I’m curious. I have always wondered how this passage worked–how can one be doomed to destruction and yet have a free will? It’s a thorny one. Thanks.
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Lots of new revelations in the NT. The impact of what Christ did by bits and pieces was revealed to the early Church by the Holy Spirit. The new words “predestination”, “the elect” included, “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” and similar passages also.
To connect the dots is not easy, but I gave you my connected dots and the words “predestination” and “the elect” are related (and part of) the foreknowledge of God, the big picture, God knowing everything in advance who would overcome and those who would not.
Hence the many severe warnings against apostasy.
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I may be in a minority here, but I absolutely believe this to be true. I affirm, as biblical, the doctrine of eternal security, that once saved means always saved. Of course believers can backslide horrifically, and may for an extended period be seduced by the world and deny the faith, but ultimately they will return, as God has promised to finish the good work he started. Since we can’t tell the difference between a backslider and one who was never truly of us, we should always assume the person is a Christian who is in a season of overwhelming doubt and pray for their restoration.
I do not believe there is any such species as “former Christians”, only “former self-identified Christians.” I don’t believe there is such a thing as a deconversion from the faith for someone who possessed a saving faith. Of those who say A) I had a saving faith and B) I have utterly renounced it, some are correct about A), some are correct about B) but nobody is correct about both.
This, of course, is just my opinion.
I appreciate this gracious attitude.
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The vast majority of Christians, whether considered historically in time or geographically in space do not interpret the Bible to say that if someone leaves Christianity they were never a Christian in the first place.
That is a doctrine limited mostly to the Reformed/ Calvinist/ Baptist churches.
Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Non-Chalcedonians, Anglicans, and most Protestant denominations believe the Scriptural teaching is that former Christians are not “Never-Christians” but are former Christians, or apostates.
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Welcome, David. I grew up in the “once saved always saved” culture, but agree with your observation. It seems the differential is between grace and acceptance of grace. I lean towards accepting that God grace is totally sufficient, and from that standpoint we are always saved in that our sin can never exceed that grace, but agree that we can elect to no longer believe. In that case, I am content to let God sort it out. Sometimes I do think we will be surprised at who we see in heaven, and suspect some may be surprised to be there as well.
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Hey, Phil-
Yes, I was raised Baptist, became Roman Catholic on my early twenties and Orthodox in my mid twenties (I am in my fifties now).
I would disagree that EOs and RCs are any less focused on grace, we are not works-righteousness believers. Nothing we do can earn God’s grace or even earn the right of keeping God’s grace. Nevertheless, we do works to take care of the free gift of grace untarnished. In our teaching, we are bringing Ephesians 2:10 indivisibly into Ephesians 2:8-9.
I do agree that we will be surprised (hopefully happily surprised) at the extent of God’s mercy in the Judgment.
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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 .