Join For His Glory for a discussion on how
https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
Read through the following study by Tenchi for more on this topic
https://christianforums.net/threads/without-the-holy-spirit-we-can-do-nothing.109419/
Join Sola Scriptura for a discussion on the subject
https://christianforums.net/threads/anointed-preaching-teaching.109331/#post-1912042
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Will note once more. Repenting or being sorry doesn't change the fact that we are sinners. Nor will responsibility or accountability change that fact either.
We might just have to come to the conclusion that we are sinners and that Jesus saves sinners.
We all have indeed sinned.
If we have indeed been born of God, then we are not sinners, but saints.
If a person who chooses to sin, and turn away from Christ, then they have gone back to being a sinner.
I agree with you. I think what the O.P. is saying is that if we're born again and love God we WILL obey His commandments. I think he's saying that there are consequences to NOT obeying them. He used the example of divorce. I like to use the example of smoking -whether or not one thinks it's a sin. It certainly isn't something God would want us to do. So if you don't smoke you have less of a chance of getting a lung disease, and if you do smoke, you have a great chance of getting a lung disease - which would make the evil one very happy.I think I should have said I don't agree with the OP. It's wrong, it's worded Wrong. The Ordinances have been abolished for the punishment sake. Thou shalt not commit adultery is worthy of However, Love is a law unto itself and does not commit adultery. I have no commandment but to love another. Now as a new believer I put no such burden as it's written whom much is given, much is required. Our soul was not born again, it needs transformed so there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.
"So you think you are saved" This is not the outward appearance of the acts of the flesh. You can't take laws to judge a person.
Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
(Isa 29:13 KJV)
Churches are filled with those who look great, but don't even know God. Their hearts are not with God, neither do they consider His path or His way.
The doctrine that God is mysterious is a Satanic poison. If you don't know God, then your left with a list to follow. If I am told to be somewhere and just get there late or not at all then it's time to repent. If I handle something OK, but not the best with all the Wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit available then it's time to repent. I have learned now not to move until I get direction.
Heb_8:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
You know God as a Father? Do you know God through the commandments and idea's of man?
Mike.
JLBWe all have indeed sinned.
If we have indeed been born of God, then we are not sinners, but saints.
If a person who chooses to sin, and turn away from Christ, then they have gone back to being a sinner.
If a person has answered FROM the way of truth, then then have returned to being a sinner, and are in need of turning back to the way of truth, or their soul will suffer death and be lost.
James 5:19-21
Number 1 is a question mark. God is very demanding, so by His standard I have had other gods.Wow! Thank you all for your participation in OUR thread. I say ours because your input is going to help build this very important topic for Christians today. Especially me and you.
Lets look again at the Scripture that is the springboard for this thread.
1Jn 5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
1Jn 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
Lets look at the Commandments of that Moses received from the our Heavenly Father, Jesus the Son of God and the blessed Holy Spirit. I mention all three because we will see a blending of these in Matthew Chapter 5 when Jesus once again gives us Commandments. Lets look at the famous 10 Commandments. I do not see anything to get all legalistic about. The Scribes and Pharisees of the Old Testament took these and made thousands of do and don't which legalism in the true sense of the word came about.
My main thrust of this thread is, these are the Commandments that we keep if we are truly born again because they are written in our hearts, we just need to adhere to them. Is there anything in these Commandments that you can't keep?
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
5.Honour thy father and thy mother
6.Thou shalt not kill
7.Thou shalt not commit adultery
8.Thou shalt not steal
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
10.Thou shalt not covet
To be continued....
I live by the dictates of Jesus in Matt. 4:4 and Luke 4:4 which says every Word of God is applicable to man and that includes ME. That's why I brought it up. Trying to toss away Gods Words on the basis of "who" they were delivered to doesn't and will not compute.
And your claim, which is not true btw, is that is ALL those Words of God mean and are intended for. I reject that claim on the basis I delineated prior. The Apostles never threw away Gods Words of the O.T. Not one single Word of God was eliminated by them.
Do temple writings of the O.T. shadow temple matters in the new? ABSOLUTELY.
I asked JLB a question and it got me to thinking.Will note once more. Repenting or being sorry doesn't change the fact that we are sinners. Nor will responsibility or accountability change that fact either.
We might just have to come to the conclusion that we are sinners and that Jesus saves sinners.
I would never disregard any of Gods word. I would be a fool to take away or add to as God gives warning on that, Rev 22:18, 19.
My whole point is to live by the greatest commandment of them all, which is love, Matthew 22:37-40, especially within the moral laws.
It's how God would expect us to act towards our neighbor no matter what they do against us. The OT is the foreshadow of Christ who came by the grace of God in the NT. The 613 laws God gave in the OT were given under the old covenant, 2Corinthians 3:14, but also came with a curse if not all 613 were followed.
God gave us a new covenant through Christ (grace), 2Corinthians 3:6, that we are no longer under the letter of the law for the letter kills,
I asked JLB a question and it got me to thinking.
I'm kind of sorry we have to be so careful with words, but it's all we've got.
Are we sinners
Or do we sin
You want to believe we're sinners.
This is true in the sense that we continue to sin so we're sinners.
But in the sense of what NATURE we have, we can no longer say we're SINNERS once we've come to know the Lord and wish to serve Him.
Then what happens is that we sin, but we are not sinners. Being a sinner is a matter of our nature. Our nature changes once we get to know Jesus. It's normal - we want to please Him and not sadden the Holy Spirit.
It's this idea: Do you steal because you're a thief OR Are you a thief because you steal.
If YOU'RE A THIEF that is a matter of nature. Your nature is to be a thief.
If I steal something you could call me a thief, but I'm not one by nature. I just happened to steal something.
I don't know if I'm going to be careful about this wording in the future, but this is how I understand it to be.
I repeat, Romans 12:2
Wondering
Agreed.I agree with you. I think what the O.P. is saying is that if we're born again and love God we WILL obey His commandments. I think he's saying that there are consequences to NOT obeying them. He used the example of divorce. I like to use the example of smoking -whether or not one thinks it's a sin. It certainly isn't something God would want us to do. So if you don't smoke you have less of a chance of getting a lung disease, and if you do smoke, you have a great chance of getting a lung disease - which would make the evil one very happy.
So, yes, of course it's a heart thing and we can't see people's hearts. BUT GOD CAN.
We can judge a persons actions - not their soul. Only God could know a person's heart and soul.
Your post reminded me of Jeremiah 31:33
One of my favorite scriptures.
In the colored sentence (my doing) you say you put no burden on the new believer because the more you know the more is required. I agree with this. God can only judge us by the light we have. Then you say you have no commandment but to love another. The most difficult one! And that one will cover for all the others.
Wondering
Sin indwells our flesh, always, as long as we are alive in it. Romans 7:17-20
Evil is present with us no differently than it was with Paul. Romans 7:21
No amount of fancy theological dancing is going to slide by these facts.
It doesn't take a genius to come to that conclusion.
Galatians 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin,
This conclusion does not change.
The conclusion is NOT confirmed by the action of sin then making us sinners. We are sinners, period, because sin indwells our flesh and evil is present with us. Act or no act on the outside. There is simply no getting around the conclusion.
We sure can if we want to be liars and hypocrites about it. There is no value in either posture.
What are we going to say? That we're moral lying hypocrites or legally obedient lying hypocrites?
I hope you see the dilemma of falling into these traps, and yes they are traps, purposefully set to show us how deceptive evil present and indwelling sin in our own hearts really is.
Indwelling sin and evil present has a mind of it's own. They are entirely beyond our control. Paul defined that the sin indwelling his flesh WAS NOT him. Twice no less just to emphasize the point in Romans 7:17-20. Did Paul have control over NOT him? No. It does what it does and it won't change what it does. Paul said clearly that "his flesh" served the LAW OF SIN. Romans 7:25. He described it as being a wretched man because of it who looked FORWARD to his eventual deliverance from this state. Romans 7:24/Phil. 3:21.
I understand that dilemma myself. I HATE the sin that indwells my own flesh and the evil present with me. Yet to say I don't have either makes me a LIAR and a hypocrite. And I'm not interested in that either.
IF we observe closely, Jesus tells us that this is mandatory hatred to be His disciple:
Luke 14:26
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
The mere THOUGHT of either is evil and defiling, internally. Matt. 5:28, Matt. 15:19-20 and Mark 7:21-23
Indwelling sin and evil present doesn't change it's stripes for anyone, whether they do an external act or not. The heart is deceitful above ALL THINGS and desperately wicked. That is a pretty dire statement of facts. Just chew on that fact for a bit.
In fact the heart is SO DISHONEST it can not be truthful about any of these factual conditions and will lie to no end about not being any of them.
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
I might suggest that being honest is part of that process, of Romans 12:2. We DO have to take the bad news facts on some subjects in Gods Words, and not run away from the conclusions. The Gospel in these ways is quite offensive, and few care to deal with it truthfully.
Brilliant deduction. My observation is that every Word of God has and retains "present tense" applicability and relativity to all of us. And that applicability, both good and BAD.
I would never equate Gods Words with mans versions of 'morality.' No matter how moral we live, we are still sinners, regardless. Gods Word of Law doesn't accept mere moral external actions to fulfill any commandment, it demands Perfection. And none of us can conjure that up nor does human morality fulfill Perfection nor is it capable of doing so. We can try to claim we are "moral sinners" and that is truthful, but is that really logical? There is no such person as a "legal sinner." They do not exist. Nor is there any such person as "a moral sinner." Such notions are logical fallacies on the surface just by reading the terms of such claims.
The law did then no differently than it does today.
By the law is the knowledge of sin. Romans 3:20
By the law sin becomes exceedinly sinful. Romans 7:13
By the law sin obtains it's strength. 1 Cor. 15:56
None of these workings can be stopped or ceased by anyone no matter how they view it.
The law was meant to do exactly that. See Paul's statement in Romans 7:11. That's exactly "how" we are to "apply it." There is no eradication of the Law to not do this work. It is specifically against lawless sinners and we are all sinners. So yes, it does apply to do exactly that.
We do take the condemnation of our indwelling sin/evil present under the Law. That's what it's for. We don't dodge that conclusion. Not under morality and not under legalism.
People can claim they follow all 10 Commandments all the time, perfectly, or are moral or are legal.
The fact of being sinners didn't move off the spot in doing so.
We DO live under the condemnation that Jesus brought.
Romans 8:3
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
This condemnation didn't evaporate. Jesus under Grace isn't allowing any sin or evil to squeak past the door. Not even a thought of it. On this basis our flesh, in which dwells sin and evil present, remains contrary to the Spirit (Gal. 5:17) and this also makes our bodies VILE (Phil. 3:21)
As distasteful as the conclusions are, they are truthful. Being moral or claiming to be legal is not going to change these facts.
We all only and always like to think of the entirety of ourselves as NOT contrary to the Spirit in any way, shape or form. And that is simply not true.
These facts make the theological scriptural bed of unmerited favor/Grace and Divine Mercy from God God in Christ. Were it not so, we'd have neither.
Sin is not capable of stopping The Love of God Expressed in Christ, period.
We are not made sinless by our beliefs. None of us. I am not interested in being made into a liar or a hypocrite by phony theology. Is the Law of God adverse to me? Yes. Because I am a sinner and the law has proven this to me beyond any doubt. I just came to an honest conclusion about it.
My bad? Or am I being truthful?
You want to believe we're sinners. This is true in the sense that we continue to sin so we're sinners.
But in the sense of what NATURE we have, we can no longer say we're SINNERS once we've come to know the Lord and wish to serve Him. Then what happens is that we sin, but we are not sinners. Being a sinner is a matter of our nature. Our nature changes once we get to know Jesus. It's normal - we want to please Him and not sadden the Holy Spirit.
Your not being truthful.
If you want to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, that you are a sinner, then you sir have taken the power of faith, and cursed yourself.
You seem to be more concentrated on what the devil can do, and have set your beliefs on him, and his abilities to deceive.
The moral laws are directly given by God, not by man, that were written on stone as He gave instruction for our conduct as in prayers and blessings, love and brotherhood, the poor and unfortunate, treatment of the Gentiles, Marriage, divorce and family, forbidden sexual relations, business practices, employees and servants, vows, oaths, swearing, Court and Judicial procedures, injuries and damages, property and property rights, Criminal laws, prophecy, idolatry and all its practices. All of these moral laws of God are found within the 613 laws.
There is no one that is righteous