Elin,It is Shameful how you twist the obvious truth.
Thanks, Hoffco, but for your statement to have merit, you must show what I twisted, and how.
Rom. one is talking of the POWER of GOD"S GRACE that gives spiritual life
Actually, the g
rammatical construction of Ro 1:5 is not about giving spiritual life, but is about
Paul and the ministers of the gospel
receiving grace and apostleship to call Gentiles
to the obedience of
faith.
Ro 1:5-6 - "We received grace and
apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles
to the
obedience that comes
from faith. And you also are among
those who are called to belong
to Jesus Christ."
In order to agree with its contra-NT view, the Judaizer/Messianic playbook alters the grammatical
construction of the Greek, giving to the Gentiles (who don't even know the gospel) the grace and
apostleship "to call people," rather than giving the grace and apostleship to Paul, et al, as the text states.
And Ro 1:16-17 is talking about
righteousness from God (as apposed to from works of obedience),
and the remainder of chp 1 is talking about the
unrighteousness of the Gentiles,
followed in chp 2 by the
unrighteousness of the Jews,
and the
unrighteousness of all mankind in chap 3.
to a dead soul. All the sinner needs is to do, is to believe in God who has power to
awaken the dead soul, and ask,in faith, for the new heart
Our
soul is is not dead, for it is what animates (gives life to) our body.
However, our immortal
spirit is in
spiritual death; i.e., no Holy Spirit life.
But our spirit itself does
not die, it is
immortal. (
Heb 12:23),
as were the spirits of Lazarus, in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man, in Hades (Lk 16).
Rebirth/salvation takes place through
faith in Christ Jesus, which
removes sin and
guilt,
making one
guiltless and
right with God (
righteous).
Without the "Work of the law" by the Spirit in the sinners heart, there would never be a conversion, the new birth.
Either you seriously misunderstand, or you do not believe, the NT word of God which states otherwise.
All the law does is
condemn (Gal 3:10; Dt 27:26), because it cannot be kept satisfactorily.
It takes a lot of work to get a baby born. I had the joy of helping deliever two of my chilfren, my wife worked very hard, but the bady did not do a bit of work, but I bet, it was not very pleasent for them.
Yes, it takes God's
mighty resurrection power to raise our spirits from spiritual death to eternal life.
The pastor's today are so ignorant about the new birth, they don't know how to instruct the sinner how to get born of God.
The sinner has no more to do with his spiritual rebirth than does the baby with his natural birth.
In both cases, we are
totally acted
upon.
We can't
get born of God by a human decision:
"not born of human decision, but born of God."
(Jn 1:14).
It is not a legal transaction, it is a messy birth.
Resurrection of our spirits to eternal life, or spiritual rebirth, is not "messy,"
any more than Christ's resurrection was "messy."
That is messy human thinking.
But once God gives the newly created spirit to us,
Our spirit is
never newly created.
"Spiritual" death does
not mean our spirits are
mortal (can die), only that they have
no Holy Spirit life.
You have some
seriously faulty understanding of the revelation spoken
by the Son in these last days
(Heb 1:1-2) through the NT writers.
we feel it and cry out for forgiveness and cleansing from our guilt, and our guilt is washed away.
The new birth is by God's POWER, but justification is by God's AUTHORITY to forgive the sins.
That is a legal description of "guiltless;" i.e., forgiven by the authority of God, through faith,
not by works of obedience.
And God's POWER and AUTHORITY (dunastes, dunamis) are inseparably the same,
just as new birth, faith, justification/guiltless are inseparably the same.