I remain sick of the implications that we don’t take sin seriously.
I was writing about general Protestant beliefs, not specifically Lutheran. As to the question that I posed, I frankly do not know what answer you would give. One of my frustrations in these discussions with Protestants over the question of faith and works is that I get what seem to be equivocal and contradictory answers to the question. So please do not take offense if I ask it once again. I can only know how to address you (as opposed to other Protestant in the forum) once I have an answer. So again: Is someone who continues in homosexual acts without any remorse saved if he truly believes that Jesus covers all of his sins?
A person can believe that Jesus covers all his sins but that is NOT a guarantee that he is saved.
He must be born again, exercise saving faith and not just intellectual assent.
However, you are asking us to stand in the place of God in judgment of someone's soul and that is beyond our ability.
I can look at someone like that and doubt the genuineness of their profession, but only God knows the heart and where that person's heart really is.
Lot was called *righteous Lot* in 2 Peter, hardly a term I'd use for a man with his lifestyle and sin, but God saw it differently.
And David, the man after God's own heart, committed intentional adultery and premeditated cold-blooded murder. By Catholic standards, he is not and could not be saved, because as we've been told by other FRoman Catholics, no murderer can go to heaven.
He committed blatant and intentional sin, something Catholics claim keeps you out of heaven.
So you tell me, is David in heaven or not?
All right, I’ll assume that this is a genuine inquiry and not an attempt to gotcha me. I’ve had to deal with gotcha questions before.
The first question is what you mean by unrepentant sin. There are sins that we commit that we repent of, but still have a hook in us, so to speak. There are sins that a man can commit every day, and hate doing, but still has to repent of them every day.
And other times we sin without even knowing that we do. Pride. Lust. The innermost thoughts of the heart that we don’t even think about.
This is why the Christian life is a life of continual repentance until either we die or Jesus returns.
An unrepentant sinner, on the other hand, would be saying, “I know it’s a sin and I don’t care; I’m going to do it anyway. I don’t care about what the Lord says.”
A person with that kind of attitude towards the will of God either doesn’t have faith at all, or will very soon lose what faith they have. I mean, that IS what James 2 is talking about, isn’t it?
And Lutherans, at least, acknowledge that. That’s why there are instructions about excommunication (and reconciliation, for those who repent of their previously unrepentant sin) and why pastors have lots of training in church discipline.