Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Is Salvation by Faith a Free Gift or Must it be Earned?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
A Free Gift?
Christians say that faith is God’s free gift that requires no special behaviour or effort to earn. Christians do not have to try to be good.
By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.Ephesians 2:8
Good deeds are not needed for salvation but only faith. That is unfair on those who are faithless but good, but, even so, do all those who have faith automatically get this free gift? The answer has to be, “No!” if God is omnipotent, because otherwise He is constrained. So, even faith does not ensure salvation. In the end, it is God’s whim! Such a capricious doctrine cannot be just.
Moreover, even if the choice of faith or unbelief is entirely up to human beings, they are deciding one way or the other, and only one of the choices has the required reward. That means the reward is not freely given but depends on the choice—one choice is right and the other wrong—just as a pass mark in an exam depends on making the right choice of answer. A special form of behaviour is necessary for salvation. People still have to earn salvation by behaving in the way God approves of.
The reward is still based on God’s approved choice, and so the reward is not freely given. All that has happened is that instead of God making the criterion of salvation something altruistic that might help life in this world, such as doing good deeds, he has made it selfish.
