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?
>>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.
Not sure but it would be best to try and keep your nose clean just in case you get called unexpectedly.
St. Paul also writes: That which I wish I do, I do not, and that which I wish I would not do, I do, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The bottom line is that we are sinful by nature, and as St. Paul says, I am the chief of sinners, unable to hold up even one simple tenant of the law. But it is by grace that we are saved, through faith. Christ’s forgiveness is unfailing, unalterable, and undeserved — but free for the asking. Confession of the human state (original sin) and confession of individual sin leads to absolute forgiveness, if the heart is truly penitent. Once this occurs, the bloof of Christ washes us and we are robed then as white as snow, and sin is set apart from as as far as East from West. An excellent question on reformation Sunday!
oh my. I WISH we didn’t feel like sinning anymore if saved.
As we grow closer to the Lord, we don’t want to sin anymore, but unfortunately, as we grow, we still do.
New Orleans, Mardi Gras.
or be in a sin parade.
Where do they have those? j/k
San Francisco.
Thank you - exactly.
God exists in eternity. He’s bigger than time.
Think about holding a film strip. You can look at the last scene any time you want. You’re not bound by the playing time of th emovie, because you exist outside the experience.
Same with God. Jesus took every sin of the whole world from the beginning of time to the end, whether they were committed by a saved person or not.
He has reconciled the whole world to God.
So yes, every sin you will ever commit are included in your salvation. Sleep well.
To Proxy: “But if you do feel like sinning anyway, then you weren’t saved”
The apostle Paul wrote of a conflict between flesh and spirit, bemoaning the fact that there were times he didn’t do what he should have done while doing some things he should have not done...he cries out “Oh who will deliver me from this body of death?”
To use your logic, then the Apostle Paul was not saved!
The apostle Paul complain of a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him so that he would not get too proud!” Jesus told him “My grace is sufficient unto thee!”
He would not have been saved if we use your logic.
The fact is even as Christians, we make mistakes and sometimes sin. The New Testament out-lines the techniques and pattern by which “those over taken with an error” could be restored to fellowship! Catholics have codified such practises through the act of Confession with a priest who acts as an intercessor, the protestants are a bit more informal about it...but the patterns are generally the same.(I’m not Catholic or Protestant bashing by the way!)
So relax, ask God to help you be a good Christian, ask for his grace when certain patterns and attitudes don’t( or won’t through God’s own plan) change immediately, ask for for his mercy and forgiveness when you do sin,confess your faults to one another, and ask for Holy Spirit power for those issues that really do need repentence quick and proceed to REPENT in faith! God isn’t out to mash us...he is out to set us free!
And don’t forget Key West!
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