Posted on 10/20/2013 11:29:26 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Once upon a time, Groucho Marx hosted the popular game show, “You Bet Your Life.” At the start of the show, a “secret word” was revealed to the studio audience. If a contestant said the word during the course of the show, a reward would descend from the rafters (a one hundred dollar bill).
Whether we know it or not, we are all, Christians and non-Christians alike, contestants in the spiritual equivalent of “You Bet Your Life.” If we bet wisely, our reward is eternal life. But if we bet foolishly, we condemn ourselves to eternal damnation.
That brings to mind Pascal’s Wager, credited to the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. He famously posited that every human being bets his or her life on whether or not God exists.
“Let us,” he wrote, “weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”
To put this in terms to which most of us can relate, even if the odds of God’s existence are, say, 1 in 175 million – the odds of winning Powerball on a single ticket – it is worth the wager.
Because, if we have bet on God, and God does not exist, we lose nothing. That is, save for indulging in certain behavior proscribed by God, including sexual promiscuity, idol worship, adultery, homosexuality (and other sexual perversions), thievery, greed, substance abuse, slander and robbery.
But if we bet against the Almighty, and indeed He does exist, we shall be cast into the lake of fire, eternally separated from God. We shall be condemned to place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Where we will be burned with unquenchable fire. Where we will be tormented day and night forever and forever.
Most of us are rationale. So we heed Pascal’s advice.
Even if we are uncertain there is a God, we hedge our bet. We respond to an altar call at some point in our lives. We say we accept Jesus as our personal Savior. We get baptized.
In so doing, we believe we have ensured our eternal security. We believe that, because we went through the ritual of being “saved,” we have a lifetime “Get Out of Hell Free” card. And that we can live our lives as it pleases us – not God – with impunity.
But what if we are wrong? What if this doctrine of “Once Saved, Always Saved,” espoused by many Godly pastors, preached in many purpose-driven churches, is errant? What if it actually is possible for us to forfeit our eternal salvation, to condemn ourselves to hell, by living brazenly and unrepentantly in defiance of God’s law?
That presents a corollary to Pascal’s wager, one that has not been considered by those who profess themselves Christ followers, but who are not truly leading a Christian life.
Let us call this corollary the Salvation wager, in which we weigh the gain and loss in betting on “Once Saved, Always Saved.”
Those who reject the doctrine, who believe those of us whom the Son sets free, must go and sin no more, must faithfully strive to live in obedience to God, have everything to gain if the doctrine is wrong and nothing to lose if the doctrine is right.
But those who subscribe to the doctrine, who believe that, having been saved, they can commit any and all manner of sin and it doesn’t matter in the eternal scheme of things, have hell to pay if they are wrong.
So what might Pascal advise?
That even if it’s more likely that once a person is saved, there is absolutely nothing they can do to lose their salvation, and that even if the odds are, say, 175 million to 1 that the widely-accepted doctrine of “Once Saved, Always Saved” is right rather than wrong, it still is wise to bet against the doctrine.
Because there are many who claim themselves Christians, who think their names have been written in the book of life, who will appear before the great white throne of judgment, who will find themselves sinners in the hands of an angry God.
They will look to Jesus and say, “Lord, Lord,” hoping He will spare them from punishment. But He will declare to them, “I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice wickedness.”
That’s a warning to those abiding unabashedly and unrepentantly in sin. They have bet their lives on “Once Saved, Always Saved.” And if they are wrong, eternal torment awaits.
The reasoning of the Bible infers a transaction taking place. One is knocking and the other answers or does not answer. This is an interaction between the mortal and the divine.
I don’t know how questioning, wondering and exploring could be evidence of anything other than using the head that God gave us all for what is was intended for.
Is your orthodoxy so narrow as to discount a simple transaction analogy? A transaction analogy written in red ink? It seems that once you have created a scaffold on which to hang your orthodoxy you have to ignore even red ink in your bible instead of trying to fully come to grips with apparent paradoxes? We are created in the image of God yet at some magical intellectual point in our lives we are supposed to stop thinking, stop struggling, stop exploring mysteries of the Bible that can’t be readily reconciled?
I don’t think so.
Behold I stand at the door and knock. Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.
This infers a transaction taking place that involves free will does it not? When I say the Bible is composed of agricultural parables, this gets your hair up. But the Bible was written for humans to understand and uses analogies we can apprehend to accomplish this. “Kicking at the goad” comes to mind. So you take a simple transaction parable and somehow reject free will and then advise me to “stomp beneath your feet human reasoning and submit”. Yet you are rejecting simple knock and answer red letter stuff to justify your orthodoxy.
That is why I made the comment earlier about your use of the word “blaspheme” earlier. It is too easy to roll that out when the conversation gets to a certain point.
“Who gave us sin?”
Adam did, and then you on top of him, added even more.
Imagine. God created man, but for no purpose. My point is this is improbable.
Adam gave me sin? Am I sinning now?
I have often wondered if this was a sort of academy in some sense.
What you are describing is apostasy. The parable of the soils explains this well.
Exactly. I have never understood the concept of once saved. It’s wrong
I have changed from “it’s wrong” to “It’s a mystery.”
“Behold I stand at the door and knock. Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
This is actually a combination of two verses, the first part being spoken to the churches in Revelation, and the latter to all men. If by “red ink” you mean the words of Jesus, that is most certainly what I have been using, as you can see from my previous responses. Is it so horrible to imagine, that the God who knocks on the door, also causes you to open it? If He didn’t, not a one of us would open up. But for those who do not open, it is to their condemnation, showing rightly that God was just in saving whom He will, since all men despise His mercies. And to those who do open up, it is not to their boasting, but to the testament of God who “works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Php 2:13). And again, “(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” (Rom 9:11-16)
“Adam gave me sin? Am I sinning now?”
If you are not a believer, you are certainly sinning now by remaining in unbelief.
There is one topic which Jesus preached about again and again and again throughout His ministry. This topic is mentioned over 50 times in the book of Matthew alone. Yet many get stuck on the phrase 'born again', attributing all kinds of meaning to that phrase that simply is not supported by scripture, while completely ignoring this recurring theme of Jesus' sermons and teachings.
To justify an apparent paradox you have to jump through some complicated hoops. I think it is both simpler than you make it out to be, yet at the same time vastly more complex.
“To justify an apparent paradox you have to jump through some complicated hoops. I think it is both simpler than you make it out to be, yet at the same time vastly more complex.”
It just seems a paradox because you do not understand it, or are unwilling to give up the false premise which starts it. This is why I say, and still say, to go and pray on it, and ask God for both true understanding and that your soul may be quickened, if it hasn’t already been.
1Co 5:9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
1Co 5:10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
1Co 5:11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
1Co 5:12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
Sorry, bible says not to fellowship with those who have turned away or are without...Preach to, be friendly to; certainly...Whoop it up with them at their parties??? Nope...
Your talking about the Pauline Ministry. An entirely different mission and time.
How to explain our modern world to a visitor from the past?
In my pocket I have this little device that makes available the knowledge of the entire world.
I use it to look at pictures of cats and quarrel with strangers.
All the various translations agree that He "enlighteneth every man."
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
So everyone without exception, including the Mongolian boy fascinated by fire, lightning, and horse, has this moment, this chance of enlightenment. He is in the Light. He either loves the Light, serves the Light, places his trust n the Light, gains more and more Light, --- or he hates the Light because it exposes his evil deeds, which he loves more than anything.
Then it's "light's out."
Not because the Light failed, but because some willfully blind themselves, or with damned resoluteness, turn away.
You are pretending that the tension between free will and predestination is not as “old as them hills”. You seem to have The Answer. I am open for debate on the subject. So go stomp on the devils head or whatever your people like to do.
Are you breathing???
Does the Kennedy Compound have a full bar?
LOL. You hit on a good point. There is an element out there attacking Justification by Faith as if we say “were good” now let’s party hard. When I see those comments and allusions, I start to wonder if that is the way the accusors are living their lives. Are they projecting their struggles on others.
It is no wonder we see strong advocates here promote outward “rites” of righteousness. Creating with human hands a “holy” punch card .
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