You and Richard, always ready to reject the text. “It doesn’t make sense to me” or “it doesn’t fit my worldview” are not valid reasons for rejecting the text, and those are what you are doing: your worldview pretty much excludes everything supernatural except when you decide it is important.
Only by misreading the text, or misunderstanding it; for example, in context St. Paul was practically a feminist activist.
As you are misreading the text of Genesis 6.
Funny then that it is never referred to that way.
How can you “keep it” unless you first receive it?
False dichotomy – a rather extreme Calvinisitic one at that.
Not according to the entire OT theme and the whole point of the Gospel.
Considering the season . . . a gift for a child, placed under the Christmas tree, does no good unless it is claimed and unwrapped.
Paul does the same repeatedly in his letters.
This is that false dichotomy again. The argument is like one person saying that the electricity is always there and the other saying that the light won’t come on unless the switch is flipped – you’re talking past each other.
The key is where Paul says that the flesh is at enmity with God: that enmity is like the light switch; it has to be “flipped”, i.e. surrendered, before forgiveness actually “lights up”, i.e. is ‘activated’ for an individual.
(Though Mark 2 poses an interesting exception.)
That is a common error when forgiveness is made the focus. Forgiveness is just one aspect of surrendering to Jesus; it is an integral and automatic part of taking Jesus as Lord. “Jesus saves” is true, but it’s about a lot more than forgiveness!
That’s why I never liked the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
(I really need to get the book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.)
Or not – Jesus seemed to think that “Come to Me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” was sufficient at least for some.
BTW, “Repent” isn’t about turning from something but about turning to God – someone can laugh at the religious idea of sin and yet recognize that they are broken and have a screwed-up life and thus turn to God.
As Jesus made clear in John 3: judgment is no longer about sins but about response to the Light.
Not really; the verbs are in the imperative, which makes it a command.
I’m reading it in the expectation that the words mean what they say, not dismissing what seems weird and strange to me.
You are keeping it by denying it to anyone who does not fulfil your criteria, You are alright, shame about the rest.
Noo falsehood. The numeber of christians i the world is a fraction of the whole, and not a big fraction.
Calviism says that only the predestined are saved whcih is not the same thing.
Um, err, the whole point of the jewish sacrificial syste is?
And the whole point of the Gospel is that Jesus died for humanity, not the faithful few.
False analogy. Human gifts are human specific., and do not involve sin and forgiveness.
Because Paul was still a Jew who beleived that there was no choice in the matter. he would have made a good Calviist.
Oh dear, have I maligned Paul?
Aw shucks!
Paul was a human as much as you or I. He had his views. I do not share all of them.
I am talknig about your doctrine, not electricity.
There is no switch, and no turning on or off. Forgiveness is there
I was not talknig about surrendering to Jesus.
That is for those who wish to make that commitment. The rules then change.
Stop linking forgiveness as a preqel for discipleship. it is not.
God is not vndictive against those who either do not recognise Him or decide they do not want a relationship with Him. That is why the forgiveness is free. If it was subject to discieship it would not be free.
Richard
I am pretty sure Abraham was a human, and Job and Moses were human, Oh and Samuel, David, Solomon, Daniel, Isaiah, John, Peter, etc… they were all human. And believe it or not, while fully God, Jesus was also fully human. So what is so unsatisfying about Paul being a human?
God chose to reveal Himself to the world by speaking to humans and having humans share what He said with other humans.
If the Word of God is not your authority, what is?
Edit to add: I had a moment, please forgive me… I am only a human.
To put my comment in context.
I know how @St.Roymond treats Paul’s words and it appears that you have a similar view.
Scripture is the beginning of faith, it is not the master of it. It is hummans writing of their understanding. As such it is nt infallible or to be accepted blindly.
IOW I have no problem disagreeing with Paul or any other human writer, scripture or otherwise. Faith is personal not learnt or dictated.
Richard
Soooo…
You think you are without sin.
Hmmmm…
entitlement.
That is religion gone bad… all the way bad to a force of evil in the world.
We reject your rewrite of the text according to way you insist it must be read. We see something different in the text because what is written is not what you have changed it to.
Nor do we buy into your claims that you do otherwise. You fit the text to your worldview. Yours being literary doesn’t make it more valid than mine just because mine derives from real science. And no, I will NEVER change mine to yours, for I will continue to think science is far more connected to reality than literature – something I would have thought was completely obvious.
Incorrect. I believe in a supernatural God who created a natural universe. And that is complete agreement with what we see. But He created this natural universe for a reason and from this can be understood its limits – and when either the naturalist or the super-naturalist are talking out of their rear end.
I disagree, but thanks for clarifying that you are not singling out Paul.
Haha… hardly!
If you sin then you do not do what the law of God requires. When God and Paul spoke of people who had the law of God written on their hearts they explained that these were people who naturally do what the law of God requires.
…Oh I see… you are one of these who equate this with a conscience so to say everyone has one and thus all are justly subject to judgement according to the law. Yeah I don’t agree with that for it is obviously not even the case that all have a conscience. And I do not equate having a conscience with having the law of God written on their hearts either. While that may serve the theological justification for forcing your religion on other people, I reject this justification utterly, because the value I see in Christianity isn’t about God as a threat who must be pacified as they do with the pagan religions. Rather it is about the self-destructive behaviors which already has bad consequences without God lifting a finger. I have no interest in the type of Christianity which sees God as the big baddy who rules by fear like a devil. I believe in a God of love who simply wants to help and we need it because we are our own worst enemy.
I think this is circumstantial. Those with the law written on their hearts may still sin in other areas. Paul is contrasting someone who has never had the law (or heard the Gospel) and does not have a particular sin, with someone who preaches the law but then sins, doing exactly what they are preaching against. Everyone sins even if they have the law written on their heart, or as Paul later puts it, with our mind, serving the law of God.
Everyone sins:
The rest of what you said? I dont know where that is coming from. Its like your putting words in my mouth and then disagreeing with them.
I agree
Perhaps another comparison: Being saved without being baptized is like getting married without having a wedding.
Jesus is saying this in parting. With it being a command, could it be that Jesus is speaking this over her, not so much commanding her but commanding the sin to not regain control of her life going forward?
Interesting idea. I don’t think it works with the Greek but I am totally blanking on the grammar involved; it feels like COVID brain-fog hitting me again.
What strikes me, though, is that “sin” is not a separate word but is part of the verb, and a command to sin as a thing should have a noun that stands apart from the verb.
It just came up when I was searching questions to see where what you said was coming from. If you disagree with this use/understanding of the text then we are in agreement on that at least.
Well yes. I don’t think Paul is saying these Gentiles are completely without sin. I think he was just amazed that these Gentiles seemed to be keeping the law better than the Jews even when they didn’t have the law. But the point was that actually keeping the law (and doing so for its own sake) is what is meant by having the law of God written on their hearts. And this refers back to passages in the OT that this is what God was hoping and aiming for in His guidance of the Israelites. And that would be a people who obey the law in all things and not just in a few things – ergo a people without sin.
But… perhaps there is a difference in our understanding of sin. I do not consider mistakes to be sin as long a we learn from them and do better. I think sin consists of self destructive habits and thus things which we do repeatedly until we largely lose the freedom to do otherwise.
Thanks Mitchell. I believe we have come to some agreement.
I do believe its still sin even if we learn from it. With the self destructive habits, that’s sin becoming exceedingly sinful.
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