> I didn't fully understand your position on the faith without works can still save you. I didn't agree, but now I think I am beginning to understand what this means. It DOESN'T mean that you can live a life of sin* and be saved because you have faith that you will be.

Absolutely correct. Salvation isn't the end of the road for a Christian but the beginning. God is just as interested if not more so (not sure about that) in the choices we make in our lives AFTER we are saved. Our sins may be forgiven in the eternal scheme of things, but they still have consequences, both for ourselves and those around us, both practical, tangible consequences and spiritual consequences. Works may often even have *eternal* consequences, even if they may not determine the difference between heaven and hell: numerous passages in the Bible talk about earning rewards that will be received in heaven, although I'm not aware that it ever specifies what these rewards are (and, privately, I wonder if it is in our capacity to understand beforehand anyway). Having committed our lives to God, we are duty-bound, therefore, to be and do His will concerning us. (Romans 6 is great reading on this. It begins, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?")

I don't really think there is a true loophole here -- that one can be saved and then blissfully continue in sin. If you are saved, the Holy Spirit dwells within you and never leaves; God is in the business of changing lives. (Note Philippians 1:6.) It's not that one can't sin when one is saved; it's just that unless you actively push God away and refuse the beckoning of the Holy Spirit enough times, you're probably not going to backslide so much you'll lose the desire to try to walk in righteousness with Him. It's happened, of course, including to me. You get out of fellowship with God long enough, and then gradually take one wrong step and then another, and each wrong step makes it easier to take the next one, and suddenly you look back and realize, geez, you've backslidden a LONG way, and if you have carried any pride with you, it gets harder and harder to face God and say, "I really screwed up," and turn yourself around, because it's just easier to tell yourself you aren't that bad off.

But God is still right there, and however accustomed we may be to ignoring his spiritual leading, it's still there and can't be completely or indefinitely ignored. The point I'm getting at is, the natural path for one who is saved, in the *long* term, is AWAY from sin (though no one is ever perfectly sinless in this life), and it's only if we pull out of fellowship with God than that path can switch directions.

> I believe that "faith with works" simply means that your faith will show by your works.

I agree that's what it means to us. Some places in the Bible use that idea to a slightly different end, but the great thing is, even in the doctrinal issues meant for other ages, we can still find symbolic meaning for ourselves. Most biblical passages can be read on multiple levels that way. I agree that faith without works is puzzling -- I won't say such a person can't go to heaven, but such a thing would seem to me either false faith or the most immediate advent of backsliding imaginable. The natural course of things is that faith is reflected through works.

> Forgive me if I seem unable to express my thoughts very clearly, but I was fumbling for words and I am afraid I came off rather poorly.

Not at all.