Well I am glad to hear that. Many seem to feel or express that once they accept Jesus, they will always be saved.
I still don't know why so many feel the need to attack Catholic traditions and teachings.
The Catholic Church is full of saints and sinners, and our main focus is to spread the Word of our Lord so that we may all live a Christ like life and join Him in Heaven. It is difficult to always to the right thing and many fail.
Christian Churches are an offshoot of the Catholic Church that seem to have a different moral core than the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has followed the teachings of Christ, while other Christian churches accept some of the basics of the Catholic teachings but reject other teachings.
As an example, The Catholic Church honors and venerates The Blessed Mother as a special human without sin and servant and obedient to God. We pray to her to ask for her help and to intercede with her son and our Lord. Yet many here accuse the Catholic Church of raising her to the level of God and accuse us of false worship. They are unwilling to accept the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Living our life as Catholics, we try to follow Christ's path as taught by the Catholic Church. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail. We voluntarily follow this path and encourage others to do likewise, but living by our moral code and Catholic Church teachings is not forced on anyone (even Catholics). God gave us free will and does not force us to love Him or follow His path.
Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us we've been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritence, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.
The Greek word, ἀρραβών, means earnest money, a large part of the payment given in advance as a security that the whole will be paid afterwards.
No where in the NT does it ever say we are unsealed. So yes, we are always saved.
I still don't know why so many feel the need to attack Catholic traditions and teachings.
The Catholic Church is full of saints and sinners, and our main focus is to spread the Word of our Lord so that we may all live a Christ like life and join Him in Heaven. It is difficult to always to the right thing and many fail.
On this there is no disagreement. Any church is full of saints who are sinners and the main focus should always be to spread the Word. I would add we should also be studying the Word as well.
Christian Churches are an offshoot of the Catholic Church that seem to have a different moral core than the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has followed the teachings of Christ, while other Christian churches accept some of the basics of the Catholic teachings but reject other teachings.
Interesting you segregate Christian churches from catholic ones. Are catholics not Christian? Sometimes I get the impression not by this terminology used by catholics.
It is questionable if the catholic church has remained true to the teachings of espoused in the Word. So many doctrines of catholicism cannot be justified by the Word. The immaculate conception is one. Catholic apologists admit there is ZERO scriptural support for this belief....yet it persists.....why?
As an example, The Catholic Church honors and venerates The Blessed Mother as a special human without sin and servant and obedient to God. We pray to her to ask for her help and to intercede with her son and our Lord. Yet many here accuse the Catholic Church of raising her to the level of God and accuse us of false worship. They are unwilling to accept the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here is where the disagreement begins.
The title you use, The Blessed Mother is not a Biblical title. It is a twist of the Word by the catholic church to elevate Mary to something not accorded in the Bible.
We are not to pray to Mary. We have no Biblical teaching or example to pray to Mary or that Mary can hear or respond to our prayers.
We do have the Biblical teaching and example of praying to God however. He does hear and answer our prayers.
The catholic church has raised her to a level equal to Christ. The claim by popes that Mary is a mediatrix and co-redeemer shows this. Pople Leo XIII has said Mary is at the highest summit in Heaven. He also said that the catholic church places ALL their hope in Mary.
Were you aware there is currently an attempt to have a fifth marian dogma proclaimed that will officially declare mary to be Co-Redemtrix?
Right now the votes aren't there for it....but it's coming.
You are correct...Christians are unwilling to accept the man-made catholic teaching on Mary. They are a lie and from the pit.
The difference is Evangelicals do not see what I posted as "cooperating" with God's Grace. We are bought with a price, the price of Christ's precious blood once for all.
God owns Salvation. It is His Work, not ours. When we walk with the Lord it is by His Grace. Jesus clearly pointed this out to Peter in the Upper Room. Peter and the other disciples (except Judas Iscariot) were washed and only need their feet to be cleaned.
Some do, even though they do not manifest saving faith, while it is RCs who are the largest subscribers to "easy believism," as while they will not say that they know they have eternal life now, yet they hardly seem worried that will got to Hell, if they even believe in it, and instead they believe they are children of God via infant sprinkling, and have implicitly faith that their own merits and that of Rome will ultimately gain them entrance into glory thru purgatory.
That is all under the rubric of an ambiguous belief in Divine mercy. To their eternal horror, as they never had a true day of conversion when they realized the new birth with its profound changes.
Meanwhile, Reformers preached that while God justifies the UnGodly by faith being counted as righteousness, (Romans 4:5) such faith must be the kind that will effect practical holiness, "things that accompany salvation." (Heb. 6:9)
In his Introduction to Romans, Luther stated that saving faith is,
a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, [”A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way”, http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
Thus God warns believers against having an "evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God," drawing back to perdition, (Heb. 3:12; 10:38; cf. Gal. 5:1-4) whereas the true believers "believe to the saving of the soul." (Heb. 10:39)
The historical Calvinistic position is that of this perseverance of the saints, the P in TULIP, which in contrast to the other OSAS position in which one is saved based upon faith in Christ to save them no matter how they lived, upholds the fact that saving faith is one is characterized by following the Lord in whom they trust.
With the Puritans this could go an extreme opposite that of the antinomians. An account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period notes,
“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”
Perseverance of the saints recognizes believers may fall away, but holds that God will bring them to repentance, and that the elect will finally persevere to die in faith.
While man must make a decision to believe on the Lord Jesus to save the contrite damned+destitute sinner by His blood and righteousness, man can take no credit for this as in conversion God draws the soul, (Jn. 6:44; 12:32) and convicts man of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment, (Jn. 16:9) opens the heart, (Acts 16:14) and grants repentant faith. (Acts 11:18; Eph. 2:8,9)
And while God states the we are of Christ's house, and partakers with Him "if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end," "the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end," (Hebrews 3:6) yet no man can take credit for this since any faithfulness is due to "God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13)
But believers are to be blamed for drawing back from following Christ, via submitting to a false gospel as in Gal. 5:1-4, and or impenitent willful in as in Heb. 10:24ff. And some as myself cannot help but see these warnings to believers (as these are clearly addressed to souls as believers) against effectively denying the faith, as being that of forfeiting what faith appropriated. Yet God works and works to bring such to repentance. Thus almighty God chastens believers unto repentance "lest we be condemned with the rest of the world," (1Cor. 11:32)
I still don't know why so many feel the need to attack Catholic traditions and teachings
Because first of all, the Roman basis for determination of Truth, of what and who is of God versus not, is that under which the church began, that being Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, but rests upon the novel premise of perpetual magisterial infallibility.
Thus it is disallowed that one can be correct in dissent from the historical magisterium and stewards of Scripture, and a RC is not to ascertain by evidential warrant the integrity of RC official teaching, but such are to be believed based upon the premise of the assured veracity of Rome.
Second, repeating much that i said in a previous post, in contrast to all the description above of the gospel of grace, the gospel of Rome proceeds from the false premise that one is formally justified on the basis of his interior holiness, that at baptism one is made good enough to enter Heaven due to "infused charity," versus God justifying the UnGodly by faith being counted as righteousness, as Scripture teaches:
But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Romans 4:5)
Rejecting this as meaning imputed versus actual righteousness as the basis for justification, and since the RC does not maintain that baptismal perfection in this life, then under this salvation system he must spend an indeterminate time suffering "purifying torments" in "purgatory" to (atone for sins and) once again become good enough to enter Heaven.
Yet all believers are already accepted in the Beloved and seated with Christ, (Eph. 1:6; 2:6) and in Scripture all sanctifying work is done in this world with its trials and temptations, in which there is an sinful alternative to suffering.
Moreover, all the verses which clearly speak of a N.T. believer's postmortem condition (Luke 23:43; Acts 7:59; 1Cor. 15:52; 2 Cor 5:8; Phil. 1:23; 1 Th 4:17; 1Jn. 3:2) show it is with the Lord, in whose presence there is fulness of joy (Ps. 16:11).
Furthermore, the only manifest postmortem suffering for believers is that of suffering the loss of rewards at the judgment seat of Christ, and the grievous shame of the Lord's disapproval, all due to the quality of the material he built the church with. But which does not occur until the Lord's return, and the elect are saved despite the loss of rewards, not because of them.
These and many other things that are not in Scripture and of its church compel those who stand for Scriptural Truths to dissent from her.
The Catholic Church honors and venerates The Blessed Mother as a special human without sin and servant and obedient to God.
Meaning that not only is it not necessary or taught that Mary was sinless - and the Holy Spirit characteristically notes even far less notable exceptions to the norm in Scripture, but it goes way above that which is written in honoring and venerating her, to almost deifying her .
..ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written..(1 Corinthians 4:6)
As indeed Catholics hold that it is impossible to honor her to excess, while holding that they observe a theoretical distinction btwn "hyperdulia" and worship. Vainly imagining that one kneeling before a statue and praising the entity it represented in the unseen world, and as having Divine powers and glory, and making offerings and beseeching such for Heavenly help, directly accessed by mental prayer, would not be seen as an idolator, like as those who burned incense to the bronze serpent that they ad looked upon for healing. (Num. 21)
Yet many here accuse the Catholic Church of raising her to the level of God and accuse us of false worship.
Close enough in the first case and true in the second. A look at the evidence leaves no other conclusion.
They are unwilling to accept the teaching of the Catholic Church
Indeed, as such things are clearly not of Scripture, upon which foundation the gospel and the church had its doctrinal foundation.