Mervin, could you please clarify this statement. It sounds as if you don’t believe in the blood sacrifice of Jesus. Is that your meaning?
I firmly believe God weeps that his children believe such evil things about him. Better to refuse to believe in any such god at all than to believe that God would do what no honorable parent would do who knew everything they needed to know. Of all the evil that happens in the world - better to say about it “I don’t know why God permits this” than to think that God delights in evil. If God has in himself the very things that He sent his son to cleanse us from, then there is indeed no salvation worth having and we are all lost. But thank the God of Christ that He is not like that, at all! We are to be perfect as God is perfect. Only then are we actually fitted for heaven. Paul did not consider himself yet fitted for that time. Which makes it a certain bet that there is no one here or anywhere else living who is completely fitted for Heaven yet either. Salvation is an ongoing project - that surely doesn’t end once we’ve walked through the door of death.
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All i hear is two people in my thread trying to evangelize to an already Christian.So please @Mervin_Bitikofer @Cody_G save your televangelist programm to someone else.
If you get a chance, let me suggest that you reread the previous 6 to 10 previous comments. I was quoting someone else who suggested God was evil. I never said God delights in evil, either.
I’m not questioning your faith, Nick. I’m merely trying to remove stumbling stones that hinder so many. Nonetheless, I turned my replies to Cody and Ralphie into a private message with them just now so that you won’t need to worry about it. And not just because of that, but because what I think/write here does not necessarily represent Biologos. So perhaps it’s better there.
Its tiring going back and forth with Cody especially citing Bible verses as an argument.It doesnt get anywhere .
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The new covenant that God has offered and acquired for us is in the shed blood of Jesus.
Heb 13:20 May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
The Old Covenant was sealed with the shedding of blood of animals, the New Covenant was established with the shedding of the blood of Jesus.
Heb 9:22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
If we trample on and reject the blood of the New Covenant that God established through Jesus, we insult the Spirit of grace and place ourselves in the position to receive God’s vengeance.
Heb 10:29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The Word of God (Bible verses) that I quote will get anyone who places their full trust in them somewhere. God’s Word will lead them to a new birth and cause them to become a New Creation and they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven if they stay steadfast in their reliance upon Jesus and the Father. But if they turn back, God says, Heb 10:38 Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."
The New Covenant that is in the blood of Jesus is our only hope of forgiveness, freedom from sin and the devil and the just wrath of God upon us for our sins.
Anyone who rejects the New Covenant in the shed blood of Jesus is outside the Kingdom of God, their sins and their guilt remain.
Thank God for the Cross of Christ. In the cross is my only hope and salvation. Precious is the blood of Jesus that was offered up by God’s design for my salvation.
You have asked an important question, the answer to which most people do not seem to know. Sin is a relationship, or more precisely sin is a broken relationship. All sin is against God, because it injures us and/or others whom God loves. Sin also harms us and others. We perpetuate sin when we refuse to love.
God is always loving. God is always in right relationship to us. We are not in right relationship to God, to ourselves, and to others when we refuse to accept responsibility for our sin, and thus refuse to accept God’s forgiveness though Jesus Christ. God not only forgives us, but gives to us the gift the Holy Spirit to block the power of sin from controlling us.
Humans are created in the Image of God, and we can be alienated against ourselves and often are, so how can we say that God cannot be alienated against Godself. We must remember that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, came up with a plan to cure the sin of the world, not just sweep it under the rug, but to kill it at its root.
John 3:16 (NIV2011)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
This was the basic plan, but in a sense it failed, because the world rejected Jesus as the Messiah/Savior. So the question was, Did the world get the final say or not? Was Jesus going to stick with the plan to the end or make changes?
Jesus could have just walked away from His mission and gone back to heaven leaving us in the mess we created, or He could have come down from the cross, grabbed a sword from a soldier and conquered the world for the Jews. Instead He allowed the world and evil to do their worst to Him, showing us Who really has the final Word. As difficult as it was to do, to feel forsaken, to be forsaken so He could experience the weigh of the sin the world as fully God.
Jesus led the way. He did not ask Paul and His disciples and us do anything for Him that He did not do for them and us.
The good news of Jesus Christ is not true, because the Church says it is true. Not because we want it to be true. It is true because it is the only explanation of human existence that fits all the facts.
What He endured that day is way beyond anything I can imagine, @Ralphie
Way beyond what anyone can imagine. Thank you, Bro. @Ralphie
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Magical thinking.
It fits with the world view where things like life and free will are magical insertions by some divine power and you don’t even bother with understanding what these things actually are.
After all such things happen fine in dreams, books, and movies where the only limit is our imagination and logical coherence and reality are simply ignored. Faith and God just becomes a big rug under which you can sweep away all the thoughts and awareness of these obviously nonsensical things about such claims.
Sin is a habit. The only power it has is the power of habits. The nature is the nature of habits. But it is a thing we create and make a part of us by choosing and doing it. So it is entirely our own responsibility – for it is not a nature given to us but a nature we have created.
I would have agreed with you. But, that’s not what I discovered. I was amazed, absolutely amazed because He wasn’t a dream or wishful thinking or a nutty concept. Not at all. Blew the socks off this kid.
Why can’t I get words to express what I want to say? The word Amaze isn’t enough. It is used often to described cool stuff but that is not how I mean it.
My world shook. My life shook like an earthquake hit me, a good earthquake. Someone LOVED me. I hadn’t felt love like that since I was a little boy, when I’d rush to meet my dad and carry his briefcase home from the train station outside Chicago.
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Gen 4:6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
Before Cain had the habit of murder, something rose up in him and tempted him to murder, sin was crouching at his door and its desire was to have him, but God told Cain to master sin. The temptation came before the habit. Sin’s influence was acting on Cain before he had the habit of murder.
2 Cor 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So you would say that Jesus had no bad habits but God made him become bad habits for us so that we could become the righteousness of God.
Rom 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So in Christ we have been set free from bad habits.
Rom 7:14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
**So we were sold as slaves to bad habits? **
“But it is sin living in me”. This is not a bad habit, it is a power, influence.
The law of sin.
Before Christ and under the law, in Paul’s sinful nature he was a slave to the law of sin, not the law of bad habits. Sin was a law already at work in him before the “bad habits” came into being. We didn’t create the law of sin by our bad habits, it was already there exerting it’s lordship over us. Before Christ, a person is a slave to sin, but through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the inner man dies and is raise up, born again and becomes a New Creation in Christ. No longer him that lives but Christ that is living in him. Jesus’s death to the law of sin, is my death to the law of sin that had mastery over me before I was born of the Spirit. What obeying rules could not do, Jesus did by uniting Himself to me and taking me through His death and resurrection. I have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of God. I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.
Jesus is my Lord. Not sin, the devil or any other power in heaven or earth.
JESUS IS MY LORD!
Santa Clause who lives at the north pole and rides a sled led by flying reindeer is a dream and a fantasy – St. Nicholas is real. Likewise there are many portrayals of God which are a dreams and fantasies – and then there is the God which is real. But as long as poeple keep treating God as a big rug under which they can sweep away all the inconsistencies then they will never get a handle on the real thing. Those who refuse to use their mind to distinguish the sensible and real from their wishful fantasies will remain blind to the reality of Him. That goes for both those thinking God is a means to get rich and for those thinking God is a reason to ignore science and the objective evidence.
Yes. The love is real. But magic is not real. There is no life stuff which can animate dust and bone to make them living beings. All we see in the laws of nature of the universe is a NECESSARY part of what God created – It is all a part of how God accomplished the creation of everything we see. Yes God did it all, but it was not magic. And likewise God sent His Son to give us truth, to make us free, to have more life, and take our sins away – But it was NOT MAGIC! There is no magical power of human sacrifice. There was no magical spell to transfer our sins to Jesus. The evidence demonstrates all this to be pure nonsense because our sins remain right where they are. And telling ourselves otherwise like telling children we see flying reindeer in the sky cannot change this.
God spoke to Adam and Eve in order to bring the human mind to life. The human mind is a very powerful thing. It enables us to have a parent-child relationship with God, but also allows us to do many more things which are subject to considerable possibility for abuse. Our imagination can help us in understanding the universe and accomplishing marvelous things, but it can also be a rather detrimental when we insist on believing in the fantasy rather than the reality. So we have replaced the God which is real with so many different wishful fantasies, whether to promise ourselves magical rewards or to shift upon Him the blame for our own mistakes.
It is just a poetical way speaking. We do the same thing with thousands of other concepts. The fact is that sin became a part of Cain as this habit he chose in murdering the brother he blamed for his own failure. But to take this literally as if sin were a bunch of creatures crouching in dark places ready to jump on us is neither realistic nor helpful.
No I would not. I would say instead that killing Jesus was our ultimate sin (the habit of destroying everyone and everything that offers us hope and salvation), and Him dying on the cross the visible consequences of our sin (our self-destructive habits), so that when we look on Him we would repent and understand that we MUST change.
Our bad habits remain. Christians no measurably different from non-Christians. The magical understanding of this is just wrong. Christ is our savior – just not by magic.
You would make a good Jew. Obey the Law and you will be righteous!
But God says the Law was given to reveal sin, it didn’t have the power in it’s self to save a person who was a slave to sin.
**MANKIND WITHOUT THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST LIVING IN THEM IS A SLAVE TO SIN AND THEY CAN’T FREE THEMSELVES. NO WAY, NO HOW!
Through Christ’s death we die with Him to sin and through His resurrection our inner man is literally BORN AGAIN made into a NEW CREATION. That is salvation. The Spirit of Christ in us, working in us both the will and ability to walk in the liberty of righteousness. It is by our reliance upon Jesus that the Spirit of God does what the Law could not do. A person can even try to follow the teachings of Jesus but without knowing, trusting and loving Him, he will fail. For it is only Christ in us that is the hope of glory. It is Christ in us that gives us power over sin. For in Christ I have died to sin and have been filled with the very life of God. That is what delivers me from temptation. Christ in me is what makes me not want to sin against God. The Spirit of the Son of God is empowering me to lovingly obey our Father. Christ in me is my hope of glory.
That is why I will only glory in the cross of Christ. For through it, the world has been crucified to me and me to the world. The only thing that matters is the New Creation. Becoming a New Creation by being born of the Spirit, has set me free from my slavery to sin and the devil.
The death of Jesus on the cross, is not just some emotional ploy to get us to feel bad and to start obeying God. There is now power in feeling bad in itself. Feeling bad and trying harder will not free you from your SLAVERY TO SIN. It takes your death and resurrection to life that will set a person free. Go ahead and try to free yourself from sin, try as hard as you can. Then try harder and if that doesn’t word, TRY HARDER. Nope! Won’t work. Your still a slave to sin. You may sin less, but still a slave.
We needed a deliverer, someone who would set the captives free. Who would free us from our old master. Someone stronger than sin and the devil.
JESUS THE LORD! STRONG AND MIGHTY IN BATTLE. OUR DELIVERER.
He came to set the captives free. Good News! Through the death and resurrection of the Son of Man, I have been released from my bondage to sin. For freedom sake, Christ set us free. Free to love and serve God from a pure heart. A heart that the Spirit of God washed clean by the blood of the sacrificed Lamb of God, by the Spirit of holiness, by my union with Christ in His resurrection.
JESUS HAS SET ME FREE FROM MY BONDAGE TO SIN AND THE DEVIL!
GLORY TO GOD!!!
Thank you! And who would make the better Christian – the good Jew who believes in righteousness or the good pagan who believes in magic?
Romans 10:5 Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say?
The difference in these two roads offered is not righteousness, but in how you seek it. The difference described here is between the entitlement of Pharisaical legalism and the faith which does what is right for its own sake because you have the law of God written on your heart.
Ralphie,
Don’t listen to those that would try and take away what Jesus did for you on the cross. It was not by your good deeds that the love of God filled your heart, it was because of your faith in Him. Yes, we repent, turn from love of self and sin but we turn to Jesus. We trust in the offering of His life blood and His resurrection. From that trust or faith, the Father gives us a new birth and creates our inward man anew. And it is from that unmerited favor that the Father shows us, we now live unto Him. He sets us free so we can serve Him in righteousness and holiness.
Are we slaves of sin any longer? NO! When the Son has set you free, you are free indeed. Do you have to sin anymore? NO! Christ has set you free. Can you enter the throne room of the Father in your time of need? Yes. Why? Because of the blood of the Lamb of God. Those who fully trust in the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ are free men. We have died to sin through the death of Jesus and we have been raised up a NEW CREATION. Sons and daughters of the living God. Live from those truths and you will remain free from the power of the enemy. Our Lord, is Lord over all. He is Lord over death and life and you belong to Him. He is our high priest who has entered the very throne room of God. He is the Lamb of God that was freely sacrificed to set you free from sin.
All this is GOOD NEWS. Never, ever, let anyone take that away from you.
Love God with all your affections, thoughts, strength and actions. Trust Him in your times of temptation and call on the name of Jesus and you will be saved from them. The Father will make you stand strong if you fully lean on Him at all times. You do not have to depend on your own strength, but know that Christ is in you and no one or anything is stronger than our Lord.
Heb 13:20 May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
The law written on your heart is what is done in the New Covenant. The New Covenant is in the blood of Jesus. It comes through union with Jesus in His death and resurrection. It is the New Birth, the New Creation. The execution of the old man and the creation of a new man, not a metaphor but an actual event. The circumcision of the flesh by the Spirit of God. The death to sin and the actual resurrection to life of the inward man. All this comes through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. Faith, trust, reliance upon the cross of Christ is what brings a person into the New Covenant. That is why I will only glory in the cross of Christ, for through it I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.
Living a life of holiness is the result of faith in the blood sacrifice of Jesus. A persons union with His death and resurrection brings us into the liberty of righteousness.
1 John 3:8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.
Jesus is Lord and my Lord and from that foundation, I live as a freeman.
I feel your pain.
Hardly. That’s a slur against Jews.
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It would be tiring if you look at the Word of God and the message of our salvation as just some verses in an old book.
But it would get you somewhere if you see and understand it is the proclamation of our salvation. That it is the glory, mercy and grace of God being revealed to us. That it is God reminding us of the power that was exerted to cause those who place their confidence in Christ to be Born Again as children of God and so many other things that “Bible verses” reveal to us about our Lord Jesus. Then you would receive it for what it is. A reminder, an encouragement, an exhortation, the love of God being revealed and on and on and on.
All it takes on your part is a turning, and receiving of God’s Word to grow in love for the Father and the Son.
Jesus is everything. Why would it be tiring to hear and understand more about him?
Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.