Posted on 05/17/2015 5:59:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It seems to me that a lot of these discussions are tied to our addiction to a time line. We have to see things as happening in time. God is not bound by time. That’s a mystery that we cannot fully understand but accept by faith. I tell our son that he is sealed with the mark of the Holy Spirit through Baptism and Confirmation. This sort of drives him crazy since he is “unchurched” at the moment. But every chance I get I tell him, “God bless you.”
Judas lived and died under the Old Covenant - when one is using some of the goings on in the "New" Testament, one must realize that while Jesus walked the Earth, He and we lived under the Old Covenant and He had to be true to it - many of His parables were applicable under the Old Covenant as He could not preach against it, but was not constrained from telling us why He was here.
Either God keeps those who He has chosen or He doesn’t.
As a lifelong frequenter of Baptist churches I was always taught “No”. There are verses in the Bible that seem to support either view. I am suspect of “doctrine” because someone has to be wrong and it separates us. Free will dictates we will always have choices to make...salvation included. I detest long tangential essays written in an attempt to utter why the Bible does not mean what it says.
I’ve attended enough churches of varying opinions on this subject to have a grasp on the arguments of both sides.
I will not argue the “once saved always saved” thing here.
But, the best opinion I’ve heard on it goes like this:
Once you are saved, you can never, ever lose your salvation. Period.
You can, however, willingly throw it away.
My understanding is that God has chosen those who will be saved before the creation of the world.
There surely is enough evidence to believe that. I would say that if anyone thinks that somehow man controls whether he is saved or not by his actions or works is claiming that man deserves salvation by his actions.
I grew up in a different church tradition than most. As a child, I was taught we were always one sin away from hell.
That was no way to go through life, and I’m glad I now have more assurance than that in salvation.
I haven’t swung all the way to “eternal security,” but I do think there is a healthy balance between the two views.
Regardless of how it all works - my faith is in Christ, I try not to sin against Him, and I ask for forgiveness when I do.
The ministries of redeeming, forgiving, forgetting, justifying, keeping, and sanctifying. Does God do those ministries, or does man do them? Are those ministries yet future maybe, or already delivered?
God put us here to make our own choices, to accept or not to...
It’s up to you to decide...
IF WE can lose our salvation, the Christ died on the cross for NOTHING!
However, if one decides to willingly commit sin after coming to Christ, they had better examine themselves to see if they really are of the FAITH.
Some people believe they are saved when they get baptized. It is possible for someone to go in the water a dry sinner and come out a wet sinner.
“But what about Hebrews 6:4-6.”
This is an allusion to Israel in the desert when the spies brought in the fruit of the land and the people tasted it.
God told them to go up and take the land, they balked because there were “giants” there!
So God would not let them enter into his rest. Forty years later, only Caleb and Joshua, and the younger children, later grown got to enter the land.
Jesus died on the Cross. Later we see many of the temple priests and religious orders followed Christ, but then balked and backed away.
Forty years after the death of Christ, the Temple was destroyed.
The book of HEBREWS deals more with the national salvation of Israel. Too many people try to impose an individual meaning on it that you can lose your salvation.
Yes.
If salvation can be lost (or thrown away), then there must be something you must do to lose it.
If there is something you must DO to lose your salvation, then there MUST be SOMETHING you must do to maintain it.
If you must do something to maintain your salvation,
then salvation is not a gift... period.
You cannot have it both ways.
You either belong to God, or you don’t.
If you belong to God, then you no longer have the choice to not belong... because you gave up that choice when you received Him.
You can certainly chose to throw away your mortal life... but not your eternal soul.
Once God finishes what He started, and the process of salvation is completed in our resurrected incorruptible bodies, THEN... (maybe) we can chose to throw it away again after that.... but even that I doubt as being possible let alone desirable.
No.
Next question...
Yes And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
Romans, Catholic chapter, Protestant verses seventeen to twenty two,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James
Good read ... a correction...
“Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord (Micah 3:7). it should be Malachi 3:7 not Micah.
We must help each other...
And it is "crazy," as the Holy Spirit distinctly states that repentance and wholehearted faith are required for baptism, (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) and nowhere manifestly records an infant being baptized, which circumcision (Col. 2:11) only has limited correspondence to (in being a figure), while Peter testified how God purified the hearts of souls by faith, before baptism. (Acts 10:43:47; 15:7-9)
Moreover, spiritual dead clergy cannot convey the Holy Spirit, while there simply is no separate class of believers distinctively titled "priests," the distinctive word for which the Holy Spirit never uses for NT pastors. See here to save my typing again.
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