[quote]MBH wrote:
[quote]honest_lifter wrote:
[quote]MBH wrote:
[quote]honest_lifter wrote:
MBH, you are correct. If we reject the sacrifice of the Christ, then there is no sacrifice left. I think your reason is sound it a lot of areas.
The part that I would have to disagree with you in what you said is that you are automatically (adding that word, inference i guess, correct me if i am wrong) forgiven for committing such acts as fornication, homosexuality, and other things listed at such places as 1 Cor 6:9,10.
I do believe that you CAN be forgiven those things, but it requires that we repent, which would include turning away from those things. We can’t just blatantly disobey the commands spelled out for us in the scripture and just expect forgiveness.[/quote]
“Automatically” isn’t a bad way to put it. Totally, completely, and unconditionally are other good descriptions. To say you don’t have total forgiveness, and that you have to do more to get forgiven, is to say that Jesus’ sacrifice was not sufficient, and is what the writer of Hebrews is saying is equivalent to insulting the Spirit of Grace and treating as unholy the blood of the covenant that sanctified us.
When you say a person must repent and turn away from sins such as fornication, etc, I assume you are saying that person needs to rid themselves of these sins, to stop sinning; and if they don’t stop, they can’t be forgiven? I find no evidence of this in the scriptures.
Consider Hebrews 10:10 “By this will we have been made holy (some say sanctified) through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” You either believe that you are made holy by what Jesus has done for you, or the only other option you have is to find a way to make yourself holy and sanctified.
So, go ahead and give it your best shot. Do everything you can to get all the sin out of your life, but if you don’t, you are not holy. And if you never accomplish that you have no hope of entering into heaven.
Regarding 1 Cor 6:9,10 - you’ll see in the first verses of chapter 1 Paul is writing to “those who have been sanctified in Christ, saints by calling…” In 6:9,10 Paul is simply saying to the saints to act like who they are, not like who they once were. He is reminding them that fornicators, adulterers, idolaters, etc will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the people he is writing to are not fornicators, adulterers, etc.
They are born again children of God with a new identity given to them by Christ, not an identity based on their behavior. In verse 11 he says “And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of God.”
Forgiveness made salvation possible. Salvation is the restoration of the life of God that had been lost in Adam. And the life that we receive will remain with us eternally because there is no sin left that will cause that life to leave (because the wages of sin is death, Rom 6:23). Salvation is because of God’s grace and mercy, not because of what we have done or have not done.
This is important because without understanding this a person is not going to believe that the work of God was truly complete on the cross, but that when He died for our sins and rose from the dead there were still a few things left undone, and that is what they now have to do. It now depends on them.
You have to decide. Is what He did on the cross adequate, or do I need to do more? And if you need to do a little more, let me ask, how will you ever know when you’ve done enough? What is a little more? How are you ever going to know? The answer is never, until you go before the Lord and He will tell you if He considers what you did or did not do, and whether it is acceptable or not.
But, between now and then it is all up to you; just keep doing the best you can and hope for the best. That is a very sad way of living. Because at no time will you ever be able to be at peace with your God. You’ll never be able to live in a state of rest with your God; never experience rest and peace in your heart.
I sincerely believe that when He died on the cross, He died for the sins of the world, and so He no longer holds any of our sins against us. And if He no longer holds any of our sins against us, then it is true that regardless of what we do or don’t do, our justification still stands on the basis of what He did.[/quote]
Matthew 6:14,15 - (the model prayer)
"For if YOU forgive men their trespasses, YOUR heavenly Father will also forgive YOU; 15Ã???Ã?? whereas if YOU do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will YOUR Father forgive YOUR trespasses. [/quote]
It’s important to remember that when Jesus was talking about this prayer to His disciples, they were still living under the old covenant–under the law. He hadn’t yet gone to the cross to initiate the new covenant and was still teaching under the old. The new covenant didn’t go into effect until Jesus died, fulfilling the old. “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Under the old covenant, forgiveness from God was conditional, based on our forgiveness of other people. But after the cross, under the new covenant, Paul tells us in Colossians 3:13, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Paul repeats this important truth on forgiveness in Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ God forgave you.” Under the old covenant, a person forgave in order to receive forgiveness. Under the new, we forgive because we are forgiven–a new and different motivation of the heart altogether.
As a sidebar on this topic - If I’m clothed with the imputed righteousness of Christ and am standing not in my righteousness but His, why would I be asking Him to cleanse me of unrighteousness? It does not make sense to do that, does it?
[quote]
1 John 5:5-8
5Ã???Ã?? And this is the message which we have heard from him and are announcing to YOU, that God is light and there is no darkness at all in union with him. 6Ã???Ã?? If we make the statement: “We are having a sharing with him,” and yet we go on walking in the darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. 7Ã???Ã??
However, if we are walking in the light as he himself is in the light, we do have a sharing with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
88Ã???Ã?? If we make the statement: “We have no sin,” we are misleading ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9Ã???Ã?? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous so as to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10Ã???Ã?? If we make the statement: “We have not sinned,” we are making him a liar, and his word is not in us.[/quote]
The passage you quoted is 1 John 1:5-10, not 5:5-8. Regarding 1 John 1:5-10: Reading 1 John in context, we see that it’s addressing the lost, not the believer. At the time John wrote this letter, about A.D. 90, a heretical group known as the Gnostics had infiltrated the Christian assemblies. The Gnostics believed that all matter is evil, that only spirit is good. Therefore Jesus couldn’t have come in the flesh, because flesh is matter. So they concluded that Jesus was an illusion.
John was addressing this issue in his first letter. Notice how it begins in verse 1: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched–this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” He began the letter this way to dispel this Gnostic heresy that was making the rounds in the churches.
One other paramount teaching of the Gnostics was that man didn’t have a sin nature. And even if he did, it didn’t matter. John addresses this heresy in verses 8 and 10 of 1 John 1 - To the Gnostics John states, “If we [an editorial we] claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us…If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word has no place in us.” (1 John 1:8,10). In 1 John 1:9, the phrase, “if we confess our sins,” is classified as a third-class conditional clause, which means that the condition stated by the “if” clause is in question. John was not sure whether or not the Gnostics would agree with God concerning their sins and turn to Him for salvation. The Greek structure of this passage forces the following interpretation: “I don’t know if you are ever going to come to your senses or not and agree with God concerning your sins. But, if at anytime–today, tomorrow, or whenever–you should decide to turn to Him, God can be depended upon to have forgiven your sins and to have cleansed you of all unrighteousness.” Notice the past tense.
[quote]
1 cor 5:9-13
In my letter I wrote YOU to quit mixing in company with fornicators, 10Ã???Ã?? not [meaning] entirely with the fornicators of this world or the greedy persons and extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, YOU would actually have to get out of the world.
11Ã???Ã?? But now I am writing YOU to quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man. 12Ã???Ã?? For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Do YOU not judge those inside, 13Ã???Ã?? while God judges those outside? “Remove the wicked [man] from among yourselves.”[/quote]
I don’t see where the above verse applies to what we are discussing on the topic of forgiveness. Paul is telling them not to associate with wicked, immoral unbelievers that call themselves brothers and mix among the church; he tells them to remove them.
[quote]
Hebrews 10:26
26Ã???Ã?? For if we practice sin willfully after having received the accurate knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left.[/quote]
We discussed this one already. This passage is used by legalists to say that you can lose your salvation or that you can backslide. The reality is there is no backslider. There may be someone who has forgotten his total forgiveness and falls back to trust in his obedience to the law to gain God’s favor. In doing this he becomes sin-focused, instead of walking by faith. For example, someone says, “I’ve backslidden. I’ve started sinning all over again.” The reality is he never stopped sinning. Sin, in the Bible, is unbelief. That which is not of faith is sin. What was sin in the Garden of Eden? It wasn’t adultery–no one there to commit it with. There was nothing to steal. Sin in the garden is the same sin that exists throughout the Bible: unbelief. As we’ve discussed, this verse is saying that if we deliberately keep living in unbelief after we’ve received the knowledge of the truth of the finality of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, there is no sacrifice for sins left. If you don’t believe in Jesus’ one and final sacrifice, there is no other sacrifice available to you to take away your sins.
[quote]
What do these scriptures show to you? To me, I can’t read these scriptures and just assume that no mater what we do we are automatically forgiven. These all say action is required. The sacrifice is there, but it is applied to those who meet the requirements set out by God.[/quote]
You say “action is required”. Can you give more specifics on the action you are referring to? What specific requirements must we meet?
As I see it, the only action required is to believe, be born again of the Spirit, and become a child of God. John 1:12 “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
As a child of God, you have an inheritance . It is described in the new covenant. In the old covenant we were under the law. It was like a contract. If you do certain things you are blessed; if you don’t you are cursed. The new covenant is not a contract, it is a will (Heb 9:16-17, Heb 10:10). Under the new covenant He remembers our sins no more, and there is no longer any sacrifice for sins (Heb 8:12, Heb 10:17-18). If you are not a born again child of God you remain under the law and under the wrath of the law; you remain dead (Rom 6:23).
We are to be messengers of the new covenant of grace, not the old covenant of the law (2 Cor 3:6-11, 2 Cor 5:17-19). Under grace we are changed from the inside out, and it is grace that teaches us to say no to ungodliness (Titus 2:11-14). By contrast, the law stirs up sin, and the power of sin is in the law (1 Cor 15:56, Rom 7:5,8, Col 2:20-23). If you want to encourage someone to sin more, then just point your finger at them and tell them they better stop sinnin’ or else they will not be allowed in God’s kingdom.
So, you are saying that these people became sanctified because of their own self effort by overcoming these sins and not practicing them any longer? If that is the case these must be some very holy people that don’t need God; they’ve made themselves holy without Him.
Oh, they’re not perfect? Well, how are they going to get into heaven not being perfect? It only takes one sin and you die. I’m afraid perfection is necessary. Any idea where they can go to be made perfect? (Hint: Heb 10:14 “Because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are the holy ones.”)
Are you saying these specific sins mentioned are treated differently by God than other sins?
It sounds like if I can work hard enough on certain sins I might need only about 70% of Jesus and the other 30% I can handle on my own. Heck, if I get really good maybe I won’t need any of Jesus. Okay, God, watch my smoke…
Do you not understand that “by observing the law no one will be justified” (Gal 2:16) and “if righteousness could be gained through obedience to the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 2:21) ??[/quote]
I do not agree with your reasoning personally, but if it suits you and you are happy, that is what matters to each individual.
Again, to me, we need to live according to what God requires of us. We can’t do what ever we want and believe in God and Jesus’ sacrifice, and everything is fine. To me that doesn’t even seem logical with the scriptures quoted so far.