Now that all good but if i get it clear you are saying that we cannot know who will be saved?
Nikolaos, it is under your view that we cannot know who will be saved because if you ever deny Christ then, however much you think now that you believe in Him, that would mean you never actually were a Christian.
Under the view of the majority of Christians, we look at salvation in a threefold way using the language of Scripture:
I know that I WAS saved when I came to Christ (Ro. 8:24)
I know I AM BEING saved through faith and faithfulness (1 Cor. 1:18)
I know that I WILL BE saved if I am faithful to the end (Ro. 5:9)
To say that I am “once saved, always saved” is to commit the error of “pronouncing the judgment before the time” (1 Cor. 4:4)
I am saved by grace through faith in Christ expressing itself in love as I work out my salvation with fear and trembling by doing those things God foreordained I should do (see Eph. 2:8-10; Gal. 6:5; Php. 2:12-13)
We are not saved by works and there is no saving faith without faithfulness are two equally important sides of the same truth.
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I probably deny Christ every time I wilfully sin…come to think of it.
Every sin is to some degree a failure to love God and/or neighbor as we should, yet sins vary in degree. Not all sins are “sins that lead to death” (1 John 5:16) or are mortal sins that St. Paul warned cut us off from the Kingdom of Heaven until we repent of them (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
We need to repent of every sin, but we would not have to despair if we cuss when we stub our toe the way we should if we deny Christ.
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I think your connecting the dots is simplistic. Do you make a distinction between passive and active? It appears that you don’t. There is a difference between knowing and causing.
Quite a bit was developed here, Predestination or Free Will?, and the separateness (or the inclusiveness) of God’s relationship to all of our sequential time still needs to be emphasized. It is a wonderful mystery that I love.
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Still relevant (they are all irreversible – no one has ever suggested any that are not):
[u]The Christian’s Confidence[/u]
Nope. There is not a greater sin than the other thing. All sins are the same. They hold out the same "value’
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I am new here so I don’t know how deep we are allowed to go into theological debates but, the verse I gave earlier from 1 John explicitly says some sins lead to death and others do not. That’s degrees of sin.
It is pretty clear throughout Scripture that some sins are more serious than others. It would be unscriptural nonsense to put, say, stealing a staple gun from work at the same level as killing an unborn baby.
You did not quote the verse, but if you are thinking all sins are the same based on James 2, I am afraid that interpretation does not bear five minutes of serious scrutiny.
But, as you did not bring it up, I will keep this reply brief.
I think we can all agree that the sin of denying God’s existence and/or that Jesus is our Sovereign Lord and Savior is categorically different and ‘worse’ than other disobedience. It certainly leads to eternal death.
There are sins that have more temporal significance, obviously, and degree, in our eyes, anyway – stealing and murder, to use your examples. But they are equally forgivable.
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When we are under the ‘condition of sinfulness’ that we all are in apart from Jesus, all sin is equal and any one sin is like any other, in the sense that if ‘we could get rid of just one sin’ it would not change our sinful status before God.
I am sorry but this is a declaration that is not supported by Christ, let alone Scripture in General. The whole notion of Original sin is refuted by both Jeremiah and Ezekiel who quote the saying Of sour grapes and declare it to be false and not of God. Everyone is accountable for their own sin. And sinning is not a disease, nor is sinfulness a certain condition.
Christ declared that He had come for the lost and the fallen, which implied that there were some, if not many for whom He had not come. He said that only the sick needed a healer, which again implies that there were, even then, those who were not sick.
The Reformation was a great means of change, but that did not make it perfect. All the notions about Biblical inerrancy and Original Sin were one reformation too far.
Richard
With thay is like saying that not everybody needs God .
No?
It is saying that not everyone needs to be a Christian.
It is saying that God has provided means to understand Him throughout ages and cultures.
It is saying that God is not as narrow minded as many Christians. Nor is He stupid enough to limit Himself to one Religion or even sub Religion.
It is also saying that we love to be the only one who is right (myself included)
Richard
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Have you read through “Scripture in General”, especially the New Testament? There are multiple references to our sinful nature, a nature that we all have. Here is but one:
Everyone is by nature a child of wrath.
Of Course. But, unlike you, I do not take everything literally or at face value. It is what separates us and our faiths. You know it. I know it. And neither is going to persuade the other to change so, state your case and keep the personal stuff to yourself.
There is a difference between having a sinful nature and being born with it. A person who sins has a sinful nature until or unless cleansed of it. But there are some, maybe not many, who are not capable of sinning. One lady I know, is in her forties but has a mental age of 7 or so. She is incapable of sinning because she has no idea what is good or evil. She is selfish and amoral. She would not know the meaning of salvation either. But I refuse to accept that she is anything but safe in God’s hands.
The problem with Biblical certainty is that it looses its humanity and also its understanding of God. Instead it reverts to the legalism that Christ spent most of His ministry disputing. (IMHO)
So there we have it. We disagree.
Richard
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So you believe that all religions lead to God? Which i believe is completely false
Not exactly. Things are rarely that black & white.
I believe that it is not our place to declare who does or does not follow God. There are many who claim to be Christian who are probably not and many who are not Christian who behave better than many of those who profess to be.
IME it is not what you believe, but how you express your belief that really counts. And God would not be God if He showed favouritism to one approach, no matter how genuine, while ignoring a genuine believer who has a different approach.
Richard
Well so lets say Muslim can be saved by belief in to him would be “alah” and professing a Godlike character?
@RichardG
My path through the faith has been a bit different than most. I was brought up in a Fundamentalist home, but in college, I read a book called “The Historical David” by Joel S Baden. It shook my faith up very hard, but because of an unexplainable occurrence earlier in my life, I held onto it and concluded that the Bible couldn’t all be literally interpreted. It became much easier to digest that YEC is a fallacy, and I don’t even believe in the Doctrine of Total Depravity anymore. That there are other societies out there, such as the Chinese, that were prosperous early on suggests to me that whilst humanity has a capacity to sin, discipline can keep the effects of it at bay.
As for the Perseverance of the Saints, I agree that it is not really our call who is or is not saved. We can only observe the outside actions of a person, but God knows the heart. The way I think of reality is as an interactive movie. God knows all of the characters, their motives and beliefs, throughout the whole movie. He even takes the time to interact with the characters, giving them instructions and clues to follow. The movie is what we are living. He knows which ones will stick it out and not give up faith, and who will eventually capitulate. That is not for us of the faith to know. We keep on, in love and good faith, ministering to all those in our circle of influence, trusting that God has the rest in control.
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