump back to James, we see that faith and works are two things that go together, and in fact faith produces good works. And so if God prepared good works beforehand for us to walk in, and we are His workmanship which were created for those good works, then a requirement within that creation is to have faith which would produce the good works. We were created for this purpose, which is why it says "For we have been" and "For we are" to signify even more clearly that it is all the work of God.

Dice · 02-26-2002, 03:47 AM

A couple more bits cause I'm bored...

And also note that this is basically an argument against total depravity. Saying that the saving faith is from you is to say we are saved because we muster up this faith in God, which would be something we choose to do, an action, a work which would allow us to boast. So your interpretation is self-refuting with verse 9. Not only this, but it's an impossibility with the rest of Scripture.

Romans 1:17 "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH."

The righteous man shall live by faith huh, but who is this? The answer is in Romans 3:10-18, and that answer is no one. There isn't one righteous, not one who understands, does good, seeks God or has a fear of God. It's not a quality we work up by which we recieve Salvation, but it is all from God. And henceforth Romans 1:17 says God's righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, not our own righteousness.

Now there is more support for this (beginning in Romans 10 and cross-study of its last few verses), but if I got into that it'd slide so easily into election and all the other doctrines of Calvinism and get this whole thing into another one of those debates. And I won't be held responsible for that when you started it by making this.