"How many are my iniquities and sins? make me know my crimes and offences. "
Well we do do works of righteousness before justification, but we also do unrighteous things before justification, as found in Titus vs 3:3…so are you saying the righteous deeds outweigh our sins, and He then chooses us for redemption? Are you saying some do zero righteous deeds hence arent redeemed?
Nope. I don’t see it. Provide the verse.
Huh? One group walked in darkness the other in light.
Huh? You are contradicting yourself. Are all men totally depraved or not?
Let’s see what Scripture says:
Neh. Those who have pride in self are those who proclaim themselves saved by faith alone.
Lol! You ought to see how much the bring in for parts. You’d make thousands on a Rolls.
That’s what Protestants do. We follow the Lord’s advice:
It is Protestants who give themselves glory and credit when they claim to be saved by their faith alone. We wait for God’s judgment. Meantime, we do our best to obey.
You know what I’m saying. You denied that we could anything good before justification because of total depravity.
No. Your critique is the attendance of fear and awe before God, in general.
Although I do not necessarily disagree (I would add His love to the equation), it is generally problematic to claim that something is in a particular verse if a) it simply is not there on a verbal level and b) it cannot be immediately deduced from the verse in question. But my concern with Michael’s characterization is that he turns grace into some kind of force that (gradually) protects us from sinning. That is an idea I find nowhere in the Scriptures.
But if you believe that God has made you sinless, how is that boasting? I claim that God has given me the faith I have, and I don’t consider that boasting.
I have never heard that there is a requirement for the person in question to be sinless in order to be canonized. Can you support that claim with some kind of official reference?
Rather, the crown awaits those that Christ has saved. We are perfectly pure in Him, here and now.
What is the difference between God’s love and His grace?De_Maria:
Although I do not necessarily disagree (I would add His love to the equation), it is generally problematic to claim that something is in a particular verse if a) it simply is not there on a verbal level and b) it cannot be immediately deduced from the verse in question. But my concern with Michael’s characterization is that he turns grace into some kind of force that (gradually) protects us from sinning. That is an idea I find nowhere in the Scriptures.
Do you mean, “how is that NOT boasting?” Because I don’t go around telling the whole world, “God has made me sinless.” Which is what the Protestants do when they claim they are saved by their faith alone.
You, if you’re a typical Protestant, claim more than that. We also believe that God gives us our faith AND that God works through us.
Did I say that was a requirement? Why must I support something I didn’t claim?
So, you believe that God has actually washed you of sin and don’t believe that you are merely covered over? Because we believe that this happens to us in the washing of regeneration which is Baptism.
Yeah. But you’ve got to read the whole thing to get the true meaning. That verse, by itself, makes it sound as though, once you believe, you have to do nothing.
Grace is the mercy that God shows His sinful people - it “protects” them from His wrath against sin. Paul writes in Rom. 5:20 that grace increased when sin increased. If you insinuate that grace is synonymous with love, it would follow that the more Israel sinned, the more He loved them! In His love, He shows us grace, sinful children of His that we are.
I would not hesitate to tell the whole world “God has saved me”. Since the glory for my salvation goes to Him alone, I have nothing to boast of. So if you believe that God has made you sinless, all the glory for that would be His, and therefore no boasting would be present.
I do not identify myself with the label “Protestant” (Catholicism is not my point of reference), so I have frankly no idea what “more than that” would entail. Together with Paul, I only boast in the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14).
So why did you bring canonization into the discussion at all, unless it was relevant to the discussion about potential sinlessness?
I believe that I have been perfected by His blood once and for all and that He no longer imputes me with sin (Heb. 10:14-17), yet I am by myself nothing but a wretched sinner.
You are nonetheless nothing but sinners who will never enter Heaven in your own “righteousness”.
Quite ironically, you appeal to the context, yet you ignore the main point of Paul’s argument. The Law was unable to justify us and save us as it was “weakened by the flesh”. What we could not accomplish, He fulfilled by dying for our sins. This makes our righteousness before God, not a mere potentiality, but an actual reality here and now. Despite our weakness and sinfulness, we who are led by the Spirit share in the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness that is not our “own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ” (Phil. 3:9). This is what Evangelicals call the blessed exchange—He took our sins upon Himself so that we should partake of His righteousness.
Yes, I believe that grace is synonymous with His love. I believe that His love increases, so to speak, when we sin, because He wants to draw us back to Himself. Let me show you. You said, “grace is mercy”.
It’s boasting. Because God has not revealed to you, your personal salvation. If He has, then you are privileged. But I don’t have to believe that He has. Nor does anyone else.
The boasting which you acknowledged above.
Because some of them did achieve sinlessness before they died.
Do you believe that you are merely covered over without actually being transformed? Yes or no.
True. We must remain in a state of grace, which is the righteousness of God. Or God must return us to that state, in Purgatory.
The more we sin, the more He loves us? So in order to maximize His love for us, we should sin as much as possible? You know that this is nonsense. His love for His people is constant and unfathomable.
Yet they are not synonymous or interchangeable. The Hebrew word chesed means “kindness” (TLOT) and “goodness” (HALOT). It refers to God’s love in action. Because of His ahavah (love) for us, He shows us chesed (kindness).
So if someone drags a drowning person out of water, and the saved person expresses praise for having been saved from drowning, you consider that boasting? What a weird logic. We know that we have been saved solely because we see Christ before us as crucified for our sins, and we believe that He is the Son of God who was sent to save us from our sins.
Paul boasted in the cross of Christ. You consider that shameful boasting or something that a believer in Christ ought to do?
And the evidence for that is what exactly … the word of your church?
I believe that I am, and will in this life remain, a sinner justified by faith alone. I have been transformed, however not into a perfect, sinless human being, but into someone who lives by faith in Christ and love for those whom He has died.
Another teaching that is found nowhere in the Scriptures, but which Catholicism has inserted in order to make up for the alleged inadequacy of the cross of Christ. If we need to be purified in “Purgatory” it follows that the blood of Christ does not cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that belief is in opposition to the Gospel.
Romans 5:8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
That’s Luther’s cry. Sin and sin mightily and grace will abound the more. But Scripture says the opposite.
So is His grace.
Argue with the interpreters. They put it as “loving kindness”. Not kindness alone. And, even if it were, kindness has much in common with love.
Totally different. I can’t see the spiritual world. Therefore, I can’t confirm that you, or I, for that matter, are standing on Mount Sion. Whereas, it’s easy to see a man who has been dragged to the shore with our eyes of flesh.
We find your logic weird. You don’t want to imitate your Lord.
We do as St. Paul suggests. And Protestants disapprove.
The word of our infallible Church would be enough. But, the Church has tested each claim and found that they were true. Thus, it is proven by miracles and frequently, by the sensus fidelis.
I take that as a yes. Which means that you don’t have enough faith to believe that God has actually “regenerated” you. You don’t have enough faith to believe that you are born again in the image of Christ. You merely give those words, lip service.
We believe we are infused of His grace and transformed inwardly, day by day.
On the contrary, this belief is everywhere in Scripture. Protestants have merely discarded the Traditions of Jesus Christ and substituted their errors.
Those verses state precisely what we would expect: God’s love for His people is unfathomable and salvific. It does of course not follow that God loves us more whenever we sin.
Luther expressed, albeit with a tone of hyperbole, what we already know through the Gospel: God no longer imputes us with our sins. Christ, the Lamb of God, has taken our sins upon Himself.
Those are consoling words that make us bold indeed.
The ideal situation would be that His grace, i.e. His mercy, would not be needed at all. But sinful as we are, we need to be covered by His grace so that we will not have to stand before Him condemned in our sins. According to your logic, God loves a sinless person less than a sinful person. That may make sense to you, but not to me.
Yet He does not love us more because we sin.
I don’t have to—I just quoted two scholarly lexicons: Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (TLOT) and Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT). He shows us kindness because of His love for us. The cause (love) does not equal its effect (kindness), yet they are of course intimately related.
You can’t see the spiritual world, but surely there were people who witnessed the cross of Christ and were called to testify about their experiences to the world. His cross is the locus of our salvation.
If I want to whether I am saved or not, I look at Christ and Him crucified for my sins.
Those who carry His name will be hated and persecuted by the world. Suffering will come, whether we like it or not.
Of all the ludicrous accusations I have heard, this one really takes the cake. I can only reply that it is completely false. On the contrary, it is precisely because of His blood shed on the cross that I believe that He has saved and perfected me.
And I do not consider your church infallible, nor the true church at all, so that makes word stand against word.
Non sequitur. The apostles performed miracles in the name of Christ, yet they were sinners.
I certainly believe that He has regenerated me, but not into a perfect being who never sins. His grace is enough for me. And your regeneration (if that is what you have experienced) has obviously not had that effect either, sinner as you are.
Where does the Bible say that Christians are “born again in the image of Christ”? Christ is without sin—we are not.
But this is where we can see how tenuous your reasoning really is. If you claim that you have been regenerated into a person who never sins, you would not have any further need to be “transformed inwardly”. So which is it: did your regeneration turn you into a non-sinning individual or not?
It is exactly nowhere, which is to be expected since the Scriptures testify about the all-sufficiency of the sacrificial death of Christ. Only those who think that His blood is not enough to fully cleanse us would concoct a “Purgatory”.
We discard that which clearly opposes the Gospel and therefore is by no means a holy tradition.
Nor does it follow that grace abounds when we continue to sin.
Yeah, God continues to judge you sinful if you continue in sin. That is what the Scripture we just read, says. God does not lie for anyone.
No one can bring a charge against those God has chosen, because they obey the Law.
So you can’t proclaim yourself saved. It is God who sees the heart.
Yeah. Interceding for those who hold the Law. Not for those who commit sins all the day long.
It’s too bad that it enboldens many to continue in sin.
You’re twisting my words. God loves us all the same. God is love. But He shows His love when we sin by patiently awaiting for us to turn to Him.
I never said that He did. You are twisting my words if you claim I said it. And, if you claim I said it, you should be able to quote me.
And I quoted the Bible. Which do you consider superior, the lexicons or the Bible.
I never said it wasn’t. Why are you changing the venue? Are we not talking about a man saved from drowning compared to a man saved to eternal life? Can you see eternal life? Can you see Mount Sion?
Good for you. Because the Catholic Church preaches Christ crucified just as Scripture says and many Protestants object.
Because suffering is redemptive. Otherwise, God would not allow it to be inflicted upon us.
This just begs to be answered, refuted, as unscriptural (that God doesn’t tell us we are His, even justified), but sadly a reality for many.
Then answer it.De_Maria:
This just begs to be answered,
On the contrary, the Protestant stance of declaring oneself saved is unscriptural. Provide one example of someone in Scripture declaring himself saved by faith alone.
It is a huge difference. It is attributed to Calvin by some and Luther by others, that they said that the Reformation hinged upon this question of salvation by faith alone.
That’s nice of you. But neither of you can do what you claim you can do.