I'm a Protestant Christian. Ask me anything!

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englands123 said:
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po18guy:
I am a Catholic. Ask me anything. Ask any of us anything.

OK, where did Christ teach bible alone?
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The Lord is the Living word.
Yes he came to fulfil the scriptures and not to abolish them.

Before Christ there was no such thing as Christianity. He came in to this world as a Human being but at the same time the Son of God.

To gather up a new generation of people for his own. That is why he will judge us not the Father. The Father has given his son all Authority.

Jesus is the Church and whoever follows him will have eternal life. Scripture was a guide so to speak because as Jesus rightly said, you will not have me on earth forever.

A good example is divorce : Matthew 19:8

8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Jesus pointed out that these laws were given because of the hardness of people’s hearts, not because such laws were God’s desire.

Jesus did not agree with divorce and never has done and he also had very strong views regarding adultery…
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@englands123

Will you please explain why you directed your comments to @po18guy? You lost me.
 
nick2 said:
The title says it all. Ask me anything regarding my faith and I’d love to give you a reason for why I believe what I believe and have a friendly discourse.
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Hi! Thanks for starting this thread!
  1. If we are saved by grace alone, and if all it takes is accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, is there any point in confessing sins?
  2. If we are saved by grace alone, how do Protestants square that with Matthew 25: 34-46?
  3. As you may be aware, Catholics take marriage very seriously, with rigorous marriage preparations and a difficult annulment process. Protestants can and do get divorced and remarried. Why is this? From your personal, cultural observation, why do you think so many Protestants don’t take Matthew 5:32 as seriously as Catholics?
I have others but will stop there. 🙂
 
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blackforest said:
If we are saved by grace alone, and if all it takes is accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, is there any point in confessing sins?
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By what other means does Hod make salvation possible other than by grace. If not by grace, God’s free unmerited gift, then how?

Whether one confesses faith alone, or by faith and works, or by faith working through love, it is all by grace alone.

The short answer about confessing sin is we are commanded to do so, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins…”. There is a reason the sacraments are called the means of grace. It is how we receive grace.
 
nick2 said:
The title says it all. Ask me anything regarding my faith and I’d love to give you a reason for why I believe what I believe and have a friendly discourse.
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@nick2

What motivated you to create this thread, and what do you hope to accomplish?
 
I’m just curious – do you think the Saints in heaven are unaware of what is happening here?

The scriptures say that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Jesus also talked about angels going into a frenzy anytime even 1 sinner repents. Then we have the transfiguration where Jesus is interacting with people who have passed on – right in front of the apostles. Pair all that with 2,000 years of this Christian practice(see the catacombs) and I see it as being quite certainly an orthodox practice.
 
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nick2 said:
The title says it all. Ask me anything regarding my faith and I’d love to give you a reason for why I believe what I believe and have a friendly discourse.
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Do you believe in predestination?
 
I think a subtle but essential point that many Catholics and believers who grew up Catholic are unclear about is what various Protestants mean when they talk about believing and being saved. Is this a process that takes a (more or less) known length of time and is pretty much identical for everyone? Like the typical image of a revival meeting where someone listens to a preacher, has a sudden revelation and falls down and is from that moment saved in every sense? Or is it something more nuanced and a little more complicated for some individuals? I don’t mean to degrade any type of conversion process…I believe the above can happen, and can certainly be seen as implied by Romans. But there are grave spiritual implications when one tries to closely define the workings of faith.
 
Thanks for all the questions. Unfortunately, this next month will be pretty busy, so it may take me a bit longer than expected to reply to some of your questions. -Nick
 
Welcome to the forum. I am a non-protestant Evangelical. I hope you enjoy the dialogue.
 
Welcome to the forum. You might be the only Dutch Christian Reformed here! 🙂
Our OP seems to busy now, so it might be quiet for awhile.
 
Hi John,

Ephesians 4:4-6 says “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

I believe all who submit their lives to Jesus as Lord and trust in his completed work on the cross have the Holy Spirit living in them. If you have surrendered your life to Jesus, then yes, we have the same Spirit living in us and I would be pleased to call you my brother in Christ.
 
@blackforest What do you think it means to accept Christ as Lord and Savior?

@JonNC Grace, by definition, is something you receive which you don’t deserve. The concept of working demands a payment. You work for a paycheck. By your work you earn something. When you receive your paycheck, you can rightly say “I earned this, I deserve this”.

Romans 4:1–8

[1] What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? [2] For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. [3] For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” [4] Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. [5] And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, [6] just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

[7] “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
[8] blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (ESV)

The righteousness of Christ, which is our salvation (to be justified), is ONLY received by the one who does not trust in his works, or his faith + works, but to the one who trusts by faith. If you can look at your salvation and say, in any measure, “I earned some of that”, then you have not received God’s grace. A paycheck cannot be a gift and a gift cannot be a paycheck. This passage teaches that they are mutually exclusive.

Why does this matter, because to God belongs ALL the glory. He deserves credit for everything he has done in the lives of his children. Every piece of our salvation belongs to him! When we claim to earn even the smallest piece of it, we are stealing glory from God and giving it to ourselves, diminishing the power of our God, and spitting in the face of our savior saying “Jesus, you’re not enough”. The teaching that we are made righteous by any combination of faith and works is idolatry.
 
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When did Sola Scriptura begin?

Do you practice circumcision and the Old Testament law as described in Scripture? If not, why not? When did the change happen?

Does your position represent anything more than your own private interpretation?
 
huck said:
One thing I was sort of wondering about with regards to protestants, and I don’t necessarily want to argue about it, is the belief in the importance of accepting Jesus as your personal lord and savior. I know this belief is popular among evangelistic groups but I was wondering about more mainstream groups like Presbyterians and Episcopalians.
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“Accepting Jesus as your personal lord and savior” is simply a way of saying, “putting your faith in Christ” and then obeying him as you live out your life. As such, Presbyterians and Episcopalians would presumably also believe that faith in Christ is a necessary part of being a Christian–even if they don’t use that particular terminology. However, some camps within the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches would put more emphasis on personal conversion and faith than others. The more liberal traditions within these churches would place more of an emphasis on the Social Gospel rather than individual conversion.

To put it simply, American Protestantism’s divide between conservative and liberal churches often comes down to a focus on individual conversion and holiness versus societal healing and transformation.
 
Have you ever been translated out of your body? It’s kinda like a NDE.
Have you ever been taken over by the Holy spirit like in 1samual 19:19-23?
 
that_emotional_one said:
I think a subtle but essential point that many Catholics and believers who grew up Catholic are unclear about is what various Protestants mean when they talk about believing and being saved.
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We are saved from spiritual death and eternal separation from God. When a Protestant asks you “are you saved”, they are asking have you been reconciled to God through Christ. Traditionally, Protestant theologians have conceptualized the different aspects of salvation as an ordo salutis or order of salvation. Arminian Protestants (who believe in free will) and Calvinistic Protestants (believers in predestination and irresistible grace) have somewhat different versions of this but here is a diagram from the Reformed/Calvinistic perspective:

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Notice that this diagram identifies which aspects man is involved in. For example, only God justifies and humans have no role in that. But Conversion and sanctification are two aspects where man has a role. In Conversion, we have to believe and repent. In sanctification, we are cooperating with God by working out our salvation.

Often Protestants identify the moment they were “saved” as the moment of conscious conversion. As you can see on the chart, conversion involves an exercise of the will in which the person places their faith in Christ and concurrently repents of sin. By faith, we are justified before God and have the righteousness of Christ.

But after conversion and justification, there is more to salvation. Faith and repentance catapults us into sanctification, which is a process that continues until death. Therefore, conversion is just the start of the Christian life as we are further transformed into the image and likeness of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit working within us.
 
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that_emotional_one said:
Is this a process that takes a (more or less) known length of time and is pretty much identical for everyone? Like the typical image of a revival meeting where someone listens to a preacher, has a sudden revelation and falls down and is from that moment saved in every sense?
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People are not saved by falling down in evangelistic meetings. People are saved by placing their faith in Christ. Falling down is a physical/emotional manifestation of that person’s spiritual crisis. They are confronted with the knowledge that they are a sinner deserving death and the promise of salvation in the Gospel. Then proceeds an inner struggle and spiritual warfare. For some people, conviction of sin and crying out to God for forgiveness can be an extremely emotional and difficult process. And as a result, the joy they feel once the struggle is over and they feel peace in the assurance that they have been forgiven can also be intense, which is why some people shout.

(I’m someone who has been slain in the Spirit many times, so I speak from firsthand experience but have also studied American revivalism and have read what theologians such as John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards wrote about such bodily experiences.)

Conversion does not always look the same. The important thing from an evangelical Protestant perspective is that a person has truly placed their faith in Christ and repented of sin. There isn’t a particular emotional response required or any particular prayer or formula that has to be used.
 
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