Salvation is by God’s grace through faith, right?
Well, look at the next couple of verses:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8–ESV)
What do you do that? “…whoever loves has been born of God…and knows God.“ Words like born of and knows connote salvation. Couple those words to the inclusive whoever or everyone and what stands before us? A way to become born of God, or to know God. Could we rephrase this to say, “Everyone who loves is a Christian”? As a Christian, I am not comfortable with that phrase as it flies in the face of the greater Christian context. That greater context says that salvation is by grace through faith alone. The Bible teaches that salvation is not by works or deeds, but what, then, do we do when John comes along and seems to contradict this maxim? [Read more…] about 1 John 4:7-8>>Surely not another way to salvation