"Ah! I pray you are never my neighbor, for you could rape my wife and rob me blind without any accountability before God! It sounds so darn... well... like people that blow themselves up because they believe they are assured salvation... for instance"
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The sinner who would do this was never saved to begin with. If you've been saved the Holy Spirit will transform you and you become a new man. Do you stop sinning? No, but you will be convicted of your sin and over time you will seek to change and become more "Christlike".
The beauty of being "Born Again" is that I have the blessed assurance that "once saved" "always saved".
If I understand RCC doctrine correctly, you may not be in a state of grace if you haven't followed the sacraments correctly. It's got to be awfully tough to be on that ferris wheel.
Ah. Yes. The wonders of 20/20 hindsight. Supposing he walked around believing he was saved before this theoretical crime, you're saying it's not enough to tell people you're saved unless your actions reflect that?
The beauty of being "Born Again" is that I have the blessed assurance that "once saved" "always saved".
If you've been saved the Holy Spirit will transform you and you become a new man.
So once you are saved, you are infallible? You cannot commit a sin? How do you KNOW you are saved if you can't state here and now that you are infallible?
The beauty of being "Born Again" is that I have the blessed assurance that "once saved" "always saved".
How do you know you aren't one of those deluded sinner who was "never saved to begin with"? Many of them at one point or another thought they had your "blessed assurance," too. But they didn't (though they thought they did) because they were never saved to begin with. Your assurance seems pretty hollow to me; I'd rather stick with what the Bible says.