Yes - it will. And does. Until you are cleansed of your sin, you are not fit for heaven - in fact you wouldn’t even want to be there. And if the only thing keeping you from taking advantage of others is because you feel obliged to follow a rule, then you have not even taken aboard the most basic [original] gospel message yet. All will NOT be well for you until you do. That is the two-thousand year old gospel message you need to learn. I don’t hear anybody else here except you promoting whatever this new gospel is - but I strongly recommend you go back to scriptures and recover the original gospel as preached then. I recommend reading First John … pretty much the entire letter, but especially chapters 2, 3, and 4. And Grace turned into license has ceased to be grace. Read Paul’s take on that in Romans 6. You aren’t alone in forgetting these things. I know I need regular reminders - I’m guessing most of us do. And as you imply, it isn’t just an ‘innocent forgetting’; we do have a rebellious streak - and the wanting to ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ in disregard for everyone else is a momentary, yet very real and recurring temptation. Any experienced believer knows how empty that promise is, though, whenever they have given themselves over to it. Sin and evil do not have staying power. Once you are in, it is pretty quickly revealed for the hellish quagmire that it is. The shining display models we saw in the store-front windows almost immediately fall short in actual customer experience. Even our sinful selves know this after some experience. And yet such temptations live on. This is why we, with Paul (Romans 7) cry out to be delivered from our egotistical selves - a prayer we can’t even fully begin to want for ourselves without God’s help.
You haven’t been listening to Klax very closely then, for I received it through him. This is the gospel he proclaims. It is closely related to the gospel that universalist claim. They may say it differently but the outcome is the same, ALL WILL BE SAVED and ALL WILL BE WELL. Even the once saved always saved group has a part in this, though with them you have to first put your trust in Christ and call upon His name, but after that, nothing you do will cause you to lose your salvation because it’s all grace.
Basicly, good or evil works can’t get you in or keep you out of the Kingdom, because Christ saves you. For the once saved always saved you must believe in Christ first, for the others Christ does it even if you don’t trust or love Him or as some relatives of mine say, “you will have to go through the Lake of Fire for awhile to be purged, but eventually you will call on the Lord and He will deliver you”.
It appears you have not heard this here on the forum before, but it has been here for as long as I have been on the forum. Even an atheist can appreciate a Jesus who won’t condemn anyone after death.
Meaning what in reality?
I was a bit mean on my poor old namesake there. He couldn’t help it. It was just the inevitable flowering of the latest in a 1500 year line of adventures in missing the point. This was just the greatest theological error eclipsing all others that had gone before. Which is saying something. Martin was right about the abuses heaped on schoolboy errors by the western Roman Catholic Church, but his is the keeper. Still.
Well … okay … granted - maybe. If you understand even half of what Klax says, you are probably ahead of everybody else. I think one of the things he’s managed to make clear is that he doesn’t even believe in the reality of God - at least not outside our own heads. So I’m a bit surprised you let yourself be ruffled by bits and pieces of the rest of his theology. Not that his critiques (those I may think I understand) are necessarily wrong at every point … nobody is gifted or brilliant enough to be consistently wrong on every point, and they may be right about a good bit for very good reasons. But you won’t fare well in a public forum here if you let yourself get tossed around by every wind. You do actually have to think critically about claims made and partake of them selectively and prayerfully, subjecting each one to the light of Christ.
@Klax and @Cody_G, it may be appropriate to open another thread on universalism, or reopen this one. It is a very complicated one that easily gets bogged down in details. Brothers in Christ, we can be grateful God is the ultimate Judge, can’t we?
Universalism and the concept of all being saved
I will if no one else does @Randy. We can be grateful that God is competent and that Paul understood that.
It’s not that I am ruffled by his theology, I was just extending or expanding on what his concept, the universalist and the once saved always saved beliefs can lead to. The Father, Son and apostles all are clear, it takes a continued faith and faithfulness to the end to enter the Kingdom of God. Grace doesn’t teach us that it covers sin no matter what, it teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust and to live sober and upright lives in this age. The separation of the sheep and the goats will take place. The wrath of the Lamb will be poured out on ALL who continue in ungodliness. Liars, thieves, murderers, fornicators, adulterers and the such will have their place in the Lake of Fire and that includes those who have confessed Jesus as Lord but turn away and do not continue to obey Him as Lord. If we hold fast to the end we will be saved. Works based salvation? NO! Faith based. Continuing faith brings continuing obedience. Turning away from faith in Christ is a dog returning to his vomit or a washed pig to rolling in the filth.
In Christ we have died to sin, how can we live any longer in it. If we follow, trust, love, obey Jesus as Lord then sin is no longer our master.
This is a copy of an earlier post in this thread…
Jesus paid the price for past sins and through His resurrection which brings about our new birth, He has translated us out from sin and Satan’s lordship, but only if we continue in faithfulness. The price He paid was to the Father. The Father requires the life of a sinner, Christ became sin for us and died in our place that we could become the righteousness of God in Christ. He gave His life as our life. Everything in the Kingdom is only obtained by being in Christ and continuing in Him. If we have come to know Christ but then turn back to the world and trample under our feet the blood of Christ, the blood of the New Covenant, then we will be cast out of the Kingdom. Just as the virgins who weren’t prepared when the bridegroom came were not allowed entrance.
I fear for those who the Devil has blinded. He proclaims a faith that is not faith at all. He comes as an angle of light, proclaiming a gospel that is no gospel at all. He perverts the words of Christ and leads many into destruction.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with all who confess Him as Lord and continue to submit to Him as Lord.
Remember what Paul said about Esau so that you dont end up in the same position.
Without holiness no one will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and see God. A real active holiness, not just one that you think you get from Christ but has no changing affect in you. Some people say that “when God looks at me He sees Christ”, but that is only true if we are walking in the Spirit and not fullfilling the lusts of the flesh.
He believes that God may be real, that there is ever more warrant for that thanks be to the faithfulness of Him in Christ, as revealed clearly by Paul’s faith. Once again Paul, the ultimate apologist for Christianity, is revealed as worthy, neither a medieval damnationist nor a C20th homophobe.
Very well … it wouldn’t be the first time I may have misunderstood you, Klax - Sorry if my words were way off base. Per our own forum guidelines, I shouldn’t be speculating about the faith of others.
[…wait a minute! Martin, were you just referring to yourself in 3rd person in that last response?! Or were you speaking of Cody? Oh well - whatever. People can clarify about themselves as much as they feel they need to.]
Mervin, Mervin, Mervin. You can do no wrong. I was speaking of myself. Whatever you have understood of me is down to me.
I guess the “take” of ALL WILL BE SAVED and ALL WILL BE WELL would suit psychopaths down to the ground, both the high functioning and low functioning varieties.
@Cody_G was accurately summarizing the gospel @Mervin_Bitikofer, but litotically. He doesn’t believe it. He believes Luther’s heresy.
And the thief on the cross made the sinner’s prayer and that made him fit for heaven did it?
He is now. It was the necessary launch for him to get there.
But not the other guy of course. He wouldn’t accept the gift of faith and is still burning. That’s Love that is. Obviously.
What suits them now in their innocent brokenness is irrelevant of course. A fallacy if you’re trying to prove that Jesus can’t save those you hate for whatever broken reason.
You know I’ve been feeling a little guilty about letting you take all the heat for universalism. The only thing I holding me back is that most of the talk has been on being ‘saved’ and I never know what to say about that. I know at least some of you have in mind getting an invite to the good afterlife alternative. That means nothing to me. The best I can do with heaven, hell and saved is to imagine them as states of mind existing now. Surly eternity includes now but I tend to think of it more as an enduring now rather than something later. Regardless now is the only part of time we ever experience directly and no eternity can ever be complete without it.
But what I think of as universalism has more to do with branding. I tend to think of all religious experience as being about connecting us with that which is beyond the narrowly personal to what is perhaps transcendent. Of course religion always has a cultural basis so they’re not so interchangeable in practice. But I see nothing wrong with acknowledging these other cultural expressions of the transcendent with the respect it is due and which we would like to receive in kind for our practices. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Being made safe from the power of sin and Satan and from the just punishment from God for rebelling against Him, is only possible through a relationship with Him. That relationship is based on faith, trust in Him. No trust, no relationship. No safety from sin, Satan and the just wrath of the Lamb. Salvation without trust, will not happen. He has provide salvation through Christ but it only will take affect in an individual when they trust, rely and love God. Relationship with God through Christ is salvation, it is safety.
Sinners prayer if made in a lite hearted way with no true trust in or love for Christ is nothing. But it is obvious from Jesus’ s response that He knew the man was truly sorrowful for his ways and had come to a conviction that Jesus was the King who could make him safe from his sins and bring him into His kingdom. That trust, faith, was the beginning of their relationship. Salvation through a relationship with Christ. The other man did not turn from self and reach out for that relationship.