Posted on 02/28/2014 10:36:43 AM PST by Gamecock
If you are “saved” and know you are ‘saved” then it would not matter what actions you take because you have already made it and it would not matter how horrendous or little the sin would be. I’m just taking the argument to its logical conclusion.
WADR, it is pretty likely that Jesus kept Kosher. No bacon for Him.
It does make the point, but how much EFFORT it takes. A lie’s travelled half way around the world while the truth’s still putting on its boots. Somehow Jesus was appealing to some sinners. They knew they were sinners but felt drawn to Him. Theoretically believers, having His Spirit within them, can have the same appeal.
Or not. The Lord’s perfect example failed to register with many. As explained in the piece, his generosity to “the sick” ( who need a doctor) was turned around and used as a slander—”a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners”.
You mean the squirrels are sinning? :-)
The author keeps saying Jesus ate with sinners “at the places where they congregated.” However, the occasions when the Gospel specifically mentions Jesus’s eating with sinners are when He dined at the house of Zacchaeus in Jericho, and when He ate with Matthew the tax collector after He had said, “Follow me.”
In both cases, the host (Zacchaeus or Matthew) had invited his friends to meet the man who had called him to a converted life.
Jesus was dining with a Pharisee, Simon, when He was approached by “a woman who was a sinner,” by implication a prostitute. I don’t really get the impression from the Gospel that everyone in the room was sinless, until *that woman* walked in to repent ... no matter what the respectable male invitees thought of themselves.
That's some darned sound advice!
Good points.
Mark 2
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
The reality is that America’s government and leaders of society, and much of society, is heathen or pagan.
If sodomy were still illegal (and the law was actually enforced, as most laws are selectively enforced today) then this would not be an issue; the moment someone admitted to being a sodomite to two or more witnesses, they could be arrested.
But since “we” - that is America - turned away from God, we now have gotten what “we” the people asked for: our civil laws defy God’s Law more and more directly.
The first priority is getting the laws corrected.
If the laws are not corrected, Bible-believing Christians will be subjected to far worse pain than having to bake cakes for sodomite weddings.
Just think of the toleration of all that sin in the local town to begin with. Why was nothing done ? Why are the laws not being corrected ? Sodomites are tolerated in every way - with the full support and backing of the government.
Do we think that refusing to bake them a cake is going to have any good effect ?
The “undecideds” on the issue, the secular “middle” in America - many of them no doubt think the refusal makes Christians look petty. They won’t think of that, generally, as “standing up for what you believe in”.
We need to get busy and speak with, market to, meet with, engage in any way with as many “secular undecideds” as possible to enlighten them on the results of letting sin run rampant. We need to convince them so they take it on as their issue. IMHO, I would NOT beg, plead, whine, threaten, get excited, whatever. I would simply say if we as a society embrace open, habitual and grave sin, we’re heading down the societal toilet. Not just sodomy, but all grave sins. Then just remind them that the 2nd table of the Law simply builds upon the 1st; without the first table, there is no reason or foundation for making our civil laws adhering to the second. Without God’s Law, people come up with all sorts of crazy legal systems of their own, that are all doomed to misery and failure.
Today we (America as a nation) think of basing civil society on the Bible as not only “weird”, but actually wrong !
Three centuries ago, it would have been commonly thought of as not only crazy and stupid, but wickedly evil to NOT base civil society upon God’s Law.
Three centuries ago, most of the heinous lies and corruption we see that produces so much crime and sin we see today simply would not fly in America; the offenders would be lucky to be ridden out of town on a rail, if not arrested, tried and convicted for their crimes, just for coming up with the wicked schemes that government and new world order comes up with.
Was there pie for dessert?
The best comment on this thread.
imo
Here is a good one: The first bar band I played in had six members. Four of them were strong Mormons.
I do tell people that I “Dine with tax collectors” quite a bit. I’m in “bar bands” here in KY, but they are not “sinning” when I’m there. In fact, the clubs I play are just couples and friends getting together and mingling and dancing. It can be a lot of fun. None of the band members are “overt” Christians except for me. But I really do see it as akin to what Jesus was doing. We talk about God and Jesus quite a bit and I do the same with customers during breaks at gigs.
Every now and then some woman may get on stage and try to dance with me, though. It is imperative to not make eye contact.
That seems logical to you, but it’s not biblical. It’s certainly not how someone saved by the free grace of God should think. Once someone has been truly saved he hates his sin and is increasingly aware of, and grieved by, his sin. I could respond with numerous passages of Scripture, but I suggest you study Romans 6 in particular.
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
—Romans 6:1-2
Why would anyone, ever, place the word, saved, in quotes? Generally the use of quote marks, in a context such as this, implies so-called,as in so-called-salvation. Isn't that a denigration of the whole concept of being saved? I don't understand.
When you are saved, your body becomes a temple for the Holy Spirit.
The question is do you want to drag God into a strip joint?
“Seems like looking at naked chicks and eating meatloaf are mutually exclusive things in my mind.”
Well, obviously you’ve never tried the combo!
“If you are “saved” and know you are ‘saved”...”
Right there is where your argument falls on its face. Nobody can truly know they are saved, we can only hope and have faith. Christ knows who is saved, but the rest of us can’t be so certain.
“The question is do you want to drag God into a strip joint?”
God’s already there, regardless of what we do, no?
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