Some Baptist Dude:
If a shepherd looses his sheep, is that a good shepherd? No! And Jesus is not a bad shepherd. He is the good shepherd! … If you begin to say that Jesus will loose his sheep then you are saying that Jesus is not a good shepherd. Jesus is not a bad shepherd. He is the good shepherd.
I would quickly counter with something about wolves in sheeps clothing and try to remember the chapter where this is referenced if I could. You could make the argument that not all people are sheep, that we become sheep through baptism.
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But the guy you are arguing with has not studied Biblical history. I can tell that he has little knowlege of the social, political and economic conditions under which the authors of sacred scripture and their intended audience operated. He is reading scripture in his own 21st century world and taking the words to mean what they mean to modern man. In his ignorace (I mean that in a charitable way) he gleans little knowlege of the ideas that the authors were trying to convey.
He simply doesn’t understand what the words
salvation and
faith (AKA sola fide) mean in the Bible…
Faith today means a belief in your mind or a feeling in your heart. A profession of faith today might get you a few strange looks from the guys at work and where I live in the deep south, having “Faith” will likely result in an invitation to Friday night Bible study and fellowship. For the ancients however, a public profession of faith, which likely included baptism, was a public renunciation of the oath of alliegiance one had to make to the Roman emperor - it was treason and was punishable by death! For a Jew, “Faith” in Jesus was a renunciation of the mosaic law and rejection of rabbinic authority which, at a minimum, would mean ostracization by your family, inability to conduct business with Jewish merchants, etc. For the ancients, faith was a public act with potentially deadly consequences! Think of a Muslim in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia who professes “Faith in Jesus” and you get the idea.
Ther terms “
Salvation” and “
Redemption” are terms in the Bible which were drawn from the way in which debtor’s prisons operated. Modern man, including the Baptist who argued in favor of sola fide, has no context under which to understand these terms as they were used by the authors of sacred scripture and early Chistians.
From “
Halloween, High Street, and Holy Witnesses” by Donald Casadonte in This Rock Magazine, May-June 2001:
***"Look, I’m not sure that you understand the term you’re using. You see, no first-century Jew or Gentile would have had the vaguest idea about what you’re talking about when you phrase the question like that. Their concept of the word salvation would have been derived from their experiences of what was known by the Hebrews as ‘debtor’s prison.’
When a first-century person could not pay his debt, he was often thrown into prison until the debt was paid. To further humiliate him, the debtor was forbidden to pay the debt himself, even if he came into some money while in prison. A relative had to come and pay the amount owed. This paying of the bill was called redemption. Now, look, before Christ came, we were all in a sort of debtor’s prison because of the sin of Adam. We could not pay the debt ourselves. A relative had to come and pay it for us. This may be one reason why Christ became man, became our relative by blood, so to speak.
In any case, once the debt was redeemed, the relative was then given the right to walk back to the prison cell, open it, and escort the debtor out of the prison. This second process-the application of the ‘right-to-leave’ that the relative had purchased for the debtor and the debtor’s willingness to be so publicly humiliated in being led out of the prison-is what a first-century person would have understood by the term salvation.
"Catholics believe that the world was redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but the second part of the process, the salvation part, depends partially on us. You see, even when Christ walks into the prison and takes us by the hand to save us-Christians almost universally call this initial step “baptism”-we still have to walk with him out of the cell. And we can let go of his hand at any time before we get to the door, if we are sufficiently cantankerous or too ashamed to be recognized as his kin. We certainly can lose (technically, give up) our salvation, as any good first-century Jew or Gentile would have realized.
“Anyway, a person isn’t fully saved until he’s actually crossed the threshold of the cell-for us, by analogy, the prison of this world-into the daylight-heaven. If you told a first-century person that they could be sure of their salvation, they would have looked at you as if you were speaking a foreign language.”***The rest of the article can be found
here.
When you could not pay a debt, you were sued “
at the gate” where the judges typically sat. If you were unable to pay, you would have been thrown into prison “
Until you have paid the last penny.” To be “
Redeemed” is to be “
"Purchased for a price.” All of these Biblical terms reference how debtor’s prisons operated.
*
So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. (Phillipians 2:12)*I’m with St. Paul, redeemed but working out my salvation as best as I can, and with God’s help, not letting go of Jesus’ hand - which is his Church - until I cross the threshold “Into the light.”
“Faith” and “Salvation” are Biblica terms which are lightly understood by many, including Catholics but especially sola fide Protestants.
-Tim-
