"With God all things are possible" doesn't mean that God does it for you
According to the passage quoted above, you are not going to stick the camel through the needle without God's help.
"Be ye therefore perfect"--with God's help.
justification by faith--God does it.
justification by works--we do it.
Both views are supportable Biblically.
But if by "faith," we mean that a certain doctrine has to be believed in order to be saved, this makes no sense. There is nothing particularly virtuous about believing some doctrine. (in this way, I agree with Jar).
Well, it's a little more complicated that that. There is such a thing as intellectual integrity, which I think is a virtue. But integrity means sincerity plus open-mindedness plus the courage to withstand the opinions of others. So if your belief in a doctrine possessed integrity, this would be a possibly saving virtue, but this would be so even if the doctrine turned out to be false. One might be an atheist with integrity.
The problem with the "just try" doctrine, however, lies in the vague delineation of what it means to "try." I suppose God knows your heart and so knows if you are really trying or not, but I'm concerned with our knowledge of our own heart. Do we know if we are really trying or not? I'm not sure that we do. In that case we are walking this perpetual tightrope, just as bad as the Calvinists who are searching about for "evidence" of being a member of the Elect. (Am I sincere in my belief? Well, yes. Oh, but am I really sincere? Really truly? Maybe I'm just fooling myself, etc.)
I'm trying, but am I really, truly trying?, etc. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.
ed: changed subtitle
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-10-2005 07:37 PM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-10-2005 08:21 PM