Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King

by Matthew W. Bates

When the gospel and its proper response have been eroded, recarpeting the foyer, rearranging the pews, and reshingling the roof will not help.

gift-giving, or grace, in the ancient world always required reciprocation.

With regard to eternal salvation, rather than speaking of belief, trust, or faith in Jesus, we should speak instead of fidelity to Jesus as cosmic Lord or allegiance to Jesus the king.

allegiance is the best macro-term available to us that can describe what God requires from us for eternal salvation.

But is this cause-and-effect assertion fully satisfactory in light of the biblical testimony?

The point of this definition—as is made clear by examples in the rest of Hebrews 11—is that by means of pistis, the true people of God are willing to

act decisively in the visible world not for reasons that are immediately apparent but because an unseen yet even more genuine underlying substance (hypostasis), God’s reality, compels the action.

So if we want to grow in faith, we should study and contemplate God’s extraordinary reliability.