A magnificent pheasant!Can you distinguish it from other birds?
Can you distinguish
the eternal salvation by the free grace of God
from the temporal salvation of God's children
conditioned upon their obedience to God's will for them?
By C.H. Cayce
If there is only one salvation, or one kind of saving, spoken of in the Bible, then no man under heaven can harmonize the Bible. In Eph 2:5 the apostle says, “By grace ye are saved.” They are saved by the unmerited favor of Christ. This being true, they are not saved by reason of any good thing done by them. The same apostle says, in another place, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us.”—Tit 3:5. They are saved according to God’s mercy, and not by any righteous works performed by them.
The same writer says, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”—1Ti 4:16. Here is a saving which follows as a result of doing something, and that doing is a righteous doing. But this saving is not an eternal saving, or the receiving of eternal life. The receiving of eternal life is “not by works of righteousness which we have done,” but according to God’s mercy. Timothy was a child of God, already in possession of eternal life, when Paul wrote the language to him just quoted.
Hence, it was too late for him to save himself in that respect; but it was not too late for him to save himself from false doctrines and wrong practices by taking heed unto himself and to doctrine and continuing therein. He would save others—“them that hear thee”—in the same way that he would save himself by doing what the apostle here admonished; hence he would save others from false doctrines and wrong practices. (Cayce’s Editorials vol. 2, pg 378)
