Posted on 10/28/2007 5:11:19 PM PDT by pinochet
I am a Catholic who is trying to understand Protestant history and teachings, in order to better understand the history of Christianity. There is one issue that I do not understand.
According to Protestant teachings, if a person becomes saved, are his future sins forgiven? Can a person lose his salvation? If not, can assurance of salvation become a license to sin?
If Ted Haggard had gone to be with the Lord early last year, while in the process of getting a "massage" from his male "friend", would he have gone straight to heaven?
Should you be sinless at the time of your death to go to heaven?
We all have sin nature, but we should not assume that Christ is a free pass to continue to willingly sin or be in a sin parade.
We are IMO to always fight the good fight to be better and not sin, but when we do, we should ask forgiveness and really mean it. We should be trying to sin no more.
I’ll throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Yes, the same questions have occurred to me.
If you are saved, then you won’t feel like sinning any more.
But if you do feel like sinning anyway, then you weren’t saved.
This is one of the many difficulties of Protestant theology. When is inner certainty self-deceit?
How many of your sins were in the future at the time Christ died? All of them.
Yes. This type of thread should be posted in either the General/Chat or Religion sections.
According to Protestant theology, you don’t go to heaven because you are sinless, but because the sinless one, Jesus Christ, paid the penalty for your sins, and you repented accepted him as your Savior. Of course, repentence can be insincere, but God knows the heart.
Your question brings me back to our Q&A sessions in Catholic school, back in the 3rd grade during catechism class.
"Sister Mary Jean, if you were walking to confession, and you had committed a mortal sin, and you were going to confess but you were hit by a car outside the church, would you go to hell for eternity?"
We were obsessed with legalistic questions such as these.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to answer this question. ;) good luck!
We can assume the Apostle Paul was saved. Yet he makes it very clear that he continued to feel like sinning. He had to "pummel his body and lead it as a slave," with strong implication that even so he sometimes failed to resist the temptation.
It is not for we humans to know the answers to these questions. We work out our own salvation and other people’s salvation is between them and God.
My layman’s opinion.
Yes, ALL your sins are forgiven (as Paul states.. we are not given ‘liscence’ to sin once saved by Christ), but once saved Jesus paid all our sins, every last one. I believe that isn’t a Catholic vs. Protestant though..it’s a Biblical belief/stance.
No. That's a cult.
That's what we're taught, yes.
Can a person lose his salvation?
No.
If not, can assurance of salvation become a license to sin?
No. If one's acceptance of Christ is true, then one will not wish to sin. We all transgress, of course, but deliberately going out and sinning because we think we have a free pass means that our conversion was not genuine.
Scripture uses adoption to describe salvation. When we are adopted as children, there’s no such thing as being un-adopted.
Where do they have those? j/k
Even after we have been saved and accepted the Lords as our savior and he has washed us as white as snow of our past sins, he knows that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and we shall sin again. Less than before as we will strive to follow in his name and to be salt to this earth and be of it rather than in it. Still, we must confess our sins in our hearts each day and each our and ask forgiveness.
In that final moment in our heart we must ask his forgiveness and call upon him in his name that we might enter heaven.
Sound familiar to much of the Catholic faith.
How many times can Christ die for your sins?
A lot seems to depend on feelings, as if one can do anything if drugged and unaware.
Care to be a tad more thorough?
But is an issue that is of interest to most people here.
A CA Guy pretty well summed up my thoughts on this in post #2.
I will add that I have a very low opinion of those people that think being saved is a license to willingly sin further without repercussions.
What about people that haven’t been saved, but do not feel like sinning?
“If You Are Saved, Are Your Future Sins Forgiven?”
No. Then again, if haven’t yet comitted them....what is to forgive?
Just because one becomes saved, does not mean that you need not confess your sins, I have been a Christian many years and still cling to 1 John 1:9 like a drowning man to a life preserver.
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Doesn’t God already know what/where/when/how you are going to sin in the future? Even before you are born?
“If you are saved, then you won’t feel like sinning any more.”
Oh. My. Goodness. You didn’t REALLY mean to sound that silly did you?
“How many of your sins were in the future at the time Christ died? All of them.”
Good answer.
No...GREAT ANSWER!
Not true, if you are saved as a kid and try to sin no more it is one thing.
Now let’s say you found Christ as a child, but you go evil and start to kill a few people for no reason as an adult, we’ll unless you found Christ again, I do not think you are in good shape.
>>Your question brings me back to our Q&A sessions in Catholic school, back in the 3rd grade during catechism class<<
In Catholicism, you get stuck in purgatory, if you did not die in a state of grace. But the Protestants do not believe in purgatory.
Yes, that is the case.
Grace implies union with God through Christ. But this is an inherently unstable state in a mortal man, kind of like a radioactive isotope. You know it can’t last, the only question is when will it decay.
The bigger problem that I pointed to is self-deceit. Men believe they are saved, and believe they are no longer sinning, but looked at objectively this is not the case, and in fact, cannot be.
BTW, I am not exacatly a Christian, but I am pretty good at technical theology, both Protestant and Catholic. It is a series of one knotty problem after another, from Augustine to Aquinas to Martin Luther to today.
‘According to protestant teachings?’ Which protestants? Classical Lutherans? Calvinists? Zwinglians? Methodists of the sort who actually adhere to the ideas of the Wesleys? Methodists of the sort who don’t seem to have much by way of fixed doctrine? Mennonites? Baptists? (of which sort?) Pentecostalists? (again of which sort?) . . .
Each protestant is his own infallible pope, so if you ask enough questions, you’ll get as many different doctrines as there are protestants.
I was born and raised Catholic, but I married a Presbyterian and We attended service there. I have always considered it Catholic Light, with one third less guilt.
The blood of Christ cleanses all. However, there is one sin in the bible which is unforgivable.
That’s why we need the lord, because we are not perfect.
“Bah! I’ll trust in God’s mercy and the blood of Christ !!!”
Best plan I’ve ever heard of.
Of course He does. That's what Omnicscience is all about.
Yes.
Can a person lose his salvation?
Only if they commit the unpardonable sin
If not, can assurance of salvation become a license to sin?
The apostle Paul speaks about this in Romans 6
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7 For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. 10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. 16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. 21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I’m with you, i. What we don’t know for sure about the details of the mind of God would fill libraries and kill billions. We take our best shot at doing what we honestly think we should, and trust that God will take it into account. We acknowledge that however the universe was created, it wan’t done by us, and we’re damn lucky to have it. We believe that something intangible connects all of us, past, present, and future, and we draw strength and meaning from that connection. Whatever the true nature of The Universe And Everything is, it is beyond the scope of our perception or comprehension to pretend that we can see it all. We give thanks for the possibilities laid before us, and pray for guidance and humility.
There is no Biblical basis for that.
>>In that final moment in our heart we must ask his forgiveness and call upon him in his name that we might enter heaven<<
What if you die suddenly (horrific car crash), and do not get an opportunity to do your final repentance?
Salvation is a relationship with God, not a state of sinlessness.
I don’t have a Bible in front of me but I think it is in the book of Romans, read about Pauls struggles with sin. He was probably the greatest evangalist to ever walk the Earth and had the same day to day struggles with sin that we all have.
Being saved is about a relationship with God. The New Testament describes it as being adopted into the family of God. I don’t think that God adopts and disinherits us over and over based on our day to day actions.
Even the Pope acknowledges the other break off faiths like Protestants are Christian for accepting Christ as their savior, they are still break off faiths.
I would still stick to your own Catholic faith since it was what Christ started and He makes no junk.
I wouldn’t worry about trying to understand non-Catholics. Be happy for them if they accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior for their salvation. THAT is where the action is.
What must you do to be saved? The Ethiopian asked that question in Acts I believe, and was given the answer: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now you may ask what do you need to believe in Jesus Christ for, exactly? In other places in the bible this is made clear: that He is the Son of God, and that His atoning death on the cross paid for your sins in full.
Now Catholics (being a former one for 25 years) have a problem with (many) but two big things: one, they don’t know for certain they are going to go to heaven; and two, they believe that if you don’t do good works plus have faith in Christ, you will not go to heaven. They look at us protestants and say, “All you have to do is believe? What’s so hard about that?”
Well, first, the bible says that because man’s nature is naturally sinful and therefore, naturally turns away from God, there is no way without God’s help that natural man can believe in God, nor His plan for salvation. So for unregenerate man, it is impossible for him to believe in God or the promises of God.
Belief requires faith, and that faith must be given to us by God so that we can believe. This is one way we understand how “before I loved God, He loved me first.” But the fact is He has to give us the faith in order to believe Him (and in Him) in the first place, otherwise it will not happen. This is also the reason Scripture points out and we concur, that God has done everything for us. He gives us the faith to believe in Him. He pays the debt we cannot pay ourselves. He promises us the gift of everlasting life.
To say that ‘we know we will be forgiven for our future sins’ is not viewed upon by any mature Christian, protestant or Catholic, as a license to continue sinning or increase it. Paul is clear about this point in multiple passages. The mature Christian instead, knowing this to be true, has confidence in God’s promises that God will forgive Him. It is about having faith when God says that He will forgive you of your sins, He will. It is about having confidence in Jesus Christ’s atoning death, that His death is sufficient to cover all of my sins, even the ones I don’t know I will commit in the future.
As human beings in our present state, we are both sinner and saint at the same time. We are sinful yet we are saved. We have two natures at the present time, the old man as Paul says (our sinful Adam), and we also have the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ living in us as well. How can this be? Well baptism for one. Believing in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Because of our two natures now, we will never be sinless in this life. We will grow as Christians, though not at the same rate, and we all will end the race at different points of maturity, but at the end, glorification will occur in an instant (absent from the body, present with the Lord) and the old nature will be gone.
The Catholic problem with this is you look at glorification as a long term process and invent purgatory as the place where final purification begins. There is no basis for this in Scripture and what you do find in Scripture is immediate judgment after death, to heaven (glorified) with the Lord, or in Hell waiting for the final judgment day.
I admit, I did not use technical theological terminology. You don’t often see that on FR, anyway.
But if you are in a state of grace, then your huamn will becomes merged with divine Logos, and you see the desires of the body as they really are, weaknesses for which you have no need.
I’ve been taught that once you are saved, you are always saved...Now, take King David. He was saved, loved the lord, did everything right, then he was lured into tempation and sin by Bathsheba which began him on the path of sin...When he realized how he had been living, He did not ask God to save him again...He ask God to Restore the Joy of his Salvation...So that’s what happens when a saved person falls from grace...He loses the joy of his salvation and needs to ask God to Restore the Joy of his Salvation..:-)
An Army Chaplain told me that. He said you could always tell at the end by what they cried if cuss words well if GOD’s name then...
I listen to my Chaplain.
As long as you don’t try and sin on purpose, I think you will be fine.
Anything shy of that requires God’s thoughts on judgment day IMO.
It's beliefs like these that are being taught in Catholicism that made me angry once I started reading the Bible for myself. Nowhere in the Bible is there anything remotely resembling "purgatory". I was angry that all those years being raised Catholic I was being misled. I'm glad I repented from Catholicism.
That’s why you pray unceasingly.
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