SALVATION ,FORGIVENESS AND WORKS QUESTION
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If someone goes from having no faith to having faith in the gospel then it's repentance. Faith/repentance are two sides of the same coin. It is fundamentally a change of mind to repent and so is having faith.
Correct. Isn't going from not having faith to having faith a change of mind? Does someone go from being ignorant, or disinterested, or rebellious to now accepting the gospel when they change their mind? It's a change of mind to repent. It's a change of mind to have faith.
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KT88
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Good question.
But do we have to forgive someone who hasn't asked for forgiveness from us?
i agree
Faith without works is dead.
True faith results in works. it is not the works that saves us it is the faith. Faith inspires us and grows in us and their can not be a faithful heart that has unfaithful action. out of the heart the mouth speaks, out of the heart the actions come. If we love someone it is shown in our actions.
If we have no works it is because we have not experienced the change that faith brings.
To be saved, you need to want to be saved from your sins. If you don't want to be, or in bible language it is called repentant, then you can have that. To want to be saved is wrongly called a work by people who work against the Lord.
When Matthew wrote that Jesus started His ministry he said it was a ministry teaching repentance. Matthew 3:2 From that time Jesus began to preach to say, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
It is wrong to try to separate Jesus and repentance.
I believe people are response - able . Able to respond to the Gospel. Like the Jailer in Acts 16 . Yes he wanted to know how to be saved . And look how simple the answer is .
31¶And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
The question is how can you believe in the Lord and not believe in what He teaches? I don't see why that simply wanting to be forgiven of our sins and be free of them is such a to do and big deal. Do people think they can ask the Lord to let them sin, just forgive them for it? The Lord is very simply asking people to want to be righteous and accept the righteousness that is freely given them as a gift. Yet that very simple thing has post after post objecting in one way or the other.
A person has to believe what Jesus accomplished of the cross , burial and resurrection . Its what Jesus did that saves not what we will do . We may do stuff afterwards . We should . But it doesn't change what Jesus did . Its what Jesus accomplished. A person has to believe THAT to be saved.
Of course, we all agree to that. We don't have the power to forgive ourselves of our sin and make ourselves righteous, only Christ has this power.
What the halabaloo is all about is our will. Do we need to want to be free of our sin? So many posts say you can want to keep your sin and still be forgiven of it. That is what they are complaining so about.
I m not convinced that you've taken stock of what Jesus is saying , when he says it and who he says it to . The 'when ' he says things the ' who ' he is speaking to is critical . A lot of bible readers tend to place them selves into the audience and time frame of when Jesus speaks . They miss the context and mis appropriate what he is saying .
You seem to believe, and correct me if I'm wrong , that this forgiveness and making people righteous is a process ?
I truly believe that God is an eternal God and does not change. Every scripture is literally true, and every scripture has a spiritual truth. There are even deeper meanings in scripture so when we read it again and again, each time the holy spirit uses those words to open our hearts and minds to meanings we didn't see before.
This, it seems to me, is what we must do as we read scripture. It is very good to know what the words meant to the men who used those words to tell us what they heard from the Lord, so in that sense context, the audience, and time must be understood.
Process? What a strange word to use for scripture truth.
Hello Throughfaith, the new birth is a part of the adoption process.
Ephesians 1
4 He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love
5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Wait? What
V23 is not the only place that our adoption as God's children is talked about in the Bible (obviously). In fact, let's take a look at another one of the passages that talks about our adoption (the preceding passage in Romans 8) to see what it has to say.Romans 8
12 So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—
13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are ~sons of God~.
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that ~we are~ children of God,
17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
Just like we are saved from the moment that we first believe .. e.g. John 5:24, we also become God's own sons and daughters by adoption at that very same moment. This is why, from that moment on, the Bible declares that "we are (present tense), the sons of God", that we are now able to "we cry out" (present tense) to God as our "Abba! Father!", and why the "Spirit Himself testifies (present tense) that we are (present tense) the children of God" (see again Romans 8:12-17 above).
This however, is simply the beginning of the story, not the end of it (for both our salvation and our adoption). For that we need to move ahead to the next passage in Romans 8, specifically to v23.
One of my commentaries on Romans has this to say (in part) about v23 and adoption (all of my commentaries come to the same basic conclusions, just FYI).
The “adoption” that we are said already to possess (Romans 8:14-17), is here made the object of our hope ( in v23). Christians, at the moment of justification, are adopted into God’s family; but this adoption is incomplete and partial until we are finally made like the Son of God himself (v. 29). This final element in our adoption is “the redemption of our bodies.” “Redemption” shares with “adoption” the (Pauline) “already-not yet” tension that pervades his theology, for the redemption can be pictured both as past and as future.
~Deut
Thanks for this post.Hello Throughfaith, the new birth is a part of the adoption process.
Ephesians 14 He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Wait? What
Romans 812 So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are ~sons of God~.15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that ~we are~ children of God,17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
Just like we are saved from the moment that we first believe .. e.g. John 5:24, we also become God's own sons and daughters by adoption at that very same moment. This is why, from that moment on, the Bible declares that "we are (present tense), the sons of God", that we are now able to "we cry out" (present tense) to God as our "Abba! Father!", and why the "Spirit Himself testifies (present tense) that we are (present tense) the children of God" (see again Romans 8:12-17 above).
This however, is simply the beginning of the story, not the end of it (for both our salvation and our adoption). For that we need to move ahead to the next passage in Romans 8, specifically to v23.
One of my commentaries on Romans has this to say (in part) about v23 and adoption (all of my commentaries come to the same basic conclusions, just FYI).
The “adoption” that we are said already to possess (Romans 8:14-17), is here made the object of our hope ( in v23). Christians, at the moment of justification, are adopted into God’s family; but this adoption is incomplete and partial until we are finally made like the Son of God himself (v. 29). This final element in our adoption is “the redemption of our bodies.” “Redemption” shares with “adoption” the (Pauline) “already-not yet” tension that pervades his theology, for the redemption can be pictured both as past and as future.
~Deut
All scripture is related, isn't it? We have one God with one message not separate messages that are not related to each other. Christ is the center of all scripture. All scripture relates to God's plan for our salvation, it is the heart of God.
That's certainly an interesting conclusion to come to, but it has several problems.
First and foremost is the fact that the OT doesn't mention God as "Our Father", so the Jews of the 1st Century (and earlier) would have had little to no sense of Him as such.
Also, the Lord was speaking to a large group of His followers when He gave them this example of prayer to use, thus necessitating His use of the plural, "our"/"you"/"your", etc., in His teaching in Matthew 6 (the "Lord's Prayer" is meant as a model for both corporate AND individual prayer, but I believe that it was principally given for individuals to use).
Within the prayer He instructed us to pray for His Father's continued provision of our personal and daily needs (e.g. "give us this day our daily bread",) as well for the forgiveness of our sins, and why we, as individuals, should not expect the ongoing forgiveness of our sins against Him if/when we refuse to forgive others of their sins against us ("forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" .. see too Matthew 18:35).
As an aide to this discussion, here's the Lord's prayer from Matthew's Gospel (with the 2 qualifying verses that follow it).
Matthew 6
9 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Sadly, that is an incorrect conjecture on your part. The folks at GotQuestions.org seem to generate their answers from the Bible (not from one systematic theology or another) and because they do, they provide us with a great/basic/introductory resource for Bible-based answers to our theological/religious questions online.
For what it's worth, here's what GotQuestions.org thinks about Arminianism and Calvinism (I will also include the last paragraph from the video below it for anyone who is interested, as they state which "systematic theology" they believe to be the correct one in that paragraph).
So, in the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate, who is correct? It is interesting to note that in the diversity of the body of Christ, there are all sorts of mixtures of Calvinism and Arminianism. There are five-point Calvinists and five-point Arminians, and at the same time three-point Calvinists and two-point Arminians. Many believers arrive at some sort of mixture of the two views. Ultimately, it is our view that both systems fail in that they attempt to explain the unexplainable. Human beings are incapable of fully grasping a concept such as this. Yes, God is absolutely sovereign and knows all. Yes, human beings are called to make a genuine decision to place faith in Christ unto salvation. These two facts seem contradictory to us, but in the mind of God they make perfect sense.[/quote]
Granted, what they teach does not support the systematic theology that you've created for yourself, Througfaith (which seems to be a kind of Antinomian/Pelagian "sandwich" of sorts .. perhaps we should refer to it as, "Throughfaithism", from now on 
), but that hardly makes what they are teaching incorrect (at least, not generally speaking, anyway).~Deut