Posted on 09/18/2017 8:17:38 AM PDT by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
No. But Jesus can.
Forgiving others is the key commandment. In his “through the Bible” on Matthew 6, Damian Kyle said that it took 20 years for a laborer to earn a single talent. So 10,000 talents is 200,000 years of work.
But for Christ, each of us would be influencing how God will judge us every day of lives - and that’s not a good thing because it would be in the negative. Nobody in their right mind would ever want to get “what they deserve” from God. BUT, there’s good news.......
Living a faith-filled, chaste, good life, doesn’t count?
No. It does not. The most minor sin is vile in God’s sight. We are saved, only, by the grace and sacrifice of Christ who washes away the stench of our sin. Hide in the rock of His salvation. Do not believe yourself capable of standing firm in your own strength before the Lord.
That’s why Catholics have the gift of the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation.
God forgives and forgets in that Sacrament!
Calvinists understand that penance/forgiveness only accounts for the past. It is in the present that we sin with every breath we take.
Yes, it does count. BUT it doesn’t save. Works proves and improves your faith. Those who shun works and the Ten Commandments know they have secret sins they don’t want addressed.
I am not sure exactly the method of judgement but, we are told the books will be opened and we will be judged from them. I am supposing all our acts are recorded somewhere and that we will have to answer for them. Before you flame me please continue reading. . . . .
We, all of us are sinners. None of us deserve any kind of reward, we have all failed the test so to speak. Because God loves us, He sent His Son into the world to be punished for our sins. Taking advantage of that punishment however is not automatic. This is where it gets controversial.
Some say that if you confess Jesus as your Lord then all is forgiven, forever. Others say, well not quite. It is easy to say you confess Jesus but if you only talk the talk but don’t walk the walk then you don’t really get the benefits package after all.
Doctrine according to Joe (that’s me by the way) says that option number two is more correct. Some will say that means you believe that works save you. No, I do not believe works save you. Faith in The Lord Jesus Christ makes you eligible for Grace that He offers to those that FOLLOW Him. The big problem is who follows Him. I think that is what the books are for. When we are kind to our fellow man it is recorded and you can say you are walking the walk. When you are mean, unkind or whatever then you are not walking the walk and that too is recorded. All of us at sometimes do bad things to other people. If we realize our sin and repent and then ask forgiveness of it The Lord will likely scratch that out of the record.
I suspect that there is nobody that will repent of every bad thing they have done but they may have tried. I am very much hopeful that The Lord will give us an E for effort and forgive us even if we haven’t asked but that it will be a judgement call.
I am unwilling, after reading many times the New Testament, to believe in the doctrine of once saved always saved or that simply saying “Jesus is Lord” will save me from anything. While we are all sinners, Jesus abhors sin. If we don’t abhor sin we will not be with Jesus in my humble opinion. If we are constantly doing things we shouldn’t then we don’t really abhor sin. Good luck with that lifestyle come judgement day.
For those who genuinely try The Good Lord will stand with them on judgement day and tell The Father that He has already been punished for those sins and that He will deal now with that person, that person is His. I hope He claims me. I’m trying to be like Jesus, I think that is what it takes.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m trying to be simple here, certainly there must be things you must do to show you are His like being baptized, but following Jesus, trying to be like Him brings us to these things.
We could argue on the points of who can baptize or what method works, but, those things are unimportant until you decide to follow Him, until you feel sorrow for your sin, until you are willing to repent and then ask forgiveness.
I suspect that doing these things will bring you to Christ in the end.
Has works got anything to do with it? No. But if you don’t have any good works I doubt you are trying to be like Jesus.
Well said.
For rewards in heaven when we stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, not for salvation itself when sinners stand before God for their eternal destiny.
Which is not found anywhere in Scripture.
All your *penance* means nothing in terms of attaining forgiveness of sin. You can't earn forgiveness.
If you earn it, it's wages due for work performed and ceases to be forgiveness. You've simply paid a debt you owe. Which you can't anyway cause the wages of sin is death, not penance or suffering.
You either have the righteousness of Christ credited to your account, or you don't and you stand in your own filth.
God guarantees our salvation.
However, I don't know anyone who teaches a doctrine that simply saying *Jesus is Lord* will save anyone.
Where did you hear that?
8The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
9He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
10He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
12As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Psalms 103:8-12 NASB
Paul is most helpful in understanding salvation. He talks, as did Jesus, of becoming a new man. Without being born of the Spirit there is no life in Christ. He also spoke about the fruits of the spirit as evidence of salvation. We are never far removed from sin but our sin can be absolved as quickly as it occurs if we are reborn in the spirit of Christ. Our works are truly not ours but are of the Spirith who lives in us.
Paul also spoke of a seared conscience in which repetitive sin hardens us to feeling the prick of conscience. This is the most pernicious of sin because it becomes a principality, an invested body of action/thought/sentiment that must be torn down if we are to survive its power. It is only by being in Christ that we can overcome these terrors. We have brought them upon ourselves and we are incapable of ridding ourselves of them. They are of many sorts: lying, stealing, all manner of perversion, pride, hate, self gratification, and on and on.
We must ask Christ to guide our steps and lead us into the fullness of life He promises. Salvation, life in Christ, is not of my doing. I can take no credit in it lest I boast and believe myself capable of saving myself.
We are each on a journey. Our lives bear witness to our condition.
Funny, I just finished preaching a sermon about exactly that yesterday.
Used the parable about the servant who owed the ten thousand talents (ludicrous money; probably about ten billion dollars if I did the math right, but the short version is that it’s an amount that no servant could repay). The sermon eventually spoke about forgiveness of our brothers, and how little the sin that we commit against each other is compared to the sin that we commit against the Lord.
But the point that matters is that in this thread is that in Jesus’ own words, the debt that we owe God CAN’T be repaid.
Correction: CAN’T be repaid except by the death and resurrection of Christ.
I did the math once and it was like ten billion dollars... assuming that I did the math correctly, and I had to do a lot of estimating.
But in short, it was a crazy amount of money.
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