Posted on 09/20/2019 9:01:36 AM PDT by pastorbillrandles
Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” ( John 6:28-29)
Salvation cannot be obtained by our personal merit. Thank God , because there is not one of us who could ever merit salvation. We cannot earn it, nor can we who have received the gift, ever lose it due to lack of merit. The scriptures make it obvious, “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight…”.
None of us can earn our salvation, nor can we in anywise put God in debt to us, all that He gives is freely given, it is grace. Salvation is Grace, undeserved favor.
If we couldn’t do anything to earn it, neither can we forfeit it by what we do. I do not believe that there is any particular sin that a believer can do which would cost him his salvation.
I cannot emphasize these blessed and simple truths enough, because those of us who set out the case against ‘unconditional assurance’ , (ie Once Saved Always Saved) are always accused of preaching ” good works”, or works based salvation.
Thank God for scriptures like Ephesians 2:8-10,
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. ( Ephesians 2:8-10)
There is nothing I could ever do to earn my salvation, nor to lose it, nor to add to it or take away from it, thank God. Therefore there is nothing I can personally boast in, all of the glory for my salvation goes to Jesus, who,“…has Loved us and bought us from our sins with his own blood”.(Revelation 1:5)
Salvation is not unconditional however. There is one, and only one condition, and that is that we must believe. “He that believes…shall have eternal life”. “This is the Work, that you believe on Him whom the Father has sent”.
Over and over again, we are told by the Apostles that we must believe to be saved. All the Father requires is belief, steadfast, loyal faith. He knows we are weak, unsteady, liable to sin, fall and defect, yet all he requires is belief.
Is the requirement to believe, in the bible a “one time” experience, or is belief seen as an ongoing loyalty which sustaines to the very end, (the goal) of Salvation ?
Popular Bible teacher Charles Stanley presents a very common misconception about saving Faith when He assures people,
Even if a believer for all practical purposes becomes an unbeliever, his salvation is not in jeopardy.” (Stanley Charles, Eternal Security- Can You Be sure? Thomas Nelson pg 93)
The Apostles never taught anything like that. Instead they taught believers to “Hold fast the profession of their hope … to the end…”
But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. ( Hebrews 3:6)
The danger to the soul, according to the teaching of Hebrews , is ‘unbelief’. The example from the Old Testament was the incident with the 12 spies. All of Israel heard the gospel of the land flowing with milk and honey. All of them rejoiced, until they came to Kadesh Barnea, where they saw the Giants.
From then on, only two out of that entire whole truly believed! The rest fell short of entering into God’s rest, because they cast aside their confidence, in unbelief.
For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; ( Hebrews 3:14)
What does this say about people now, who once believed passionately in Christ and the gospel, but who no longer “hold fast”? I know people who set out believing in Christ, but who no longer maintain faith. Are they still saved? As we pointed out in the last message, “whoever goes on believing shall be saved…” , not whoever ever believed at one time!
Saving Faith is not mere mental assent to a set of propositions. It is an ongoing commitment of a loyalty to a Revelation from God, much like the vows at a wedding. it is “faithfulness”, a response to what God has done and revealed. Jesus called it “abiding in the vine” in John 15.
Neither Jesus or the Apostles ever held forth anything similar to Charles Stanley’s proposition that one can be saved on a temporary belief, which one eventually defects from. Believers “go on believing” whatever it takes. If that belief calls for self renunciation, so be it. When the belief requires personal repentance, true believers repent. None of those things are “works” they are simply elements of the one and only condition God has set on salvation, Faith.
Exactly- Here’s a verse to back that up too:
1 Corinthians 1:30
It is because of him [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
Christ becomes our righteousness because we are incapable of righteousness on our own (there are none righteous)- and we certainly can’t be ‘righteous enough’ by our own efforts so that we don’t lose our salvation, because again, (there are none righteous)- Christ is the righteousness that we stand blameless before God on- He becomes our righteousness at salvation.
IF we must maintain a ‘sinless enough’ life to keep this righteousness, then it’s no longer His righteousness that makes us blameless, but our righteousness that makes us ‘sinless enough’ for Him to keep being our Savior. It becomes ‘Our observance of the Law” which keeps us holy enough to maintain salvation- in other words- we do works to keep us saved- and if that were the case- we then would have occasion to brag of our own saving righteousness-
Iscool: They didn't say . . .
But some of them did, and it is a foundational part of the Gospel that those who did either wrote all of the Nre Testament, or were eyewitnesses to His body form both before and after the Cross experience. It is clear from Genesis that when God formed the human body, he made it according to the eternal form He intended to inhabit forever, an image that He preferred.
Iscool: Maybe they recognized him as a Cyborg . . .
Oh, come on. You force me to treat you as a child.
As they were walking along, Jesus joined them as a fellow traveler. He walked with them and talked conversationally with them. Iscool: Seems like Jesus walked a considerable distance with a couple of his disciples and they didn't recognize him . . .
He did not at that moment permit them to see him as the Jesus they had seen and known before. But he did speak to them as someone who knew the Scriptures thoroughly, and even scold them as being foolish in failing to believe the prophets who foretold that He would be killed, then rise from the dead ones. Though they did not recognize Him as Jesus at the moment, they apparently perceived him without remarking to Luke that he was different than just another human being.
You fail to mention that when He blessed the bread (His typical formula?) and saw his pierced hand as he served them, that they DID recognize Him. Luke so states.
Iscool: In the OT Jesus appeared as different people, it seems . . .
Irrelevant to this point in question of His Incarnation. What is germane is that further along in Luke's account Jesus told them (a) that his now spiritual body was one of flesh and bones, and (b) that this body still was marked with puncture holes in His hands and feet, and had the still open incision through His side. His body apparently would have been drained of blood (Prov. 20:30). So the life and movements were occurring because of life in the spirit. Have you watched a movie lately? Or the hologram of Princess Leia of Star Wars fame? Maybe something like that, eh?.
Iscool: The apostle John's description of Jesus is nothing like the Jesus hanging on the Cross . . .
John was certainly present when Jesus met the disciples on the shores of Galilee, and could identify Him in a lineup, I suppose. Read John 20:16,26-27; all of 21.
Iscool: And lastly, the bible tells us that we don't know what he will look like but we will ultimately look like he does . . .
So what? Nowhere in the Scripture do we see an FBI-type description of His appearance before the Cross. And though He wasn't hanging on the cross anymore, one might surmise that His Risen spiritual body had no more remarkable thorn-scratches or slap-bruises to take to Heaven. Just the Cross-wounds.
Iscool: I just hope he has at least two arms. . .
Probably the same two that he used waving goodbye to the disciples as he disappeared from them. Probably He looked not much different than the two men angel beings seen by the women at the crypt, and the ones that stood by tha apostles seeing Him off at Bethany.
I guess you must be twitting us all with this disingenuos post and responses, right? You can't mean your comments to be taken seriously, can you?
Iscool: But he was walking around thru walls and didn't have any blood . . . How human is that???
Don't be naive. Jesus, though still being incarnated, occupying a flesh-and-bones body without blood, this body was and is spiritual and tangible, both then and now in Heaven (otherwise, how would He sit down on His Own throne on the right hand of The Father's throne? That in this spiritual body able to pass through earthly walls is not much different than the Holy Spirit in Person dwelling im lots and lots of terrestrial human bodies, right? (Yawn.)
Iscool: The rich man's body was not in hell.
It wasn't? His husk may have been in the grave, but whatever part of him was in Hades, where Jesus said he was located, he had a tongue. Maybe like the phantom limb of an amputee, but real to him, and really in pain (And he will get his body back again, to inhabit in the Lake of Fire).
Also, Lazarus was in a different compartment of that region Sheol, amd was having a pleasant time whilst waiting for the removal of that compartment lock, stock, barrel, and inhabitants of it to Heaven when Jesus brought it up there with Himself. These were still people, weren't they? Still humans?
Iscool: While on earth Jesus had a terrestrial body...He needed a celestial body for heaven just as we do . . .
Well, it is plain and clear that the Incarnated 100% human 100% God, The Risen Lord Jesus Christ Who represents all mankind before The Father has now a 100% human spirit body of flesh and bones with two wounded hands, two wounded feet, a torso with a big slice in it, and a human face that was seen on earth, a human person who talked with over 500 terrestrial humans in the forty days of his circulation among them. Do you think He would have contacted personally only a few of them and left the other believers out? Well, I doubt it.
And He was seem by Paul also (which is an integral part of his gospel) though from Heaven, and instructed Paul in His doctrine in Paul's Arabian hermitage.
And that is the end of my participation in commenting on your construct of Who Jesus Is. He is a human, the first-begotten (first-born) one from the other dead ones. I am glad he made it possible for me to be born in the spirit, with a new spirit body yet to come for me to be united with.
Waiting for that shout!
“I think we have rather well exhausted this exchange , or at least i rather am, and I think we must agree to disagree, and be glad that we are among (the minority) who believe the saved are those who finally persevere, which I must seek to do in better yielding to the Spirit.”
Yes, as predicted, we were unable to resolve this issue. I do believe that it is possible to resolve it, in that, if an apostle were present, he would delineate the errors from good doctrine and set us both straight in any errors we might have. And this is what we both are doing in our study of the scriptures and in discussions such as this one. I think we are in agreement on some key points which are the more practical matters. We exhort the lost to repent and trust in Christ. We exhort those who profess faith to continue in faith and endure through hardships and temptations. We call professing believers to repentance when there is sin. We do not accept that professing believers who turn from Christ, renouncing Him, or denying Him by their works have any reason to expect to inherit eternal life. Contrarily, these are worse off than those who have little knowledge of Christ and never come to salvation.
“Which pertains to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, in which man cannot resist God, which effectively means God does will some to be dammed, due to leaving them no recourse but to follow (if not in degrees) their Adamic nature, and thus are effectively damned for something they had no choice over.”
As you said, this is another issue entirely. While I do not identify as a Calvinist or “Reformed theologian” I respect men like John Piper who do. It is possible that the theological position here is misunderstood just as sometimes the scriptures themselves are misunderstood. I do not believe in double-predestination. I believe those who enter Heaven are chosen by God, but those who go to Hell do so by their own choice. Those who enter Heaven do so on the merit of Christ’s works of salvation. Those who go to Hell do so by clinging to their own works. There are a set number of places in Heaven for the elect, and when these places are full, no more may enter. Hell is never full. It has an unlimited capacity. God merely tolerates the lives of those who reject His grace, allowing them to have their way and do their own will after His Spirit strives with them to a finite point and then does so no more. When this moment occurs, their hearts are hardened beyond redeeming grace, and it is this danger which is being warned against in the passages we have discussed directed toward those who have an outward expression of faith with much supporting evidence of it being real.
“But Christ also willed Jerusalem/Israel to repent, weeping over its impending destruction, but they would not.”
God is not willing that ANY should perish. The sense in which this is true is that God delights in mercy. He IS willing to make His power known through wrath. These statements (straight from scripture, as you know) seem contradictory but must be understood in context. God provided a way of salvation for mankind. Christ’s substitutionary death is sufficient to save all of mankind, but it is only efficient for the elect. Those who go to Hell only do so by trampling over the cross which is blocking their path there, figuratively speaking. Before God hardens anyone’s heart, they have already hardened their hearts to His grace and mercy many times. At some point, only known to God, He will choose to turn over such to judicial blindness and hardness of heart, so that they no longer have the possibility of repentance or saving faith. And this is a terrifying prospect. It is a prospect that we must all be moved by personally but also out of the natural bonds of love toward our friends and family members. How sad it will be to realize that some of those who God has brought into our lives will perish apart from Christ. This is doubly true if we consider that by a greater example of Christlikeness they might have been won for Him.
No...Not in the sense of human flesh and bone bodies...They were souls...When they were released from Abraham's Bosom the graves were opened as well that held their bodies...Their souls no doubt were united with their new, spiritual bodies...
AND we have Paul’s teaching regarding the place those dead in Christ will be coming from at the time of the Rapture departure.
Despite your vehemence, your supposed proof texts have been shown to prove your assertions and reasoning, much less reconcile them with the texts which again, clearly warn believers as believers against going back into bondage, making Christ to be of no effect, to no profit, falling from grace, departing from the living God, drawing back to perdition, being cut off, etc.
And seeing as you remain intractable and suppose reiterating the claims i responded to are yet an argument, and are reduced to emotional indignation, then again, I will leave you to your desired belief, but i must be being willing to go wherever the truth may lead. Which I do not find your reasoning doing. Sorry and bye.
I agree with the above and most all that you said. Thank you for being reasonable and mature, which I am often not
Before God hardens anyone’s heart, they have already hardened their hearts to His grace and mercy many times.
And we can harden the hearts of many just by telling them Truth, so it does not necessarily require a supernatural act, but the absence of it.
May God peradventure grant all "repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." (2 Timothy 2:25)
LOL, you so kind.
Correctin: flesh and bones (plural). Even marionettes have joints that bend the same way as real human anatomy. And yes, the homonids in either compartment of Sheol did not yet have tangible bodies. But they did have bodies that identified them and which needed attention. So, how do humans feel pain? Through biological electrical currents. Apparently disembodied souls have such feelings, and even hearing. Did not Jesus preach to these souls in Sheol?
When they were released from Abraham's Bosom the graves were opened as well that held their bodies...
Well, I don't know about that. I don't know exactly who it was that came out of the grave.
Their souls no doubt were united with their new, spiritual bodies...
Ah, are you sure about that? Did Lazarus, Martha's brother, have a spiritual body? Sounds like a risky assumption to me. Maybe you can clarify the doctrine on that matter?
Three credentialed scholars were quoted in my response to you: (1) A. T. Robertson, regarded as one of the most well-known and capable grammarians of the last century; (2) Marvin Vincent, also author of a thoroughly approved text on NT Word studies, copies in every seminary or Bible school, likely; and (3) Dr. Fred Wittman, doctorate from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary under Dr. Earl Radmacher, Dean.
Wittman has translated the whole New Testament from the Byzantine/Majority textforms of Robinson and Pierpont's opus, as well as coordinating that with Scrivener's Textus Receptus published by the Trinitarian Society. His Precise Translation agrees with the named commentators. What I gave you as the sense of the verse is exact, as given in Post #174.
Jesus' words given in John 5:24 are economical, terse, and completely resolve the question about who it is that continuously hears Him and His Word (logos = doctrine, see Heb. 6:1a); and commensurately also persistently believes in The Father Who sent Jesus. That person will NOT continually come under condemnation, but has permanently once and for all passed out of the sphere of Death (and its cause Sin as the master) into the sphere of absolute everlasting life (and holiness).
As for me, I will completely rest in what Jesus has said, and that is that the one who HAS made this transition MUST be the one who continually hears, persistently believes, and will never come back into condemnation.
The accompanying conclusion I must make is that any interpretation of other passages that make Jesus a liar in His irrefutable statement about the behavior of one who indeed has been given salvation as a gift, that interpretation must be defective, and discarded.
So I do not feel a need at this time to try to harmonize the Hebrews passages upon which you rely, lest I bend them with eisegesis as others have done.
My first and paramount trust is in the very words of Jesus, as recorded infallibly in verse John 5:24, precisely and unarguably translated and interpreted, and that alone.
His statement is not conditional that as others would like to say that IF you continuously hear/believe, etc. (present tense), THEN you will at the end finally pass from death to life. That is not the sense, and it is the sense that a Greek=speaking first-century person of minimum intellectual gifts, would understand acd accept as plain literal language.
The sense is that only when one has already passed from death to life, unconditionally he/she WILL be constantly hearing/believing in effected faith first exercised at the outset of the sin debt transaction.
The Spiritual song that echoes the sense is as follows:
My Faith Has Found A Resting Place My faith has found a resting place,
I know Whom I have constantly believed since making the one irrevocable decision to become His solely owned possession, and I trust that in (dative of association) Him that will never, ever change. What a relief I don't have to keep making that decision. The instant that I was saved, sanctified, justified, and regenerated by new birth, the rest of the responsibility for my status was taken out of my hands, with Jesus accepting the burden for its eternal continuance. With my intentions always being to serve Him, my Heavenly Father will make sure that I comply, with no black marks on my slate (1 Jn. 1:9).
Not in device nor creed;
I trust the Ever-living One,
His wounds for me shall plead.
. . I need no other argument,
. . I need no other plea;
. . It is enough that Jesus died,
. . And that He died for me.
Enough for me that Jesus saves,
This ends my fear and doubt;
A sinful soul I come to Him,
He’ll never cast me out.
My heart is leaning on the Word,
The written Word of God,
Salvation by my Savior’s name,
Salvation through His blood.
My great Physician heals the sick,
The lost He came to save;
For me His precious blood He shed,
For me His life He gave.
That also means that I am not going to quibble about it again. I leave this up to the Holy Ghost and His power to correct interpretations of His Inspired Written Word misconstrued.
Selah all
Lazarus didn't need a spiritual body like we will have and Jesus received...He wasn't going to be walking thru walls and navigating thru the Van Alan Radiation Belt up in the Cosmos to get to heaven like we will, and Jesus did...Lazarus didn't get that body til he was headed for heaven...
No one has really attempted to deal with the many texts I supplied except to argue that these were not written to believers, as believers, which as shown, is simply contextually untenable. And if your case rests your argument of what the Greek means based upon your scholastic (as emphasized) sources, then again I suggest you try to correspond with a exceeding well-credentialed conservative scholar on the issue who do not as re. Jn. 5:24 meaning what you insist it must.
And if you are right, then there is indeed a manifest conflict with the clear tests I referenced, which are not simply in Hebrews (and to which more can be added).
And with that i think I am moving on to other threads, by the grace of God.
Well yer a fine one to talk...Your pope teaches that you don't even have to believe in Jesus to become a 'Catholic' Christian...
There's an advantage to studying the scriptures as opposed to just picking a couple verses as your Church does to create its own false doctrine...
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Well, that covers every Catholic that ever lived...
Ahhhh...Here's one of those Buts that's missing from every Catholic Bible and catechism...
Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Rom 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Rom 8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
The flesh is bad, but we are not in the flesh if we have been born again...
Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Because we have been Born Again, we do not walk after the flesh but we walk after the Spirit, even tho we commit those sins you posted...
Rom 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
That verse and doctrine seems to lost on everyone who doesn't like OSAS...
These are bible truths...Can we find scripture that may seem contrary to these scriptures??? Certainly we can...So what do we do, cancel the one out to chose the one we like??? Many do just that...
But we are to believe the entire council of God not just those scriptures we like...So how is this reconciled??? By acknowledging there are different dispensations for different times and different groups of people who have different destinations and are saved under different conditions...
Amen! Even Paul used the term dispensation, and in the same fashion which you use here. See my tagline ...
It is so sad that you are entrapped in Catholicism because you will not accept teaching from other than that religion, so you generate scripture passages which you do not understand and continue to sow nothing but confusion here and in your own mind. I pray for you, sir, regardless of the efficacy ...
“And we can harden the hearts of many just by telling them Truth, so it does not necessarily require a supernatural act, but the absence of it.”
May God peradventure grant all “repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” (2 Timothy 2:25)
Excellent point and conclusion to our discussion.
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