What a gamble!!
You must admit that John 3 does make salvation seem much more certain than that line makes it seem
But folks can be wrong about their assurance.
At least I’ve been told so. Other people can be they tell me. Not me, but the other guy can be wrong.
The elect peservere, if they don’t persevere, they weren’t really elect.
Logically it would seem you have the same, er, “gamble”. You’ll know for sure when you get there.
“What a gamble!!”
No gamble, Padre. Its just the fact of the condition we humans find ourselves in. Sometimes clients complain to me about the “injustice of it all”. I often tell them they might as well complain about the sun going up or going down.
” You must admit that John 3 does make salvation seem much more certain than that line makes it seem.”
I’m at the office Padre so I reply in haste with perhaps more later when I am home. John 3 is a great chapter in the Gospels, one the Fathers speak of often. Those who indeed “die to the self” so that they exist only to act in accordance with God’s will and to contemplate the uncreated divine light will experience complete theosis, they will become “divinized”, they will become “gods”, as a number of the Fathers noted, not by participation in the Divine Essence, but by adoption, which is our created purpose, the ability to fulfill which was lost in the Fall and restored by the Incarnation.
When you consider that Jesus uses the present tense of "believes", I don't see Him as speaking in "certain" terms in regards to the future... He never mentions that a person is saved because they BELIEVED 20 years ago.
Regards
Adding to 7861, take a look at +John Chrysostomos’ Homilies XXV and XXVI on The Gospel of +John, Padre. I thought I could snip pieces of them here and there, but the whole is so good and holds together so well that really the best thing to do is read them in their entirety. The last part of XXV is particularly instructive about the Orthodox belief regarding what life the Christian is born into.
http://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/114/1140030.htm
http://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/114/1140031.htm