Top of my controversial topics list is...

P1LGR1M

[Polite Mode: ON]

[Emotions: OFF]

Okay, let’s get started…

You said:


“Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure.” (1 Timothy 5:22)

Charge dismissed on biblical grounds.

NEXT!

You said:


What? You ain’t gonna go to the Greek on this “proof-text”? You mean to tell me that this scripture means what YOU say it means on its face? Don’t you see your hypocrisy?

But enough of my commentary, let me tear this down real quick.

There are assemblies and people to be avoided; and it’s these types:

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” (Romans 16:17-18)

THESE ARE THE ASSEMBLIES I AVOID.

And I already told you that nearly every assembly out there today falls convicted by this scripture.

You said:


Hey, you did that with Hebrews 10:25…

And I showed you BIBLICALLY how you did that. You just opined on how I did it without biblical reference.

You said:


Only in your ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED mind… (with all due respect).

You said:


No.

This is the reason:

“But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:3-4)

That’s sin in general.

But in order to preserve the tradition of ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED you must tamper with scripture.

You said:


My sins have been excused by the blood of Christ.

And there is a reason why John wrote:

“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin” (1 John 3:9)

You should reassess what John meant in the first chapter. Considering the fact that Peter also wrote:

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” (1 Peter 4:1-2)

Furthermore the Galatians were being admonished by Paul for doing theses things:

“Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” (Galatians 4:10-11)

“Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” (Galatians 5:2)

Paul wasn’t discouraging the Galatians from living holy lives in purity.

P1LGR1M

My friend, You still haven’t provided any scripture to support your position.

You are not good at pulling folks out of error (as you see it).

I already addressed your objections and yet you continue to throw them in my face.

You just want to lecture me with sectarian speak seemingly not even bothering to read what I say. Just accusation after accusation. But I am not offended. It’s to be expected. My Lord suffered insult and I must expect the same treatment (Matthew 10:25). But I will not give up. I love peoples souls enough to endure insults in order to save some of them according to uncorrupted seed (1 Peter 1:23).

You will never see the truth of scripture with the ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED blinders on. The warning passages in scripture are hard to be understood when you believe OSAS. But once you have leavened all its crafty word play into your heart it’s hard to undo it.

“As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:16-18)

I stand in scripture alone and I will not be moved!

Maybe we should talk about the weather instead… LOL!!

this can confuse some people

Again eternal can means forever. never ending.. Or forever no beginning or end.

in fact, if you look at John 3: 15 (eternal) and john 3: 16 (everlasting) in the NKJV. then look up the greek text, you will see the same greek word is used both times aionion in fact, the literal reading as written, in john 3: 16 it ends like this...

believing in him not should perish, but should have life eternal.

It’s hard to know where to even begin here.

The church has never taught that sin is meaningless. It taught that sin can keep you from heaven!!! And still teaches that. Some Sola Fide adherents, OTOH, because the doctrine insists that righteousness is merely imputed or declared anyway at justification, may see themselves as sinless even though they’re not: “simul justus et peccator”, etc. And this is nothing but pretense, hypocrisy, nothing to do with the gospel; God doesn’t deal in falsehoods.

Anyway, the idea that the believer is free from the penalties of sin as long as they have faith has also led some to think that grace/the gospel is a license to sin as Jude 1:4, for example, makes clear was already a threat at the beginning. But the church always opposed this, as Paul and others did, of course. And the early church opposed it so severely that, across the board, throughout the church world, it was considered that, if someone sinned in some grave and serious manner: adultery, murder, etc, they were no longer part of God’s fold, and repentance was impossible. Christians had turned away from the world and its sin, often at great cost. Persecution and martyrdom were normal occurrences. Certain New Testament passages support this idea that repentance is impossible, and, as well, it was simply the consensus that was received and held at the beginning. So much for forgiveness being some sort of carte blanc already-ever-accomplished deal as long as one believes.

In the 200s AD, however, the overseer/bishop of Rome, Callistus, ruled that a person could, with a sincere change of heart, come to repentance and return to fellowship with God and His followers, even as this was allowed only over time and after much penance was involved. This was very controversial, causing no little storm within the church. He based this on the understanding of God’s mercy and love and desire that all come to Him. Eventually this teaching would take root and be accepted throughout the church, everywhere. Either way, sin continued to have much meaning in the church, quite different from today’s climate in general I might add.

Other actions would be required of the church, in the east and west, as the need arose, sometimes driven by other controversies. The canon of the new testament would be assembled at council in the 300s, as well as the doctrine of the Trinty and the nature of Christ being hammered out due to the Arian controversy. In the 400s the Pelagian controversy arose over the role of man’s will vs grace in his salvation. A big plus that came out of it all was that, based mainly on the arguments that ensued, most of them from Augustine, doctrines on grace were set down in the following century at council. Using 25 canons or statements it was solidly maintained that fallen man cannot possibly move himself to God in any way, that he has not the power to find God to begin with, or to please Him, to come to faith in Him, to justify himself, to live out the righteousness demanded by the law because he doesn’t possess that righteousness within himself to begin with, on his own. And yet the law is holy and good; man was made for it; he wasn’t created to be a sinner after all. The real distinction between fallen and redeemed man is that fallen man lacks God, union with Him, due to his own ignorance and pride-driven preference for himself over God, initated by Adam. Man cannot pull himself up by his own bootstraps; he needs grace, he needs God to find him, to inform him, to call him, to move him, to justify him.

What Paul means by saying that we’re justified and saved by faith is that we’re justified by grace, by God, as opposed to ourselves, because faith makes God our God again. Faith is to say yes to God, placing us into right stead and order with Him. Adam had said no to God, and He’s been patiently working with mankind ever since to bring us back around to yes, definitively made available to all with the advent of His Son who reveals and reconciles us with Him. That faith, that agreement, that yes, that unity, is what pleased God first above all else about Abraham’s response. It’s a game-changer for man- it’s the basis of justice for man, it’s what we were all made for.

But the church also maintained that man, even when called by God, can still say no. He can resist grace at any time. He’s not just saved but on a journey to salvation, to his purpose, to fulfilling that which he was made for which can be summed by loving God with his whole heart, soul, mind and strength and his neighbor as himself. In this profound, supernatural love, in this transformation into God’s image, is found all the purpose, satisfaction, and happiness a human can know and possess. Within that he has finally obtained the true and priceless Object of all human desire. But it’s also a journey that he can jump off of at any time, returning to the flesh, departing from the Spirit. So it’s a struggle, between our pride/desire to sin and our choice for good over that evil. So, after the 25 canons the church stated thusly:

“According to the catholic [universal] faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility, if they desire to labor faithfully, to perform with the aid and cooperation of Christ what is of essential importance in regard to the salvation of their soul. We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. We also believe and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God, but God Himself first inspires in us both faith in Him and love for Him without any previous good works of our own that deserve reward, so that we may both faithfully seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism be able by His help to do what is pleasing to Him.”

While baptismal regeneration was the normal belief held by all the churches from antiquity, those going by Scripture alone in these later days often argue with each other over it. Either way baptism, aka “the sacrament of faith”, was considered to be the moment a person is born again, dying to the old man and coming up from the waters as a new creation in obedience to Christ’s command. At baptism one is forgiven and cleansed of sin. It’s taught that, at that moment, providing that faith is genuine, nothing would stand between the believer and heaven if they were to die then and there.

Sacraments, BTW, are theology “set in stone” so that even the simple, often illiterate man down through the centuries, can know and live out God’s will in the most basic ways: the need for rebirth, the need for continuous communion with and nurturing from God, the need to reconcile with Him again if need. All grace, and yet grace that must be “claimed” as it’s accepted and acted upon daily. We must walk the walk-and that’s both a gift and a choice. As we proceed on that journey, growing in the knowledge and love of God, our choice for good is becoming firmer, more sure, more complete, and so is our salvation.