Posted on 08/18/2009 10:09:39 AM PDT by NYer
"I and the Father are One.", Jesus (John 10:30)
"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.", Jesus (John 14:9)
I think prayer is for people, not God.
In the “Our Father” prayer, it states...’Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’...wouldn’t that mean that whatever is done, is His will?
’Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’
It would not mean that, but something a but more chilling.
In Heaven, God’s will is a foregone conclusion - it’s done.
On Earth, God’s will is one thing, and your will is another.
You get to choose. God isn’t into rape. Your love for Him is a choice.
What you are asking, is that His will be done, even if your will isn’t the same as His at the time.
I’d rather His will be done, because I trust His judgement more than I trust my own.
How do you know it would not mean that? I believe His will is done all the time.
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I must disagree at least in large part to this.
Gods will is that we have a choice to accept Him as God or not. To follow Him or not.
His will is never, ever evil. Any evil that is done on earth is not His will. He gives us freedom to do what we want. A mosquito is more like a machine than us. The machine doesn't make moral decisions about God it just does what it was designed to do. We on the other hand do make moral decisions.
God is indeed our Father. The Savior said that we, all of us are His (The Fathers) children. The difference between Christ the Savior of the world and us, all of the rest of us is that His earthly Father was not a man but was God. His mother was human, that makes Christ both human and God. It makes Him different than God the Father and it makes Him different than the rest of us.
Christ was a man and He was God. He was not God The Father. In Genesis we are told that Adam was in the image of God. In the same chapter we are told that Adam's son Able was in the image of Adam.
People often say when they see my grandson that he is my son, meaning that he looks just like me. I believe that when the Savior said that when you see Him you see The Father that is what he meant. (Please don't throw rocks at me.) I realize that I may have a rather unique view of this but it makes perfect sense to me.
One of The Saviors names is “Prince of Peace”. Why isn't it King of Peace? Because He is a prince. He said that He will inherit all that His Father has. He has told us to be “one” with him like He is one with His Father. Paul tells us when a man and woman marry they become one as The Father and Son are one. They become unified in purpose.
I think the Holy Trinity is three persons/Gods unified in purpose. One of the Three is God the Father, the other two serve Him.
If we love and serve The Savior then we too will become “one” with Him and serve God The Father.
Wouldn’t that mean, on occassion, that it is His will that you sin?
“the Holy Trinity is three persons/Gods”
Nope. God, not Gods.
Do I understand the Trinity?
Nope. Imagine that - I can’t comprehend the Creator of the Universe. Stupid me.
However, I can accept what He has revealed.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” — John 1
However, Jesus is the “only begotten” Son. That word is monogenes meaning:
“1) single of its kind, only
a) used of only sons or daughters (viewed in relation to their parents)
b) used of Christ, denotes the only begotten son of God
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 9
AV — only begotten 6, only 2, only child 1”
Jesus is uniquely Son, but we are created by God as new creations, adopted sons of God. The pity is we too often take it for granted, rather than considering what we do to the name of God when we sin.
“The Savior said that we, all of us are His (The Fathers) children.”
Where?
Sin ... I posted a thread on this topic yesterday. Not sure you ever mentioned to which denomination you belong but would be interested in your definition of sin and the degrees of sin. Catholics recognize the traditional seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. This is the thread I posted on Sin in America. Granted the researchers acknowledge that is is not meant to serve as any authoritative review.
I’m a Baptist, but I think Luther does a pretty good job in his introduction to Romans...
“Sin in the Scriptures means not only external works of the body but also all those movements within us which bestir themselves and move us to do the external works, namely, the depth of the heart with all its powers. Therefore the word do should refer to a person’s completely falling into sin. No external work of sin happens, after all, unless a person commit himself to it completely, body and soul. In particular, the Scriptures see into the heart, to the root and main source of all sin: unbelief in the depth of the heart. Thus, even as faith alone makes just and brings the Spirit and the desire to do good external works, so it is only unbelief which sins and exalts the flesh and brings desire to do evil external works. That’s what happened to Adam and Eve in Paradise (cf. Genesis 3).
That is why only unbelief is called sin by Christ, as he says in John, chapter 16, “The Spirit will punish the world because of sin, because it does not believe in me.” Furthermore, before good or bad works happen, which are the good or bad fruits of the heart, there has to be present in the heart either faith or unbelief, the root, sap and chief power of all sin. That is why, in the Scriptures, unbelief is called the head of the serpent and of the ancient dragon which the offspring of the woman, i.e. Christ, must crush, as was promised to Adam (cf. Genesis 3). Grace and gift differ in that grace actually denotes God’s kindness or favor which he has toward us and by which he is disposed to pour Christ and the Spirit with his gifts into us, as becomes clear from chapter 5, where Paul says, “Grace and gift are in Christ, etc.” The gifts and the Spirit increase daily in us, yet they are not complete, since evil desires and sins remain in us which war against the Spirit, as Paul says in chapter 7, and in Galations, chapter 5. And Genesis, chapter 3, proclaims the enmity between the offspring of the woman and that of the serpent. But grace does do this much: that we are accounted completely just before God. God’s grace is not divided into bits and pieces, as are the gifts, but grace takes us up completely into God’s favor for the sake of Christ, our intercessor and mediator, so that the gifts may begin their work in us.
In this way, then, you should understand chapter 7, where St. Paul portrays himself as still a sinner, while in chapter 8 he says that, because of the incomplete gifts and because of the Spirit, there is nothing damnable in those who are in Christ. Because our flesh has not been killed, we are still sinners, but because we believe in Christ and have the beginnings of the Spirit, God so shows us his favor and mercy, that he neither notices nor judges such sins. Rather he deals with us according to our belief in Christ until sin is killed....
....Next St. Paul sketches further the nature of sin and the law. It is the law that makes sin really active and powerful, because the old man gets more and more hostile to the law since he can’t pay the debt demanded by the law. Sin is his very nature; of himself he can’t do otherwise. And so the law is his death and torture. Now the law is not itself evil; it is our evil nature that cannot tolerate that the good law should demand good from it. It’s like the case of a sick person, who cannot tolerate that you demand that he run and jump around and do other things that a healthy person does.
St. Paul concludes here that, if we understand the law properly and comprehend it in the best possible way, then we will see that its sole function is to remind us of our sins, to kill us by our sins, and to make us deserving of eternal wrath. Conscience learns and experiences all this in detail when it comes face to face with the law. It follows, then, that we must have something else, over and above the law, which can make a person virtuous and cause him to be saved. Those, however, who do not understand the law rightly are blind; they go their way boldly and think they are satisfying the law with works. They don’t know how much the law demands, namely, a free, willing, eager heart...
Then St. Paul shows how spirit and flesh struggle with each other in one person. He gives himself as an example, so that we may learn how to kill sin in ourselves. He gives both spirit and flesh the name “law,” so that, just as it is in the nature of divine law to drive a person on and make demands of him, so too the flesh drives and demands and rages against the spirit and wants to have its own way. Likewise the spirit drives and demands against the flesh and wants to have its own way. This feud lasts in us for as long as we live, in one person more, in another less, depending on whether spirit or flesh is stronger. Yet the whole human being is both: spirit and flesh. The human being fights with himself until he becomes completely spiritual.
In chapter 8, St. Paul comforts fighters such as these and tells them that this flesh will not bring them condemnation. He goes on to show what the nature of flesh and spirit are. Spirit, he says, comes from Christ, who has given us his Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit makes us spiritual and restrains the flesh. The Holy Spirit assures us that we are God’s children no matter how furiously sin may rage within us, so long as we follow the Spirit and struggle against sin in order to kill it. Because nothing is so effective in deadening the flesh as the cross and suffering, Paul comforts us in our suffering. He says that the Spirit, love and all creatures will stand by us; the Spirit in us groans and all creatures long with us that we be freed from the flesh and from sin. Thus we see that these three chapters, 6, 7 and 8, all deal with the one work of faith, which is to kill the old Adam and to constrain the flesh.”
In Galatians, Paul wrote:
“16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
Before we convert, sin is everything - we wallow in it. And describing the works of the flesh is like describing a disease by its symptoms. Coughing, wheezing, mucous - those are the symptoms of the disease, but the germs or viruses are the cause.
A man who gives half of all he makes to charity, if he does it to make God accept him, or to win the praise of those around him, is sinning. A man who lusts after women, but doesn’t commit the act for fear of what it would do to his family, is still sinning. A man who harbors anger (one of MY favorites!) but who doesn’t punch someone because ‘that isn’t how adults act’ is still guilty of sin. That is the point of the Sermon on the Mount - the Law is spiritual, and we cannot meet its demands. It isn’t that we sin, it is that we ARE sinners.
When we convert, we are born again. We are new creatures, with a spirit that WANTS to obey God. However, humans are not just spirit, but also flesh - and our flesh hasn’t changed, That is why we await the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8) - until then, we are at war. Our spirits have been made perfect forever - Hebrews 10 - but our spirits contend with our flesh.
Now, obviously our acts affect those around us in different degrees. The man who gives much to charity helps many, even though he may be sinning. The man who refuses to commit adultery in the acts helps his wife and family, even though he may still be sinning with desire.
Hope that clarifies. One fault I have with many modern evangelicals is that we water down the message seeking converts - but ‘easy converts’ are not converts at all. Too many say, “Jesus wants into your life”, when what we need is to die with Christ in baptism and be raised to a new life with Him.
I would be a ‘Reformed Baptist’ more so than a ‘Free Will Baptist’...the 1689 Baptist Confession is, I think, pretty solid. In updated language, it can be found here: http://www.grbc.net/about_us/1689.php
THY WILL BE DONE(Catholic/Orthodox Caucus meditaion St Peter Julian Eymard)
My Will v. Thy Will Be Done
The Our Father in the Catechesis of Teens
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father - In Heaven (Dr. Scott Hahn)
The 'Our Father': Appropriate gestures for prayer
The “Our Father” of “La Civiltà Cattolica” - (comparison to Muslim version)
Our Father
HOLDING HANDS AT THE OUR FATHER?
Our Father ... in Heaven
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