StudentoftheWord , Are you saying that entering salvation on earth is a choice while entering salvation from hell isn’t a choice? I disagree.
I’ve already pointed out that Revelation 19:11- 21:27 teaches that “the kings of the earth” go from getting slaughtered in Armageddon to enjoying heaven, and the lake of fire is between Armageddon and heaven. If somebody can refute this while discussing these scriptures, please speak up.
Did I say that? No I didn’t did I.
Craig, I’m still trying to figure out what you’re saying. You said, “I should rephrase that, in any case, I believe that salvation in this age is a conditioned on a choice, but end salvation based on the univseralist salvation is not a choice as God will be all in all.”
What does “end salvation based on the univseralist salvation is not a choice” mean?
I don’t have as great a handle on the Bible as you do BA, so I won’t try to out-exegesis (exegize?) you, but I will say that you don’t know whether the fire is corrective or not. I know that it depends on several greek words that could be translated various ways. I think neither side should assume they know for sure what God’s plan is for those fires. I hope based on stated will of God that all should be saved, that those fires will in fact be of the corrective type. It wasn’t just Origen who believed the wrath of God to be corrective, it was the entire Alexandrine church, including most of the fathers who developed the Dogma of the trinity (Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, etc.) and including the majority of the patriarchs of the current EO church. These are not heretics (although some other aspects of Origen’s writings have been declared heresy at the time, Origen remains a saint in the EO church. I’m not sure of his status in the West). These are people who defended against heresies for hundreds of years and are the only reason we have the trinitarian faith that all Christians share today. None of us have it figured out and we can’t. We can’t be God. We can’t understand his ways. The best we can do is try to align ourselves with his revealed will and to share with others what that will is.
I will make this simple. Salvation is already assured, Armenian Self-Determination (Augustine Free-Will) is a myth. This is not to say you do not have Freedom of Will, it just means that the power of salvation was never in your will to have freedom over it. This was not your choice to make, humanity is assured salvation while we were still sinners and willfully sinning against God as sinners.
Romans 5:6-7
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
So, what choice do you have if as a sinner, you are powerless? How can you self-determine by the ‘power’ of your will to be ultimately saved? On top of this, what is it you think you are saved from? There is more than one salvation, just as their is more than one death and more than one resurrection of the dead. Not all will participate in the first fruits of salvation, but they will be gathered in but not after they pay the consequence of their wickedness.
God is not a player in the game, He is the Game Master. If you believe in Armenian Free-Will of self-determination then there is no hope for humanity and Christ died for nothing because as long as there is a will a part from God, God will never be all in all and everything in the Scriptures and promises have been a lie. Therefore, it must be noted, we are going to be saved whether we made a choice or not, but what we are saved from should we have rejected the first fruits is far more fantastic than if we had just trusted in Him and did the good we were prepared beforehand to do.
Our salvation is assured but this scares those who believe that such promise will encourage more sin. If we are all saved, then lets go out and sin! What did Paul say?
**Romans 6:2 **By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
So this fear that preaching salvation and a lack of perpetual torment is a fallacy, if a person willfully sins after hearing the good news believing that they are saved from those consequences, they are going to have a hell of a time of it since that is where they will go as a result of it because the wages of sin is death. There is no more sacrifice for sins left, He died once and for all and for those who trampled upon the blood of Christ in such manner will suffer severe loss, and everything they built in their life will be destroyed they will be hurt in the Second Death.
So tell me, how did one self-determine that everything they built will be destroyed? How much power does your freedom of will actually have to prevent Second Death from coming yourself? You cannot save yourself unless there was already a hand reaching out to save you in the first place, a hand that was coming for you when you were still powerless and your choice had no play in it.
So now it should be noted, One died for all, therefore all are considered dead on His account. Therefore there is only one foundation upon which everyone builds their life upon (whether they know it or not), and that foundation is? Jesus Christ. Becareful how you build upon it, because based on your choice on what to build, will what you build be saved or lost. A field that produces a harvest will be blessed but the field that produces thorns will have the thorns burned and the field cleansed by fire. Which do you choose?
I am speaking on things that accompany salvation.
So are you saying that while we do not have any control over our salvation (i.e. God will save all), we have the power to ‘unsave’ ourselves, after being initially saved?
The salvation from the corruption of the world through knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is not the promise of reconciliation in which all men are saved by the blood of Jesus and His Resurrection to life which will bridges the gap between man and God while we were still sinners. This difference continues to get blurred because we were all taught incorrectly the doctrines of Augustine Self-determination who reduced everything to being saved and not saved.
So, the promise of reconciliation is already complete, God is not counting men sins against them. This is not a choice, you cannot sin yourself out of having your sins not counted against you! However, should you continuing to live a life of sin, being entangled in the corruption of the world, you will not be saved the consequences of such action. Your salvation from the corrupt world is your choice.
These are fallacies of oversimplification. People begin to compare apples to oranges and oranges to apples, not realizing the dish is an apple-orange salad.
2 Peter 2:20
If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.
Hebrews 10:28-31, 35-38
Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 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? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.”
2 Corinthians 5:9-10, 14-15
So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
The choice is, do you live for Him who died for us and was raised again? Or do you live for yourself and suffer through destruction? Build worldly treasures which will rust, rot and be stolen; or build heavenly treasures which will never perish. Build rightly upon the foundation or build poorly upon the foundation so that when the Day of Light appears, we either have reward or suffer loss.
We are not saved from suffering loss and destruction if we turn from God, but we have been reconciled in God and should we suffer loss, we will be dealt with by God as Children not as strangers, the true essence of our Salvation is who we are.
Craig.
I agree with God reconciling the world back to him through Jesus. That is a fact. I also agree that sin has been put away and is not counted against anyone. ( Already judged in Jesus). But… You have a choice. God, by grace, has provided everything. But if you don’t believe, you won’t receive.
BA,
- What exactly must one believe?
- Why is this necessary?
- What is accomplished when one believes?
- Is believing required to satisfy God’s requirement or does it provide some benefit to the believer?
Todd
Hey Todd.
- Believe what Jesus has done through his death, burial, and resurrection.
- To become born again. Without being regenerated you are still spiritually dead and will not see heaven.
- You are born again or born from above…you go through a death and regeneration process with in your spirit. The sin nature, what the bible calls “old man” is crucified in Christ. The believer is baptized into Christ’s death and then made alive to new life by the “last Adam”.
- The benefit it gives the believer is being set free from the dominion of sin and spiritual death.
Just acknowledge it as fact? That’s it?
How does this make you regenerated?
Is this instantaneous, or is it a growing process?
The believer no longer sins?
Todd
Todd.
- Believe from your heart.
- When you believe the Holy Spirit regenerates your spirit by taking the spirit of sin and death out and replacing it with the spirit of life in Christ. In other words the very nature of God was imparted in your spirit.
- being born again is instantaneous going from death to life is right now.
- Yes, the believer can and does sin, but sin no longer has dominion over him.
Here is how I would present it and how I differ from BA, for those of you who think we are the same simply because I have been defending him (and he needs to be defended because he is asking very good questions):
- Believe from your heart: Necessary, no matter if it happens now or after death. Why wait until after death, when the only SURE way is here on earth based on the warnings of Jesus Christ.
- Here I disagree with BA. I believe Regeneration comes before faith and is what allows one to even be able to have faith in the first place.
- Sin and death have been defeated at the cross. Acceptance of this gift allows one to be in Christ. We were justified at the cross whether we accept Christ or not. How the afterlife works for those who have not accepted their justification is something that hinges on the freedom of God and is not revealed to man.
- I agree with BA here.
rainzbow.
Charles Spurgeon was a Calvinist but he did not believe regeneration came before faith. His comments of being born again before faith:" If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him, and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate. Am I only to preach faith to those who have it? Absurd, indeed! Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine? This is preaching Christ to the righteous and not to sinners."
Thoughts?
Well, I’m not particularly in love with Spurgeon, but I think what he is saying is that preaching, hearing the word, comes before regeneration (although regeneration was a given [meaing: it will happen no matter what, likely through the hearing of the word] since before time according to Spurgeon’s views [not my views]) and once one is regenerated, one is able to have faith. Then, comes sanctification. That’s how I’m reading that quote.
BA,
What you have described sounds like the Baptist doctrine I grew up believing. I have modified my views since then.
While it is true that one is born (or reborn) in an instant, it is also true that one is born a babe and must grow into maturity. Secondly, sin’s domination over someone is defeated as he yields his members to the Spirit’s leadership. The transformation that takes place through the renewing of your mind takes time as one matures as a follower of Christ. Thirdly, one can indeed fall back if he allows fleshly lusts and other addictions to divert his focus away from the Spirit; “he who sows to the flesh, will of the flesh reap corruption.”
Believing is not done to satisfy God, but to initiate a change in one’s heart. Once one believes, he can then persue repentance and discipleship which will bring renewal and abundant life in Christ.
Todd
Todd.
It’s biblical doctrine, not Baptist doctrine. Your talking about sanctification…which is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ. Believing is required to have a born again spirit. Everyone is spiritually dead…Everyone needs a regenerated spirit. Without believing you will not have this reborn spirit and will die spiritually dead and separated from God.
Believing takes you from spiritual death to spiritual life in your spirit.
This is Born Again. I had to register again because of some problems with my password.
P.S. Read my Topic : “Aaron and Sonia please read” under biblical theology.
You know. I tend to agree with you here (except on technicalities and [somewhat] the order of events as we’ve discussed in part on this thread), and yet, I want to stress that just because someone doesn’t know how they are saved, doesn’t mean they aren’t saved. For example, Catholics treat justification and santification as essentially the same thing, and believe it is a lifelong process. This isn’t very Biblical as I see it. They don’t conceptionalize being ‘born again’ as you do. But, some Catholics do have a true relationship with Jesus and aren’t worried about their salvation if they miss the Eucharist or if they have some mortal sin on their heart when they die. They have faith, and are saved by grace through that faith though they would never be able to explain their salvation narrative as being born again and they wouldn’t likely seperate justification and santification into two seperate concepts. On the other hand, thinking about these things CAN cause serious error, like believing you are saved because a piece of bread takes away your sins (an obvious distortion of Catholic thought, closer to how protestants think Catholics think rather than how Catholics actually think) , however, I think such grevious error is rare. After all, Jesus Christ seemed to have plenty of disdain for legalists.