Everyone is undeserving of God's love. This is what workers for salvation can't wrap their mind around. Their pride is a barrier in this regard as they feel like they deserve something from God. He owes us nothing.
This is why GRACE is such an amazing thing. You can't comprehend the depths of God's grace until you realize that nothing you can do would ever merit it.
I once held more of a Christ does everything approach to faith.
The problem I have is the jump between how we are now into the blameless, holy,
Christ like state at some point in the future.
The model which is gnostic, is just a dualistic view of the flesh.
The idea of total inability seems to come from gnostic ideas and has no foundation
in scripture. The best argument put forward was sex was original sin and impossible
to resolve.
So the next issue was what does stop us gaining communion with Christ? Maybe what
is before is reality, we just assume it is a problem so do not walk in it.
So then I ask myself what is purity, what does it mean to purify the heart.
Paul describes both our effort and the Lord purifying us. So it is a combination effort,
a relationship with a dawning of light in our hearts.
So if people assume people who take positions all have the same issues and hangups
they are mistaken. And my brothers and sisters in Christ, without attaining to the
gifts of grace, all the theology in the world means nothing. I spent years knowing God
loved me deep in my heart, yet I still had barriers that had to be broken down which
through expressing love to my wife, finding who I was, getting pushed to my limits,
I changed.
We are different than we think we are, and to walk by exercising faith changes us.
Now I am here to share this as part of my walk of faith, not because I am proving
anything but as an act of service and love to you all. Christ died that we might
be free from sin, no longer bound to it, and to walk in the Spirit, in truth and reality.
But until you see disbelief has often clouded the words of Paul, and taken away
its power and profound meaning. Paul says he gained righteousness through Christ,
he means a righteous holy walk, which is impossible without Christ and the Holy Spirit.
But do you have the faith to see this, or does disbelief still shroud your mind and
heart?