| Author | Message | ||
| Starlabs Registered user Username: Starlabs Post Number: 58 Registered: 5-2011 |
Kelleigh Maybe your question to me has already been answered, but what I mean about Univerisalism is the belief that God loves everyone so much that He will save everyone. The Bible doesn't teach this. I'm not saying that you think it does, I'm just trying to give you my brief interpretation of the meaning. | ||
| Starlabs Registered user Username: Starlabs Post Number: 59 Registered: 5-2011 |
It seems to me that forgiveness is one of those good or moral acts that people engage in. I think an Athetist can forgive someone but that doesn't mean they are saved. For me the verses that have been posted about salvation in Jesus' blood shed for us and our acceptance of that gift is the only way we know with certainty that someone will be saved. Even then God gives us that desire first in our hearts to know Him. Where the Bible is silent on how those who have not had Jesus realved to them as I referenced to earlier about say a fetus or say a still born child, well then we can't truly say we know there outcome if the Bible is silent. We have to trust in His Soverignity. | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1643 Registered: 7-2004  |
Kelleigh, Although I don't agree, I can understand why people might conclude that salvation through Jesus could be available to someone who never knew Jesus, but I take serious issue with the idea that salvation would be extended to someone who didn't want to know Jesus. What would lead you to that conclusion and why would you even want to believe that? | ||
| Truman Registered user Username: Truman Post Number: 52 Registered: 1-2012 |
Asurprise and Rick, I agree with you that it is the Spirit put within us, based on our belief, that enables us to forgive. But I also agree with Kelleigh that Jesus very clearly told us to forgive others when we have been wronged - otherwise we can not expect forgiveness from God. Examples are the parable of the unforgiving slave (Matthew 18), and: "For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing." (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV) | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1644 Registered: 7-2004 |
In the parable of the unforgiving slave, the slave had already been forgiven when someone asked him for forgiveness. To conclude that we are required to forgive unconditionally before we can receive a conditional forgiveness from God suggests that God requires us to do more than He himself does. Those who know Christ, understand and appreciate what has been forgiven to them, as a result they can see that any offense done to them is far smaller than their forgiven offenses to God. Forgiveness flows from the result of being forgiven much. This is different than worldly forgiveness. Wordily forgiveness has our own selfish interests working when we forgive. We forgive because we value the relationship. We forgive because it makes us lookmmore noble. We forgive because we want to restore peace. This is not godly forgiveness, but sinful forgiveness. So I disagree with the premise that worldly forgiveness stems from the same cause as true Christian forgiveness. There is a need in reading Scripture of rightly understanding what is written as Law, and what is written as Gospel. Law speaks to the sinner to convict of sin. Christ also said to "go and sin no more" and to "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" if we apply these as conditions of salvation for the Believer, we have a contradictory and confusing Bible. When we understand these as Jesus clarifying what it takes to actually be righteous, we can see these as commands that shows how far we continue to fall short. Mercy and forgiveness are not concepts unique to the NT. | ||
| Kelleigh Registered user Username: Kelleigh Post Number: 390 Registered: 7-2011  |
Ric, being a public forum I'll speak generally about an acquaintance. This is not a hypothetical, situational ethics type scenario. This case involves a real person that my husband and I care about. In that way this is particularly meaningful to me. A man raised by an abusive father who was a Christian. The father imposed a strict version of Christianity on his family while abusing them. The man doesn't 'want to know Jesus'. He is just not interested. This is what I meant by someone not wanting to know Jesus. Contrast the life of this man, with a very simple scenario, another individual who is fortunate to be born in to a loving Christian family. They accept Jesus and are saved. Does God in His mercy and justice have a plan that can save everybody? “All flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.” Psalm 145:21 I've been searching for information about universalism today. It seems to me that the universalist biblical worldview may answer a lot of important questions. I'm going to check it out for a while. Thanks Starlabs. I’m not comfortable with ‘God is Sovereign’ in answer to some of the difficult issues of Scripture yet, however I appreciate the idea of leaving the tough issues with God. I'm working through it. | ||
| Kelleigh Registered user Username: Kelleigh Post Number: 391 Registered: 7-2011 |
Worldly forgiveness is sinful forgiveness? Not only are we Christians the the only ones who can be saved, we are the only ones who can truly forgive? Too much information for one day. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13392 Registered: 12-2003  |
Kelleigh, I wouldn't say worldly forgiveness is sinful forgiveness, but I would say it's perhaps incomplete. Jesus' "forgiveness" of the Roman soldiers who crucified Him was not the therapeutic forgiveness we know well today. He didn't directly forgive those men because they were not asking to be forgiven. They were completely unrepentant. But Jesus gave His Father His right to exact justice on them. He turned them over to God. "Father, forgive them," He said, "for they don't know what they do." True forgiveness is not "forgive and forget". It's remembering so we can protect ourselves in the future, but it's giving up our right to get even and relinquishing our expectations for anything back from them. For example, when a person forgives an unrepentant abusive parent, he or she releases his right to get even or to extract justice to God, and He relinquishes any "normal" expectations that the abusive parent will ever have a normal or loving relationship with him/her. Instead, He submits his wounds and the "hole in his heart" to the Lord Jesus, and he receives healing, identity, and meaning from Him instead. A non-Christian can let an offender "off the hook", so to speak, but his releasing the other person does not yield healing unless he "owns" the deep wound and offers it to the Lord Jesus for His redemption. If you haven't read it, I'd like to suggest you read Martin Carey's article in the last Proclamation here: http://www.lifeassuranceministries.org/proclamation/2011/4/neverwithoutbloo.html Martin is a school psych as well as an MFT, and he's well-acquianted with what he calls "therapeutic forgiveness". I think you'll find his article deep and challenging...and it exposes the fact that without the historic fact of Jesus' blood received personally for our own sin, there cannot be true, deep, healing forgiveness. Colleen | ||
| Kelleigh Registered user Username: Kelleigh Post Number: 393 Registered: 7-2011 |
Thanks Colleen that is a very interesting and thoughtful article. | ||
| Starlabs Registered user Username: Starlabs Post Number: 61 Registered: 5-2011 |
Thanks Colleen for the way you explained forgiveness. I was trying to go down that line of thought but missed explaining it with the meaning for which I intended. As you can see I'm not a very eloquent writer. Sometimes my thoughts race ahead of what I write. I guess I'm too busy with studying about drugs. (for Pharmacy, LOL). | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1646 Registered: 7-2004 |
I don't mean that as Christian arrogance, but rather as a testament to the power of the Gospel. Christians have something more in their life than non-believers have. One thing we have is the knowledge and the personal experience of God having died for our sins; dying to take the place of our death. If this doesn't make our actions and our motives any different from unbelievers then something is amiss. | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1647 Registered: 7-2004 |
I also think I may not have been clear on what I mean by "sinful" in this regard. Anything that is not 100% pure, holy, and good is tainted by sin. Whatever is tainted by sin is not perfect and is not a "good" act before God, but only a filthy rag. Therefore the things that we do that are good in man's eyes, even the morally good choices we make, do not make us good. | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 2421 Registered: 7-2007 |
Kelleigh; read Handmaiden's post in the thread called: "Won't a good moral life get me to Heaven?" It explains salvation really well! | ||
| Kelleigh Registered user Username: Kelleigh Post Number: 397 Registered: 7-2011 |
Ric, you make me think. I hate that  Asurprise, you recommend it, then I'll read it! | ||
| Truman Registered user Username: Truman Post Number: 53 Registered: 1-2012 |
Rick, I think you may have missed my point, a few posts up the road. The point about the unrepentent slave wasn't about the sequence of events; it was that, having been forgiven, his master expected him to forgive others as well. I wasn't saying or implying that we must first forgive in order to be saved. And yes, anything we do is as filthy rags compared to God's holiness. But, to quote you, let's let scripture speak for itself. Jesus was very clearly giving instruction in these passages. And in the story you mentioned, about the adulterous woman, in context He very obviously was saying, "I'm not condemning you either. Now go and leave that lifestyle behind." To parphrase Paul, should we keep sinning so grace can abound? Absolutely not. Does Jesus ask us to be complete (translated as 'perfect')? Yes - not to attain salvation though. But to whom much (salvation) is given, much (loving our neighbor) is expected. | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1649 Registered: 7-2004 |
Truman, Thanks for your post. The order is critical, particularly as you look back through this discussion. We forgive because we are first forgiven by God, we don't forgive in order to be forgiven by God.
It is exactly because I take the literal words of Scripture so seriously that I have to seek an explanation that avoids causing Scripture to be contraditory on the subject. Jesus didn't just say, "leave that lifestyle behind", He said "Go and sin no more." I think the change you suggest for those words significantly softens and changes what Jesus said. Likewise, in Matt 5:48 with the discussion of perfect. The word "telios" can mean perfect or complete and we would have to decide on that meaning based on the context. It appears that all of the major translations go with the perfect definition in this verse, and I think for good reason. ""Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." The entire section of Matt 5 is about just how demanding the Law really is, instead of being something that most people can accomplish it is something we all routinely fail to accomplish. But the requirement of righteousness through the Law is that we be perfect, just as the Father is perfect. Anything less than perfect, is failing to keep the Law. Paul and James expresses this same thing, pointing out that failing in one point of the Law makes you guilty as a lawbreaker. In trying to understand why Jesus would even speak words like these, we have to understand the struggle with so many of the Jews of His day. Many, like the Pharisees, thought that they were pretty good people-that they were doing well at following God's Law (maybe like some SDAs we know?) But Jesus knoes that it is the sick who seek a Healer, not the well. Until these religious people could see that they were sick, they would never seek Him for healing. So I read these verses as Jesus making clear how everyone falls short. Without belief in Him, we would have to "go and sin no more" in order to be righteous. Without belief in Him, we would have to be as perfect as our Father in heaven. | ||
| Truman Registered user Username: Truman Post Number: 55 Registered: 1-2012 |
Rick, I appreciate your perspective. Your first point, about the "order" of forgiveness, is something I already agreed with and mentioned earlier. Where I may disagree is with the notion that the sole purpose of Jesus' comments is to tell us how far we fall short (if that is your belief). If you tie together the entire message of the NT, we are instructed to press higher ("toward the mark"), and live a better life, treat each other better, etc....yes, BECAUSE we have been given salvation (which I already stated). In the example of the adulterous woman, are you saying that Jesus was only telling her that everyone falls short? He not only made that point ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."), but He also urged her to leave her sin behind. Again, in context, the whole reason she was brought to Him was because she was caught in adultery. Are you suggesting that Jesus didn't ask her to leave that? Side note: I know this is not your intended message, but it almost sounds like this... You are saying that I am "changing" His words when I say he was asking her to leave her lifestyle behind. Yet, it sounds like you are essentially changing His words to, "I know you can't stop committing adultery, so I'm just saying 'sin no more' to illustrate that you are powerless. You're saved, so it doesn't matter whether you stop or not." Which one is a bigger change? With Matt 5:48, I agree with your comment that Jesus needed to show the Pharisees they were sick and in need of healing. Throughout that chapter and the next, Jesus is talking about the spirit of the law, and how they can't just observe the letter and consider themselves righteous. So yes, one point (although He doesn't say it here, so perhaps we're not letting scripture speak for itself) could be that no one is perfect. But I disagree that it's His ONLY point. He is also calling them to something higher than the written law, that which begins in the heart. (Pointing toward the New Covenant, with the Spirit-filled life.) It's a stretch to argue that the Beatitudes, the Lord's prayer, the Salt and Light illustrations, etc. are not given for instruction as well. Sometimes we are so repulsed by the legalism we've endured, that we don't want to believe God is asking us to do anything (not saying this applies to you, just generally). My interpretation of the NT is that we are asked to do many things; not as a test of salvation, and not to assess others' lives, but individually BECAUSE we have been given so much. I don't see the conflict in the NT, because all the writers gave instruction (and/or quoted Jesus doing so), all based on the new commandment that we love one another. | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1652 Registered: 7-2004 |
The issue of the order is critical to the earlier discussion on this thread. A key objection that I had was the order in which the issue of forgiveness was presented, because it created a work that was a pre-requisite to salvation.
On what basis do you conclude that the woman caught in adultery was a saved believer in Christ at the time of His words to her? She expressed no statement of faith directed towards Him. If you understand that she was not saved, she had not expressed any faith in Him, then Christ's words make perfect sense exactly as they read. Without faith in Jesus, the only path to righteousness would be to go and sin no more.
I didn't say anything about the sole purpose. I said that we need to carefully examine the context of who He was speaking to and what He was accomplishing in those statements. There are "Law" statements that point out our sinfulness.
I would disagree that what Jesus is calling them to is something that begins in the heart. This is what I would consider the false letter/heart argument about the Law. Instead of the term "spirit of the Law", which I believe can become misleading; I suggest describing this as the "righteous requirements of the Law." When we don't realize just how far we are from meeting God's standard of righteousness, we are tempted to keep trying to meet that requirement on our own. Whether we try to follow the law to the letter of the Law or by our "heart principles" we fall short. Unless and until we recognize that we are sinners who do not meet God's standard of righteousness and need that righteousness as an outside gift, we are not pursuing the righteousness of faith (and have not experienced salvation-even if we were "saved" from the foundation of the earth). Obeying the heart principles of the Law is not the "Spirit-filled" life, this is still a "law-based" religion. The Spirit-based religion is about changing the heart so that we actually want the things of God. I actually believe that we are asked to "do" very little. We must allow the Holy Spirit to "do" a great deal. I believe that IF we (as people throughout history) consistently followed the Spirit, even the written instruction of the NT would be redundant. But we try to follow our own desires and claim that it is the Holy Spirit. And these instructions throughout the NT serve verify whether or not our inclinations are Spirit-led or flesh-led. A "love" that is based on trying to follow the command to love, is still legalism. A "love" that flows from a changed heart under the direction and power of the Holy Spirit is the description of the full Christian life. Now if I said that I didn't need to show love to someone because I wasn't feeling led to do that, the instruction of the NT (see previous paragaph) would point out that I wasn't feeling led because I was following self rather than the Spirit. The instruction points out my sin, but it does not give me the ability or the power to actually be loving. Like any "law", this New Covenant instruction is powerless to actually change us. All Scripture is instructional, if applied properly within its context. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13397 Registered: 12-2003 |
This is a profound paragraph:
I am seeing more and more that God's "expectations" of me as a believer are not so much to realign my behaviors as to surrender at deeper and deeper levels. For example, the response I understand God to want from me when I feel anger and frustration rising in me is not primarily mastering my emotions and choosing not to yell. Primarily I see it to be surrendering at that moment my desire to argue, rage, correct, or sarcastically retort. It's not so much "self-control" as it is submitting to the Lord Jesus and asking Him to take the moment and take care of me. I have to surrender my "rights" and my desires to Jesus at the moments I'm tempted so I react to Him instead of to the "other". A changed heart directs me to react to Jesus instead of directly to the offender. He holds my heart and defends me and gives me clarity so the words I say don't cause damage but address the situation honestly. I so don't get it right so much of the time! But I'm seeing "obedience" to be submitting myself as a living sacrifice to Jesus more than working on my behaviors. If that makes sense! Colleen | ||
| Truman Registered user Username: Truman Post Number: 58 Registered: 1-2012 |
Rick, Well...again, it seems you are either missing or ignoring what I said about this being instruction of what we do BECAUSE we are saved - not in order to be saved. Re: The adulterous woman: I got the impression she was saved because God the Son said He didn't condemn her. Is that not enough evidence? I agree with your comments indicating that we wouldn't need scripture if we were completely in submission to the Spirit. You may be picking an argument where there is none. If you acknowledge that I'm speaking of the Christian life we lead BECAUSE we are saved (not IN ORDER to be saved), then you're down to parsing the difference between us being instructed in what we "do" vs. being instructed in what we "should be doing." Since none of us is perfect, none of us is perfectly filled with the Spirit enough to remove all our selfish desires all the time...so either way you are comfortable describing it, we are being instucted by Jesus and the apostles. As for your objection to His law being written on our hearts, I don't see the problem. My interpretation is that His law of love is written on our hearts as the result of our being saved and filled with the Spirit. (Message edited by truman on February 09, 2012) |
