What determines whether a person is saved by God?

In James 2, verses 14 and on, it is pointed out that true faith, faith that leads to salvation, does not merely acknowledge facts about God, such as His being one, because the devil and his demons believe those things – and they shudder. No, faith of salvation is shown by good works.

Wait, many will say, isn’t the focus on good works what made the Pharisees who opposed Jesus evil? Certainly, self-righteousness is not pleasing to God, and thus it matters the cause of one’s good works. But just because it is possible for one to do actions that may be described as “good works” and merit anger from God does not mean that no one should ever do any actions that can be described as “good works” for any reason.

So we see, belief in God as who He is is necessary to be saved, but not enough by itself; otherwise the demons would be in heaven. And doing good works of kindness is also necessary, but neither is that enough; otherwise the Pharisees would be in heaven.

Clearly faith and works together are needed, and the works must be a consequence of the faith.

Notice that Jesus found it sufficient to analyze the nature of the Pharisees’ works to prove that they were not elected. However, just as they were furious at any suggestion that they had not always been the most holy of all people, it is difficult for anyone to confess sin, yet “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

Thus, if salvation is a sequence of events, the order is election, repentance, faith, and good works.

How can God’s sovereign grace coexist with man’s free will? One key thing to recognize is the difference that we are limited inside time, while God is not. As it is said, for God “a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”. In other words, this world is to God as a novel is to an author. The author may spend several weeks composing a scene that, in the timeline of the story, takes only a few minutes, yet at the same time be able to think of several years of the story timeline in just a few minutes. The author can even choose at any time to rewrite a sequence of events so that, from his perspective, the story just changed entirely, yet from the perspective of inside the story, there was never any sequence of events other than what is between these two covers.

Yet, despite the author’s sovereignty over the narrative, all human characters have free will. The reader feels emotions when reading because of admiration, despise, or other qualities of regard for the characters themselves.

In the same say, while God writes the narrative of history, He has many parts carried out by characters with free will, so that elements of the story that He does not directly like, yet are necessary for parts which He would love to include, can be included, both provoking His anger and serving desired purposes.

Many will respond to this claiming that this is not fair. If that is true, that it is not fair for God to create things on a lower level of existence than His and choose how they use their free will, then it most certainly has never been fair for a human author to write a fictional story. If such people have read fictional stories, not to mention writing, then they have most certainly committed hypocrisy, enjoying the unique consequences of this “injustice”. Reading history would be equivalent.

Further, the concept of “fair” is a subset of what is “right”, which is defined by the self-existent being that created everything else, and none other.

(Originally written as a note on March 12, 2018)