>>So you would advise a person not strive to enter in until after he’s already in? He strives to get in out of gratitude for getting in? That sounds different from the Lord’s advice.
That’s why I’m having this discussion. The bible appears to contradict itself if you take each verse as a separate statement.
>>No, the faith that gets a person IN Christ’s kingdom is living faith, not dead faith. Those who heard the gospel preached on Pentecost understood this, and strove to get in. Peter told them how, and 3000 people obeyed and “were added to the church”.
Exactly. The only thing they did was to obey was to have faith and accept Jesus. They didn’t build a church or feed a specific number of homeless people or memorize a certain number of verses. The just had faith alone.
>>Just like the Israelites at Jericho: They didn’t wait until after the walls fell and then march. Just like Naaman the leper: He didn’t wait until after he was healed and then dip in the Jordan. Just like Noah: He didn’t wait until after he was saved from the flood and then build the ark.
In each of those cases, the work was not done until they did it. In the case of salvation, the work was done by Jesus before we were born.