He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

John 3:36 NASB

Martin Luther restored to the church at large the understanding of justification by faith alone with the divine inspiration of the verse, “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).  Man was broken, and completely incapable of pleasing a perfect God, and needed the divine to descend and make a demarkation, an end of man’s corruption, and remake him anew.

It was faith, and faith alone, that Paul wrote about, that connected us to the saving Grace made available by Christ.  By faith Abel had made a better offering, and by faith, Abraham was counted righteous when he believed, not wavering with unbelief.

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He told them still another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Matthew 13:33

It is no large observation to note that people do not usually fully understand all aspects of the Kingdom immediately at the time of salvation.  That which is planted grows, flourishes and multiplies, until greater and greater light is revealed within.  For, surely, the path of the righteous is like the growing dawn, it grows brighter and brighter until the full light of day (Proverbs 4:18).  So, the Spirit comes to reveal to us all truth, to be our counselor, and to help us.

Salvation is not an agreement with a doctrinal statement, but it is an introduction to a person, Jesus Christ.  It is meeting Him, and realizing that there is no other name under heaven whereby men might be saved, and that living with faith in this man, belief in who He is, is the doorway to Eternal Life.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

Ephesians 2:8

Faith is not a work.

This is one of the places John Calvin, the leader of reformed theology,  in my opinion, missed it.  In depth doctrinal analysis of all of the branch of theology today called Calvinism aside, the essence of his argument for many of his works hinged upon the understanding of total depravity as being excluding using the faith God provided.  According to that branch of thought, any effort on our part was lacking when it comes to pleasing God.

Many people complain about having “faith in faith”, and saying that it is not what saves you.  Unfortunately, this steers very wide of the margin of scripture, and does nothing but raise a smoke-screen against the real issue, that many do not have a real understanding of what faith is.

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Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

Hebrews 10:38 KJV

In the beginning, God created man and placed him in Eden.  He was assigned the job of subduing the Earth.  After the fall, things changed, and things were changed.  God told the man, “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19).

It was by the sweat of the brow that Adam was told that he would eat his food after the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had been eaten.  It would be with thorns and thistles and hardship all the days of his life.  And in the end, as God has originally warned him, he would die (Genesis 2:17).

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The people of Israel called the bread manna.

Exodus 16:31

“Manna”, the name given by the Israelites to the bread which came out of heaven, means “What is it?”  Though the bread fell on the ground every morning, and the Israelites ate it for 40 years in the wilderness, the name they gave it is the name that stuck.  When they saw it, they wondered what this thing was, as Moses commanded them to gather it to eat it.

They didn’t know what it was, but it was their bread.  Scripture calls it in other places the “bread of angels”.  Jesus later said that He was the true bread that came down from heaven (John 6:41), that whoever ate this bread, His flesh, and this wine, His blood, that they would live forever.

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