Can one be saved (end up in heaven) if one does not believe in the divinity of Jesus?

[Fastfredy0]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

 

[electedbyHim]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

Christ's divinity might be essential

I believe Christ's divinity is essential, based on 1 John 5:1.

 

[Free]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

I believe it is essential, although a person can be saved without that knowledge, it’s just that at some point they must come to believe it; a truly saved person will come to believe it. A person can’t be knowledgeable about the issues and arguing against his deity and be saved. That puts them outside of Scripture with belief in an unbiblical Jesus.

 

[Hopeful 2]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

Define divinity.

"Definitions of divinity. any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force. synonyms: deity, god, immortal."
I think anyone who does not believe that Jesus should be worshipped, is in a lot of trouble.

​

 

[Follower Of Christ]

I am surprised this question even came up. This is my answer though:

1 John 2:23 "No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also"

John 14:26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."

So deny the divinity of the Son and you deny the divinity of the Father. Deny the divinity of the Father and for sure the Holy Spirit shall not indwell in you for the Father shall not send it your way. Hence one is not saved as a byproduct.

I hope this helps! Believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ is essential. Like Peter, we must be steady in our belief that Jesus is the Son of the living God in order to attain salvation and become a living stone.

I pray this thread stops here at this post. Anyone that doubts my answer first needs to reopen his bible and get back to the basics of this faith. As Jerome (not Jerry Seinfeld) said: "When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us"

Again, I am surprised this question even came up.

 

[reddogs]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

Christ tells us belief in whom He is is important and we see it..

Matthew 16:16
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Mark 16:16
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

 

[Who Me]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

"Can one be saved (end up in heaven) if one does not believe in the divinity of Jesus?"

I think it depends on what one believes and ones capacity for rational thought.
Children are taught that Jesus saves, that one needs faith in Jesus. That he is the Son of God is very much a secondary issue to children.

So a child might trust in Jesusfor salvation, without understanding he is the Son of God. I find it hard to believe that an adult would not understand this aspect of Jesus.

 

[Vinny37]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

[Can one be saved (end up in heaven) if one does not believe in the divinity of Jesus?]

IMO, emphatically Yes. I’m unsure whether I believe in the divinity of Jesus, though I now believe he is deific but neither God nor God the son, but God the son as a human being, and I believe in the divinity of angels. With John Wesley and William Cowper, I hold to Wider Hope. To quote a song, “Ten thousand sages lost in endless woe, for ignorance of what they could not know?” God sees the hearts of each human being, and sees whether they desire to everlastingly be with him or away from him. Love welcomes, it does not force.

I disagree the premise that our faith (if defined as knowledge belief) has any essential connection to eternal life beyond death: it is welcome or unwelcome of deity which is the decider. I agree the premise that faith (if defined as knowledge welcome-belief in messiah: Jhn.1:12) has an essential connection to eternal life before death. The term ‘eternal’ can mean a quality of God’s life in Christian life, as well as a quantity, viz unendingness, of life.

 

[locust]

saved does not mean you's is going to heaven . the saved are the ones that continue to live

 

[Whatever]

I kind of agree with Vinny37. I'm not even sure that the Disciples understood this half the time.

Nicodemus:
John 3:2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

He didn't see Jesus as Divine, just as a teacher like Moses. But that was at the beginning.

Do exceptions count for most people? In other words, there are a lot of Down syndrome and other intellectual disability cases. These are usually very happy and easy going people. You can tell them about Jesus and even tell them that He is God or Divine, but do they really understand that.

Somebody mentioned:
1 John 2:23 "No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also"

Jehovah's Witnesses don't deny Jesus, they say He is God's son (but still a created angel). So, when John said the above, did he mean by "deny the Son," deny His Deity" or just deny Jesus as the promised Messiah? All through Israel's history, did any of them think the Messiah would be God Himself coming in the flesh?

Way back in Deuteronomy 18 God promised He would send them a prophet like Moses.
Stephen reminded them of this and told them that prophet was Jesus.
Act 7:37 "This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, 'THE LORD YOUR GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN. HIM YOU SHALL HEAR.'

Prophet like me. Moses wasn't divine. I'm not arguing that Jesus isn't the second person of the Trinity, but how much IQ does a person have to have to really understand this?

 

[Fastfredy0]

saved does not mean you's is going to heaven . the saved are the ones that continue to live

Everyone continues to live eternally, be it in hell or heaven.

 

[Fastfredy0]

Christ tells us belief in whom He is is important and we see it..

agreed .. but that does not answer the question.

 

[Tenchi]

Your eternal life is determined by the content of your faith and Christ's divinity might be essential ... or maybe not.

My salvation is not dependent upon the quantity or quality of my faith, its depth or breadth, or the greatness of its sincerity, but upon its Object, Jesus Christ, the Savior. Consider the man with the demon-possessed child:

Mark 9:21-27
21 And He asked his father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood.
22 "It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!"
23 And Jesus said to him, " 'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes."
24 Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, "I do believe; help my unbelief."
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, "You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again."
26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, "He is dead!"
27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up.

Did the doubting father's frail belief keep Jesus from saving his boy? No. It wasn't the greatness of the belief of the father that was key to the rescue of his child but in whom the father was placing what little faith he had.

It is essential, though, that the one coming to Christ for salvation understands who Christ is: God incarnate. Only an infinite and perfect sacrifice for sins - both essential characteristics of deity - could expiate sin once for all, as the Bible says Jesus did (Romans 6:10; Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10; 1 Peter 3:18). If Jesus was not God-in-the-flesh, as Scripture says he was (Titus 2:13; Colossians 1:15, 19, 2:9; John 1:1; Matthew 1:23), he was just a man and unable, then, to be a sufficient propitiation for our sins.

But Scripture says he was just such a propitiation:

1 John 4:10
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 2:1-2
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

Hebrews 7:24-27
24 but Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently.
25 Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
26 For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;
27 who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

Here, the writer of Hebrews points out the two essential elements of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus for sin:

- He continues forever (Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, having no beginning nor end).
- He is holy, innocent and undefiled, he is sinlessly perfect, needing not to make sacrifice for his own sins.

These characteristics are unique to deity, to the fundamental nature of God, which is why Jesus set aside his heavenly glory (Philippians 2:5-10), not holding tightly to his equality with God (Philippians 2:6), and became "sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He alone, as the God-Man, could satisfy the holy demand of God's justice.

 

[Fastfredy0]

My salvation is not dependent upon the quantity or quality of my faith

So, you believe you can be saved if you have no faith; which is to say there is no quantity or quality or sincerity.

Did the doubting father's frail belief keep Jesus from saving his boy? No.

Agreed. But you said above that the father's faith required no quality, quantity or sincerity. This is the not case per the scripture you quoted which says the father said: ""I do believe; help my unbelief." The father had some quantity and therefore quality of belief. Jesus in your bible reference says: All things are possible to him who believes. Again, this does not align with your statement that no quality, quantity or sincerity is required.

 

[Follower Of Christ]

From Zechariah 12:1,10 "The oracle of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus declares the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn."

That settles the question of whether Christ was God or not. If you still think Christ is not God then you have to go back to the basics of your faith.

Next, what is heaven? Heaven for mortals is the coming Kingdom of God on Earth. We die, we go to sleep and at the last trump from Revelation the faithful in Christ are resurrected. From 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16 "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord."

The saved shall live forever. However the damned shall be destroyed and shall stop existing at judgement day.

Tenchi is right. Prior to Christ being crucified and resurrected, God poured His Spirit upon his faithful and saved whom he pleased. But for us living in times after the resurrection believing in the divinity of Christ is essential to salvation.

Romans 1:18-23 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

 

[Whatever]

Everyone continues to live eternally, be it in hell or heaven.

I think it would be more correct to say "everyone continues to exist eternally, only those with Jesus really live eternal life.

John_17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

 

[electedbyHim]

[Can one be saved (end up in heaven) if one does not believe in the divinity of Jesus?]

IMO, emphatically Yes. I’m unsure whether I believe in the divinity of Jesus, though I now believe he is deific but neither God nor God the son, but God the son as a human being, and I believe in the divinity of angels. With John Wesley and William Cowper, I hold to Wider Hope. To quote a song, “Ten thousand sages lost in endless woe, for ignorance of what they could not know?” God sees the hearts of each human being, and sees whether they desire to everlastingly be with him or away from him. Love welcomes, it does not force.

I disagree the premise that our faith (if defined as knowledge belief) has any essential connection to eternal life beyond death: it is welcome or unwelcome of deity which is the decider. I agree the premise that faith (if defined as knowledge welcome-belief in messiah: Jhn.1:12) has an essential connection to eternal life before death. The term ‘eternal’ can mean a quality of God’s life in Christian life, as well as a quantity, viz unendingness, of life.

I believe in the divinity of angels.

Do you have Scripture for this?

I know many people will use Hebrews1:14, but that has nothing to do with divinity.

 

[Follower Of Christ]

Proverbs 14:12 "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death."

1 John 5:16 "There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that"

 

[Tenchi]

So, you believe you can be saved if you have no faith; which is to say there is no quantity or quality or sincerity.

??? How this question arises from what I wrote I don't know. Really, this question seems like a Strawman, a purposeful and silly misrepresentation of what I wrote, given in the form of a question, that you can easily knock down. Please read my post more carefully. The answer to your question is already given in it.

But you said above that the father's faith required no quality, quantity or sincerity.

No, I didn't. This is your over-statement of my words. Please re-read my post more carefully. It is patently silly to say that no faith whatever is required to be saved. And so, I didn't ever say such a thing.

 

[Fastfredy0]

No, I didn't. This is your over-statement of my words. Please re-read my post more carefully

Apparently a misunderstanding. So you do believe there must be a some degree quality, quantity and sincerity in faith in order to be saved (born again)?