Posted on 08/17/2015 9:45:07 AM PDT by amessenger4god
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’" - Matthew 7:21-23
Brothers and sisters, it is seriously time to drop the works-righteousness. Time is so short. When you stand before the Lord don't for one second think you can offer your works as the admittance fee. The deluded folks Jesus mentioned above did just that and were told that He never knew them.
Works-righteousness is something that I and almost every Christian I know falls into over and over again. It goes something like this: Jesus died for me, but I have to hold me (truth: Philippians 1:6, John 6:39). Jesus died for me, but I have to prove myself to Him. Oh man of dust, how great do you think you are that somehow you can ever measure up to the standard of the holy and living God? That arrogance is called self-righteousness, the very thing the Bible says will lead to death.
Understand that this issue is at the very heart of the Gospel and is the very heart of the Reformation. It is a Catholic doctrine that you must somehow balance faith and works, as if Paul and James were not in agreement (they were in complete agreement: see here, here, here, here, and here). Sadly many Evangelicals are taking the road paved by N.T. Wright right back to Rome. I see many watchers doing the same thing. You can't possibly balance faith and works. It is either all grace or all works. The only works you've ever done that have pleased God are the ones that came from your trust in the sufficiency of Christ's own work.
Good works will never come from your efforts to 1. prove yourself, 2. prove that you're saved, 3. atone for your sins, 4. save yourself. These are rubbish works, which the Pharisees do. Your job/your choice is simply to trust that Jesus died for your sins and rose gain and then not let go of this hope (see also here). Forgiveness is not a debit card. If you really believe that Jesus died for ALL of your sins and that you've been set free from sin and death and that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you unconditionally, you will:
1. Be saved.
2. Be extremely grateful.
3. Be extremely joyful.
4. Dance with all your might.
5. Love unconditionally because you know you were loved unconditionally.
If you still think that you are saved by grace + works, or mostly grace with a few works, or if you are just confused about what the Gospel is, I recommend you read Part One in this series.
Yup. We see the classic example of a square peg accusing all the round holes of ‘unfair’.
Only 3??
There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary numbers and them that don’t.
Oh well.
I'll be stuck with about 85% of the Mormons then.
The third are those who understand that “10” is actually a base 3 number.
Thank you for proving me correct.
I personally do not believe in the concept of once saved always saved, I believe that when God put Adam and Eve into the garden of Eden and told them not to partake of the tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that while he gave them the command he also gave them the opportunity to choose.
God sacrificed his son and gives us the opportunity to take advantage of the gift that He has offered us, Grace. No one is forced to accept Jesus Christ as their savior, no one will be forced into heaven.
I do not know of any scriptural reference that describes the taking away of our ability to choose. For those who believe they are saved and cannot fall it would mean that they no longer have the ability to choose evil, that would mean that God has taken away our agency. I do not believe in that kind of Christianity.
I understand the concept of choosing Christ Jesus as Savior and following Him forever but I do not accept that we cannot fall away. Judas Iscariot was an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ yet he fell.
I love the Lord Jesus Christ, I suspect I will always follow Him. I am imperfect, I am a sinner and will need the forgiveness of God and that the grace He offers for those who repent and do their best to follow His son Jesus Christ.
How would you define the way to God?....
You wrote scripture (Matt 25:35-40) which refers to what one does “after” they come to God not that of the way TO God...........failing or doing any of these isn’t THE WAY to God...it’s ‘the result’ of already being his.
So again.....what would you say would be the WAY to God ?
So again....Matthew 25:35-40
The Lord’s prayer and the verse immediately following it would seem to suggest that “forgiveness” is a work absolutely necessary for salvation.
......”I personally do not believe in the concept of once saved always saved”.....
Jesus cannot deny Himself and since we have His Spirit within us then it’s more about the Security of the Believer....does one ‘believe’ what Jesus says about our security In Him or not.
I do believe in the ‘Security of the Believer”...because they trusted in HIS ‘finished’ work on their behalf and all which HE says He has accomplished. So that there is NOW therfore no condemnation to those who are IN Christ Jesus.
or 4, or 5, 6, 7, 8... ...N
No, there are only 11 ...
Jesus told us that when we are in Him, the two hands of God hold us such that No Man/No Woman, including JA Kraig, can take us from Him. We are His family thereafter. The following is offered in Agape for you, with no angst of winning or losing some debate points. I am going to share the Truth and have no reward for it nor any rejection if you reject it. The Truth stands on its own, and those In Christ will recognize it.
You have posed a false premise, which I too would agree too were it not a false premise. I'm the FR Protestant that was pilloried for saying Mary had a choice to accept God's son into her womb for gestation or not to. God knew in advance what Mary would choose, and we are all the more blessed by her grace.
When we are brought to the crisis point of realizing we are hopeless sinners, and that point due to the Holy Spirit working in our conscience, we have a choice to accept PURE Grace or reject that Grace and set out to strive our way to eternal life. Saved or unsaved, we already have eternal life, unless we are subject to the second death described by John in the Revelation.
We choose to accept His cleansing of our dead spirit and He puts His life in the cleansed spirit, so that we have eternal life to be in His Presence. In so choosing, we are born into His family by His Spirit, not by our striving. We have chosen to which direction we will spend that eternal life we already have. The spirit inherited from Adam though dead is an eternal thing. When God shut off access to the Tree of Life, He was preventing the first couple and all thereafter from living in a body with a dead spirit, for eternity. Eating from the Tree of Life would have sustained their physical bodies in a dead state spiritually, and the fruit of wickedness would have abounded the more. God offered each of us a way to be born from above, not just born from the amniotic fluid of the womb.
It is a false premise to see that new birth as removing our choices. I realize it is hard to understand that He is in the born from above, raising them up in the Way that they should go thereafter, but that is exactly what the Scriptures tells us! And I can testify 100% that when we choose the Hallmarks of His Character the pathways in life are so much more rewarding, as we do as His Spirit directs and learn to hear His voice in us clearer and clearer.
While still in this body inherited from Adam we retain a sin nature that is in rebellion to God's Character.
But with God's Holy Spirit in us thereafter we are expected to choose His Character behavior. But we are not forced to and we suffer the consequences of our bad choices. I'm seventy years old; I can assure you 100% that we DO suffer the consequences of our bad choices, those choices which are not aligned with the Character of God.
I have yet to meet someone who is saved who doesn’t think they can’t fall.
What it does mean, though, is that our falling doesn’t cost us our salvation.
We are still saved, even when we blow it, as we all will and we all do.
God knows.
But that's what Jesus tells us the 'will of the Father' is...Why not believe it???
Amen!
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood Him, my FRiend. He doesn’t say they’re the same. Instead, He draws a contrast between doing one and doing the other.
Something like that. (I had noticed that too)
The answer that had been supplied was as for a comparative judgement thing, an example provided for how to fail passing ('cuz they wuz kidding themselves), not a how to get there, + pass.
The old +works thing dies hard though, doesn't it?
Even a pagan knows they gotta' work for it (and do ceremonies too).
Mankind = disorder in the Court (disordered judgement).
Cart lashed up next to (beside) the horse. The horse hates it when they do that...
It's awkward for everybody, including the people on the receiving end of the occasional 'works' that other people are occasionally doing in hope of getting "there" in the first place.
When blind wagon masters start cracking bullwhips over everyone's heads (including the horses) the scene becomes a misery.
I do feel sorry for those poor guys on bicycles in the skinny ties trying to do all they can do in order to qualify.
How could any honest person say of EVERYTHING "yep, I did all that I could do"?
A guys gotta' sleep sometime. Or at least rest? (and accept, no, there is no way to do "everything that could have" been done. That is an impossible request demand)
There is a third element in absolute faith, the acceptance of being accepted. Of course, in the state of despair there is nobody and nothing that accepts. But there is the power of acceptance itself which is experienced. Meaninglessness, as long as it is experienced, includes an experience of the "power of acceptance". To accept this power of acceptance consciously is the religious answer of absolute faith, of a faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be.Paul Tillich , The Courage to Be, p.177
I'll be stuck with about 85% of the Mormons then.
And they said, "let there be jello"
There was GREEN Jello .. with shredded carrots in it.
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