Reconciled to God while enemies !
- Thread starter brightfame52
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What do you mean by "everything?" Jesus doesn't brush my teeth and comb my hair right? Jesus doesn't literally do everything. Right. So how is repenting any different?
Let me put it this way. What should we think if a person refuses to repent? What does that mean? What is wrong with the idea that our internal status has external manifestations?
A New Heart, a New spirit, the Spirit put in us, which equates to Salvation, thats the cause !
I agree completely that Jesus came to save His people from their sins and that our acceptance before God rests entirely on His life, death, and resurrection. Where I would nuance things a bit is this: the New Testament consistently describes justification as God counting believers ‘in the right’ because of Christ, not as a transfer of moral perfection. Christ’s obedience and sacrificial death are absolutely the basis of our salvation, but Paul frames justification in terms of God reckoning us righteous through faith, not in terms of a transaction of merits. So I affirm the same gospel realities—Christ’s sinless life, His atoning death, and God’s full forgiveness—while understanding the mechanics of justification the way Paul describes them: God graciously placing us in the right because we belong to Christ.
That is taken for granted. So no problem. Paul refers to the elect as "saints", or "holy ones" Those whom God sets aside to bless with salvation and a place in the kingdom of his son.
I meant everything pertaining to and required for salvation, He achieved perfectly on the behalf of those He had chosen to salvation. In that regard, there is nothing whatsoever remaining that is required of them to become saved - it was given as a completely free gift from God's exceeding mercy and grace, through Jesus Christ, Savior.
Those that He saves are given repentance as a free gift. True repentance is to cease from a trust in
our works for salvation, unto a trust and faith in Christ, and in Christ alone, as the Savior. All of the attributes associated with/to salvation, are from salvation and which are manifested as its byproducts. Only those who have not become saved will not repent. Christ alone is the Savior, man is not.
[Act 11:18 KJV] 18 When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.
[Rom 2:4 KJV] 4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
[2Ti 2:25 KJV] 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
Might become, not have become. Also the righteousness is in him, not in us, and most bibles translate it that way.
You reject Pauls teaching, and teach conditions/works. The elect shall be made righteous/just by the obedience of one [Jesus Christ] Rom 5:19
19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Thats Paul's Gospel
When someone brings up 2 Corinthians 5:21, they’re usually thinking of *δικαιοσύνη* as “moral righteousness,” but Paul often uses the word in a more specific, covenant‑forensic sense. The Greek term doesn’t always mean moral virtue; it can also mean the state of being declared in the right—what we might call “justifiedness” if English had such a word. In passages like 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Philippians 3:9, Paul is not talking about God transferring moral qualities to us but about God granting us a new status in Christ. I completely understand why this distinction isn’t always emphasized in Sunday sermons, but it helps make sense of Paul’s argument: Christ bears our sin so that we might receive His *δικαιοσύνη*—that is, His justified standing before God. It’s not about becoming morally perfect; it’s about being placed in the right relationship with God through Christ.
I appreciate the reference to 2 Corinthians 5:21. I think Paul is talking about our *status* before God rather than moral righteousness itself. The Greek word *δικαιοσύνη* can mean “justifiedness”—the state of being declared in the right. That nuance helps the passage make sense without forcing it into categories Paul isn’t using.
I just told you NOT to prooftext but to harmonize GW--in this case Ezek. 36:26-27 with the NT teaching re IF,
as in Acts 16:31, If you believe in the Lord JC, you will be saved.
If it were totally up to what God wants, everyone would have a new heart (1Tim. 2:3-4).
We are in Him. His righteousness is ours.
Might there just means made possible.
And "possible" = IF God's condition of saving faith is satisfied by the sinner's exercising MFW to cooperate with His Word.
I take that as a given.
This I don't understand because repentance is not something that can be given. Repentance is a response to a truth statement. As someone mentioned, repentance is changing one's mind. If someone tells me that I am a sinner in need of grace, I must repent in order to accept that claim to be true. That isn't something Christ can do for me. It is something I must do myself.
The biblical view is that I must be born from above before I can even *recognize* the existential truths about myself that God reveals. Jesus teaches that unless a person is born of the Spirit, he cannot “see” the kingdom — meaning he cannot perceive reality as God defines it. The new birth is not simply a moral reset; it is the awakening of the self to what is true: my need, my condition, my dependence, my calling, my reconciliation. Without this Spirit‑given life, I remain closed to the truth about who I am before God. With it, I gain the capacity to acknowledge my sin, receive God’s grace, and live in the “justifiedness” Paul describes — the state of being placed in the right through Christ’s reconciling work. In that sense, regeneration is what makes existential honesty possible; it opens the eyes of the heart so I can finally inhabit the truth God speaks over me.
The free gift is the Spirit of God and the enlightenment that comes with it. Repentance and belief follow from that gift. That's my point.
If I understand your point, I agree with you. But a complete picture of the gospel includes the truth that my behaviors flow from the kind of person I have become. Once I am born from above, I begin to believe God because that is the kind of person I now am. I repent because that is the kind of person I now am. I am no longer God’s enemy because the Spirit has made me into someone who can finally see, acknowledge, and live within the truth. In other words, my actions don’t create my identity; they express the new identity God has given me. The new birth gives rise to a new existence, and that new existence naturally shows itself in the way I live.
Agree, brightfame52. All I see in that verse is Christ's obedience, and from/by that obedience (alone), that many will be made righteous - with the emphasis on "made righteous". IOW, by Christ, and apart from and irrespective of their actions, He made them righteous.
You write alot that no one is discussing. We have been judicially declared righteous as a result of being placed into Christ. We are being made righteous by the ongoing work of God in us.