Jesus will never abandon you but you're still of the devil?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jamil_joseph02
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

jamil_joseph02

Guest
I find these passages to seemingly contradict each other:

Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him. Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4-10)

and

“I will never forsake you or abandon you.” (Hebrew 13:5)

so in Hebrews 13:5 Jesus tells me, “even if you sin, you’re still my Child,” but the book of John says “if you sin, you are a child of the devil and not of God”

so, how to reconcile these two verses or rather, what’s am I missing here?
 
To condense, if you sin, you are spiting God and doing the devil’s work, yet despite this, Jesus will never stop forgiving you and taking you back when you repent.
 
Well, in 1 John a major theme was what you could call the “proto-gnostic” heresy. That’s why the book starts off affirming Jesus’ coming in the flesh, and calls out those who don’t as anti-Christ. Keeping that in mind, I think they were the kind of people who thought their bodily existence as illusory or something, so they sinned a lot and thought nothing of it. Taking that into account, it seems a “looser” reading of that passage is in order. He’s not saying that if we don’t become saints in a day then we’re not of God, he’s saying that those who turn against their Christian brethren and sin habitually aren’t of God. Not to mention I remember hearing that John wasn’t so great with Greek, which might be why the epistle reads so roughly.
 
there will always be what seems like contradictions in the Bible when we try to compare and contrast versus against each other. That is not how we are meant to read the Bible by the way.
The reason we are meant to read the Bible is so that we can learn how to be Christian etc. You can if you want, tie yourself into theological knots but it aint worth it. Far better to read the whole Book of the Bible and concentrate what is in front of you at that time. We will not understand everything in one go but bit by bit it will be revealed to us what is required of us, remembering that Jesus uses Parables to teach.
Yeh fine if you want to play the theological ‘game’
Jesus Will Never abandon anyone who calls his name. It does not matter that are in grave sin etc. Jesus loves you, whatever. Many find that so hard to understand but yet the simplest message of all that is soooo good to hear. Good News. Jesus Loves You.So simple yet so challenging even 2012 years later on we find this so hard to simply believe.
 
jamil_joseph02 said:
I find these passages to seemingly contradict each other:

Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him. Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4-10)

and

“I will never forsake you or abandon you.” (Hebrew 13:5)

so in Hebrews 13:5 Jesus tells me, “even if you sin, you’re still my Child,” but the book of John says “if you sin, you are a child of the devil and not of God”

so, how to reconcile these two verses or rather, what’s am I missing here?
Click to expand...
He won’t forsake or abandon us-but *we *can still forsake or abandon Him.
 
When John wrote this, I don’t think that by “sinner” he meant a Christian who might stumble and fall, then repent and start again.

I think he was talking about the difference between those who want to follow Christ, and those who couldn’t care less.

A truly bad man is not aware of his badness. One of the things that always strikes me when I watch movies and documentaries about career criminals and / or tyrants is how one-dimensional their characters are - all they’re interested in is “me”. Admittedly movies are not real life, but I think they give a picture of criminal life that would be reasonably accurate in some cases.

Whereas a truly good man is very much aware when he sins.

To me John was writing more about the separation of Christ / Christians and the world. The world doesn’t care, and just goes on ignoring the judgement of God.
 
well, what I’m seeing here is that Jesus still loves everybody – even those who are not of His Father. Pretty clear now.
 
1 John 3 was really distiguishing between Christians and non-Christians, and how to be a good Christian. Here is the rest of the passage:

9 Those who have been born into God’s family do not sin, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the Devil. Anyone who does not obey God’s commands and does not love other Christians does not belong to God. 11 This is the message we have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was right. 13 So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to eternal life. But a person who has no love is still dead. 15 Anyone who hates another Christian is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them. 16 We know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top