Yes. I’m curious. Let’s branch this out. How does your faith work in you to be more like Christ in this life–loving your brothers and sisters; both Christian and non Christian; as in James and Jesus’ words? It’s a great outgrowth. Thanks!
Hi Randy
Were you at all ministered by what Shannon posted?
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Yes. I am sorry; I went off topic too fast. Please feel free to talk more about this. Thank you
this looks great, Christy. I’m going to listen to it this weekend. Thanks!
@Kelli ,thank you for your response. Everyone lives by faith. The question is faith in what?
The Pharisees lived by faith in the Bible and see what that got them. You and Pastor Bill are advocating the same.
The just shall live by faith in God, not the Bible. Abraham did not have the Bible. His faith was in YHWH. Today we have God with us in Jesus Christ so we have no excuse for not knowing that God is Jesus Christ, the Logos (Rational Word of God) and Saviour, not the Bible.
We are commanded to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, not the Bible.
Exodus 20:3-5 (KJV)
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: Exodus 20:4 (NIV2011)
God expects God’s people to put God First, and God alone, not the Bible. Please do not put God to the test!
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Allegiance (we could maybe substitute ‘performance’, and hence ‘works’?) is not what makes someone a family member to begin with, though. In terms of practice (and soteriology), adoption is pivotal. Whether someone can lose their adoptive status through disloyalty is another matter (discussed at length here and here).
Maybe ‘faith’ has to do with the self-awareness and embrace of family status and the fatherhood of God as affirmed by behaviors of the mind and desires of the heart, and of course external behaviors too.
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Translators are not suggesting “allegiance” and “faithfulness” as possible translations of pistis because of their gut feelings about a meaning they like. They are suggesting the evidence points to it after studying period texts and making lexical semantics arguments. The fact that a suggested meaning of a Greek word doesn’t correspond with your gut feelings about what a text means after a lifetime of reading that texts in English with different words (the semantics of which have surely shaped your theology to some extent) isn’t entirely relevant to the discussion of what words are good translations.
The covenant language and context of Judaism is full of concepts of faithfulness and allegiance linked to membership in the chosen people.
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Maybe I should not have posted this regarding the faith? 
Thanks for your input Roger
See my tag line.
I’m thinking about what it means pragmatically after a lifetime (not quite yet ; - ) of experience.
the thief on the cross switched allegiance to Christ, and didn’t have any works he was able to perform; so that seems to fit both categories. As James said, faith would naturally grow out to works, if it’s real.
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I think you did fine! I was jumping the gun. Thanks.
Thanks Shannon and God bless you. I have indeed received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and it is indeed important for us to examine ourselves and see that we have the faith of Christ. Thanks for the reminder.
For many of us, there are a lot of complex issues and questions that we have to grapple with (creation and evolution being one of them), and people often come up with flaky (or even outright dishonest and manipulative) ideas in the name of Christ. The three things that have troubled me the most in this respect over the years have been young earth creationism, prosperity preachers with private jets paid for by widows’ offerings, and repeated failed attempts by so-called prophets to predict the date of the Rapture. But when I’ve been pushing back on such things (and yes, I can get quite snarky about it – but you also find quite a lot of snark in some of Paul’s epistles towards similar nonsense in the first century) I’ve always had to remember to take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Jesus is still Lord no matter what superspits or cranks say and do in His name.
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Thinking practically again, you have faith in a particular chair because it is trustworthy. I don’t think ‘allegiance’ applies, nor the ‘faithfulness’ of the chair. The thief on the cross switched his allegiance from himself to Jesus, true, but what was salvific was not his allegiance, a reflexive attribute, but his faith in Jesus as the Christ and Jesus’ trustworthiness.
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Of course none of us has the faithfulness of Christ. That was His. All are saved through it, whether they know it or not. He’s competent like that. Some of us are given a smidgin of faith as a gift, by hearing its distorted proclamation, which is worked up further distorted by our ignorance. That broken work can’t save us. It can’t possibly matter, as long as we further realise as Paul did that, that he realised my tag line.
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I don’t think Jesus was talking about this temporal life when he said the following (he says comparable things elsewhere where he is obviously not talking about this life), nor in his humanness mistaken:
Anyone who ascribes to Joshua in any way, matter or form is to me, engaging in counter-productive argument related to faith.
Joshua might be the greatest villain in the Bible. Thanks be to Goddess that Joshua never existed and is merely a myth but please, just as you would not use Hitler or Hess to make a point, please people stop referring to Joshua as anything except a lover of prostitutes.
Goddess is not genocidal; She loves all regardless of color, religion or intelligence level…
So well stated!
Evangelicals go from one strangely translated verse regarding all scripture being Goddess-breathed to elevating the text over the Creatrix who breathed (inspired) the text Herself. [content removed by moderator]