Full Question: If I am saved and my cousin is not. God loves us all, He gave His Son for all, He gave His grace that is to lead us to salvation to all of us. I accepted Christ, but my cousin has not. Prevenient grace gave me the power to accept Christ, but I then used my free will to actually do it. My cousin refused to do that, to accept Christ. Isn’t my acceptance of Christ a good deed? Yes, it is. Isn’t my cousin’s rejection of Christ and salvation a bad deed? Yes, it is. So, am I not then saved in the end by my good deed of accepting Christ? Like, God did 99,99999999999% but then I did that 0,00000000000001 and that saved me. You see, that bothers me. Arminianism seems to put at least a bit of merit for salvation in a human being.
Response:
Question: Isn’t my acceptance of Christ a good deed?
Answer: Sure, faith in Christ is certainly a morally good thing to do and it is likewise bad to reject Him, if that is what you mean.
Question: So, am I not then saved in the end by my good deed of accepting Christ?
Answer: No, you are saved in the end because God has graciously decided to save believers. You are saved in the end because Christ graciously saves you in response to faith since you are powerless to save yourself.
It doesn’t matter that faith is a good deed because no amount of good deeds can merit salvation from God and no amount of good deed can erase a single sin, let alone a lifetime of sin. That is why we need atonement and atonement can only be found in Christ. We cannot atone for our own sins, so we need to trust in Christ to forgive us and save us:
“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.
David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are they
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” (Rom. 4:4-8)
Trusting in Christ doesn’t earn anything (as Paul well points out), as it simply receives a free gift that none of us deserve, and it is nonsense to try to take credit for a gift simply because we freely received it and did not reject it.
If you receive a gift from someone with full power to reject it instead, does that mean you earned the gift? Of course not. Does it mean you bought the gift? Of course not. Does it mean you contributed to the gift? Of course not. Does it mean you gave the gift to yourself? Of course not. All of that is plainly absurd.
All you did is receive it. It might certainly be a good thing to receive it, and a bad thing for someone else to reject it, but that does not change the fact that you did nothing to earn it or deserve it, and that is exactly Paul’s point in Romans 4.
Question: Like, God did 99,99999999999% but then I did that 0,00000000000001 and that saved me.
Answer: Not at all. You are powerless to save yourself which is exactly why you need to trust in Christ to save you.
Related posts:
Does Arminian Theology Suggest That We Depend on Ourselves Instead of Christ for Salvation?
The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #10: Wait, Now Faith is a “Work?”
The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #9: Faith is Some Reason to Boast?
[The original post and comments can be found here.]
