This is really like 4 or 5 questions, right? LOL.
What are we saved from. I want badly to ask you how you could ask this. Most who become Christians seem to *never* pay any attention to the previous covenant. Men in the prior covenant went to a great deal of expense by way of sacrifice to attempt to cleanse themselves from sin. Ope, didn't think sin existed back then or that there was sacrifice for it? Just a gentle reminder. Jesus' sacrifice Unburdened us from the old system and saves us from our sins, for the which there MUST be a sacrifice. Salvation is a cleansing of our sins that sets us free from the law and sin and death that condemned us for all we had done in our lives to that point. It wipes the slate clean. There is no way, now, other than through Jesus to do that.
Salvation is salvation from what we were. And it gives us a chance to be what we can be through God's help. I want you to ask yourself this: If we are 100% free from the law of sin and death, why was the couple in Acts 5 put to death by God for sin? There is a quite obvious answer for this in scripture; but...
In being saved from our sins at the time of salvation, the sin in our lives that should condemn us to death is no more. And Jesus is the only one who can remove it. If you were to go on without him, you would die in your sin and go to Hell. Salvation is being saved from certain Hell. Upon salvation, we have a chance then to walk in obedience in the spirit of God unto eternal life. Thus we go from death, to life, to life eternal. This is what scripture portrays. Many either oversimplify this and miss the basics or forget the basics and turn it into something it is not. Salvation, again, is the first step in the walk - it is not the whole journey. If it were, Paul could have been saved, shut his mouth, sat down and continued in sin the rest of his life and not had to worry with thos petty things like righteousness and being free from sin, walking in the Spirit of God and warning people not to have sin in their lives because they don't know when the master will return...
I have one more favor to ask, would you mind reading this post and tell me what you think of the rest of it? I would like to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
-ksen
Gentiles were never under the old system.
Would it be fair to say that, given the fact that at salvation we are freed from the compulsion to sin by virtue of the fact that Jesus freed us from the sinful nature we once possessed, that for the first time in our lives we actually have the choice of whether to sin or not? That's the way I see it. We've locked horns before, and I believe that we're actually closer to the same belief than you think. I don't like sin, I hate sin, and I don't make a practice of sinning. Before salvation, I couldn't help but sin, as it was my nature. Since salvation, I can choose to practice righteousness rather than sin, as it is my nature now to practice righteousness. The only thing that makes that difficult at times is that I still inhabit the old body, which still would sin, if I let it. That is the part of salvation that has a future component: the redemption of the body. I see what you're saying in seeing eternal life as different from salvation. Eternal life includes the redemption of the body.
Would you revisit the hypothetical situation for a second and clear up something that I'm still not clear on, as to your belief? Say this person has been a Christian for 20 years, walking with the Lord, practicing righteousness, obeying God and being everything that a Christian should be. He inadvertantly sins in a momentary lapse, not premeditated, not planned, but sins nonetheless, and before he can ask for forgiveness in prayer, or simply say "Lord, please forgive me", i.e. in the next instant, he is killed in an explosion, instantaneously. What is his fate in Christ? Does he still go to be with the Lord?