The Pilgrim’s Progress<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u2022 At this point, we put our trust in Christ…<\/p>\n
The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion: that Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a sense, make good his deficiencies.<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022\u00a0This is the best deal you’ll ever get…<\/p>\n
Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022 This still requires obedience, however, …<\/p>\n
There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022 I mention Theosis, the idea central to Eastern Christianity that salvation and sanctification relates to our participation in the life of the Trinity.<\/p>\n
\u2022 What is the relationship between Faith and Works?<\/p>\n
Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022 Perhaps we can see the issue clearer if we compare the parodies of the two extreme positions.<\/p>\n
One set were accused of saying, “Good actions are all that matters. The best good action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving money. The best thing to give money to is the Church. So hand us over 10,000 pounds and we will see you through.” The answer to that nonsense, of course, would be that good actions done for that motive, done with the idea that Heaven can be bought, would not be good actions at all, but only commercial speculations.<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nThe other set were accused of saying, “Faith is all that matters. Consequently, if you have faith, it doesn’t matter what you do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end.” The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your “faith” in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all-not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022 Lewis then\u00a0considers this verse of Scripture:<\/p>\n
…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.<\/span><\/p>\n– Philippians 2:12-13<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nThe first half is, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”-which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”- which looks as if God did everything and we nothing.\u00a0I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together…\u00a0you will find that even those who insist most strongly on the importance of good actions tell you you need Faith; and even those who insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u2022\u00a0Jack then concludes the chapter…<\/p>\n
I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.<\/span><\/p>\n– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And so we come to the final chapter of Book III. Continuing on from last chapter, we continue to examine “faith”. This chapter focuses on faith in terms of salvation. If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe\u00a0manually, or\u00a0any place where good podcasts can be found\u00a0(iTunes,\u00a0Google Play,\u00a0Podbean,\u00a0Stitcher\u00a0and\u00a0TuneIn). Please send any objections, comments or questions, either via email\u00a0through my website\u00a0or tweet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3111],"tags":[1914,4835,400,2969,4636,4365,4438],"class_list":["post-67515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-c-s-lewis-joke","tag-catholicism","tag-featured","tag-god-in-the-dock","tag-mere-christianity","tag-the-eagle-and-child-podcast"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Faith-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67515"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73608,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67515\/revisions\/73608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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