Once Saved Always Saved

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
By the way, do you consider yourself to be a mature Christian?

I am a maturing Christian. I am way different now than when I started out 35 years ago. Way different.

But you don’t consider yourself a mature Christian yet?

Tong
R2993

 

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
The thing is, there are nominal Christians and there are true Christians. There are false brethren and there are true brethren.

Of course, we know that's true. I'm talking about true born again Christians. Some who have strong believing as opposed to those who don't, but who are saved nonetheless. If our believing is not ours, so as not to be a work of self righteousness, as is being argued here, why does God give crappy believing to some, while he gives strong believing to other Christians? I'm not talking about the evidence of the gospel itself—faith. I'm talking about a person's believing. The trusting that he does in response to the evidence of the truth (the faith) God gives a person.

<<<Of course, we know that's true. I'm talking about true born again Christians. >>>

And what I’m saying is that, in the church, even in the early church in Corinth and Galatia, there are nominal Christians and true Christians. That it is not conclusive that those who are said to have fallen away are true Christians or includes true Christians. For as I have pointed out, true Christians, if they fall away, it is impossible for them to be brought back to repentance.

<<<If our believing is not ours, so as not to be a work of self righteousness, as is being argued here, why does God give crappy believing to some, while he gives strong believing to other Christians? >>>

Believing is not ours? What do you mean by that?

Why does God give crappy believing? What does that suppose to mean?

<<<I'm talking about a person's believing. The trusting that he does in response to the evidence of the truth (the faith) God gives a person.>>>

Faith is more than just evidence that you talk about there. It is power from God. Scriptures speaks of such faith, that even a small measure of it, even small as a mustard seed, it has the power to move mountains.

The true Christian is given faith by God. So all true Christian have faith that comes from God. And all nominal Christians don’t have that. At least perhaps not yet for some. What faith they profess to have is one that is from them, that which is common in all man.

Faith that comes from God is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It is why we can understand for one, that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. In contrast faith that comes from man is not like that. As the natural man says “to see is to believe”.

The point is that, the true Christian, whether mature or babes, have that faith that comes from God. Having faith, even small as a mustard seed, the true Christian is not overcome by doubt. One who doubts in the Lord is one who have not such faith. And one who have not such faith is not a true Christian.

R2994

 

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
In my view, it depends whether you or I is a true Christian or just a nominal Christian. It depends whether we have the faith that comes from God or just have the faith that comes from and what is common to man.

But Paul says they were true Christians, not fake ones.

Paul did not say whether they are true or fake. He considers and presumes all are true Christians. I too considers and presumes all who profess faith in Christ as true Christians. For I believe that only God knows for certain the hearts of men. I don’t find any scriptures that speaks of Paul as having such power. Further, I have pointed out to you already in one of my post, Paul have doubts about them in Galatia (Gal.4:20).

Tong
R2995

 

[Ferris Bueller]

What do you mean that God is responsible for a person’s believing?

People of the Osas persuasion are saying that one's 'act' of believing (trusting) comes from God, because it would be a self righteous work of merit thought to earn salvation if it didn't come from him. So why does God give inferior believing/trusting to some people that requires them to be told to keep believing and not to fall away?

 

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
What do you mean that God is responsible for a person’s believing?

People of the Osas persuasion are saying that one's 'act' of believing (trusting) comes from God, because it would be a self righteous work of merit thought to earn salvation if it didn't come from him. So why does God give inferior believing/trusting to some people that requires them to be told to keep believing and not to fall away?

What comes from God is faith not one’s act of believing. God works in the man to whom He gave faith, until he is fully persuaded and is converted. And so he repents and believes in God and Jesus Christ.

Tong
R3002

 

[Amazed@grace]

To repent unto God and believe in the one He sent Jesus Christ, means surrendering one’s will to God. Why the surrender of one’s will to God must be obvious by now.

Now, if one still have the mind that he can will to reject Jesus Christ some time later or that it is possible that he will reject Jesus Christ later, he must examine himself whether he had truly repented unto God and believed in Jesus Christ. For rejecting Jesus Christ is not the will of God. If not the will of God then, whose will is it? And if it’s not God’s will and is the person’s will, would that not mean he had not truly surrendered his will to God?

Some may argue, that committing sin is not the will of God. Does it mean that when one commits a sin, he did not truly surrender his will to God? Scriptures tells us that those born of God do not sin. Not to mean that they don’t commit any sin anymore, for that matter. But that, they do not desire to sin nor wills to sin. So, if one sees himself desiring to sin or willing to sin against God, that sure says something.

Tong
R2980

I see it this way.

All biblical even without the scriptures posted that do apply. But most bible lovers like myself will know the passages that apply.

God knew his elect,saved ones, before the world was created.
God calls us, whose name he knows because we are in his book of life already.

Jesus did the work, God makes the call, and we who heard that truth resonate answered his free irrevocable grace.

We believe,we are baptized in him, receive the holy spirit. Our sins eternally forgiven and put under the blood. Because Jesus is our advocate in heaven should we stumble in future.
We do not sin, because those who sin willfully are not of Christ.

Some may feel so overwhelmed by life as to wonder where is God now? They may lose faith.

However, they never leave the grace of God. And God never loses love nor faith in them. The parable of the Prodigal son testifies to this.

Those who are not in Christ but assume the title Christian, while sinning and living and loving the trappings of the world, are not his elect. They do not fool God. Who has told us precisely what it means to be his.

Comparing nominal, name only, xtians to the truly redeemed in an effort to show we Christians are able to return to what we were prior to redemption, with those nominal ones as template proof of this, is not sustained by God's word.

We are sealed by the HS, and for the promise.

When God knew us before anything was created, he also knows the fakes. We aren't them. And no thing in this reality will EVER take us from his hand.

That which imagines it is stronger than the fact of that will of God, is the deceivers lie.

And those who follow him are the nominal ones who transpose God's words eternal into their own unsealed fallen language as adversaries of God and his truth.

God's irrevocable free gift of grace, sealing by the holy spirit in the promise, eternal redemption as a new creation in Christ, sins forgiven and under Christ's blood eternally in immortal life, is then translated by the false , to conditional reprieve able to be repealed by that mortal believer in that who first accepts their fallible mortal will and limited vision is able to surpass the foreknowledge and will of Almighty God.

And therein exists the difference between name only, and sealed eternally.

That which teaches Salvation is conditional are living a lie.

And their guilty knowledge of their own willful sins in the process is what sustains their blaspheming the truth they have never actually lived.

But that scares them to death none the less when even a glimmer of that fact comes near them.

Those who "know" Salvation can be lost are living that way. The lie.

The elect are not.
It really is as simple as that.

 

[marks]

If God is responsible for a person's believing (or else it's you trying to save yourself) why do some believers have, shall we say, imperfect believing? And especially imperfect believing in regard to living for Christ, not just in regard to salvation. I mean we got people saying here that you can go back to unbelief (again, what happened to God's responsibility for your believing?) and you are still saved. That's inconsistent with a claim that God is responsible for the believing you have. I would think if believing was God's doing, not yours (so that it wouldn't be works), he would do a better job at it than that. Don't you?

Let's shift this conversation to Biblical terminology.

"Imperfect believing", that's not Biblical terminology. YOU are talking about people returning to a "pre-saving-faith" state, as if it were even possible.

You put your trick questions, and endless stream of fallacies, and little snippets of thoughts, to people trying to have an honest discussion with you. You give hypotheticals and spin them whatever direction you want, and you churn out an answer from someone that seems to you to fit your agenda.

I said I am not being fooled by you.

Here's part of what I mean.

No one here is telling you they think a believer will return to a "pre-saving-faith" state, "return to unbelief". And you know that's not what they mean. You drag out that statement falsely from people, and you will present yourself as having all the false sincerity as your chosen Icon.

YOU are the one who says a child of God stops believing, and stops being saved. @Tong2020 ,@Behold ,@Blood Bought 1953 , myself, well, I know to be careful with my speech around you. None of us are saying that. You give careful wording to make it sound otherwise, and that's not honest.

Christians can have a bad day, a bad week, month, but that doesn't mean Jesus has left them, and that doesn't mean that God has stopped guarding us by HIS power - not our own - through faith, which is what God's power does in us to keep us.

Thinking that we have to keep our puny weak little fingers tight on God or well fall off back into death is such a light view of salvation I wonder that you'd even bother to call it salvation!

Now, here is Biblical terminology.

Colossians 3:1-13 KJV
1) If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
2) Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
3) For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
4) When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

You've been risen with Christ, and now live a heavenly life with God. And though you be hidden now, you will appear with Him when He appears.

5) Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
6) For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:
7) In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.

So because this is true, put to death the parts of you that are still on the earth. These are terrible things, the very things for which God will punish those who are not His children.

8) But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
9) Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
10) And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
11) Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
12) Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
13) Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

The new man is renewed in the knowledge of God, so wear that person, not the old man, since you've put him off. Don't be those ways! Be these ways!

Do to others as Jesus has done to you!

So what about this "believing"? How is it that God can be SO CERTAIN about us that He'll turn out to be a liar if any of His children don't "remain saved"?

1 Peter 1:2-5 KJV
2) Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4) To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
5) Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The answer is here. We are kept by the power of God . . . through faith.

This is where it's easy to make a wrong turn. If you've come to the conclusion that these verses aren't true as stated, and that in fact you may not be kept for your inheritance, you can come to think it's up to you to "keep yourself saved".

Galatians 2:16 KJV
16) Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

We believe "in" Jesus, but our believing in Jesus is not pointed as the source of our justification. We believe in Jesus - our faith - but it's Jesus' faith that justifies us.

Paul makes the same statement about our lives,

Galatians 2:20 KJV
20) I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

I live my life by the faith of Jesus.

Now, your question seems to be, "why is it then that those who have Jesus' faith in them don't look like that to me?"

The answer is in the doctrine of "renewing the mind".

Much love!

 

[marks]

Just want to clarify your question there.

Good luck on that!!

:)

 

[Amazed@grace]

Paul did not say whether they are true or fake. He considers and presumes all are true Christians. I too considers and presumes all who profess faith in Christ as true Christians. For I believe that only God knows for certain the hearts of men. I don’t find any scriptures that speaks of Paul as having such power. Further, I have pointed out to you already in one of my post, Paul have doubts about them in Galatia (Gal.4:20).

Tong
R2995

Paul and the bible spoke of and to fake Christians.

What Does the Bible Say About Fake Christians?

 

[Amazed@grace]

If God is responsible for a person's believing (or else it's you trying to save yourself) why do some believers have, shall we say, imperfect believing? And especially imperfect believing in regard to living for Christ, not just in regard to salvation. I mean we got people saying here that you can go back to unbelief (again, what happened to God's responsibility for your believing?) and you are still saved. That's inconsistent with a claim that God is responsible for the believing you have. I would think if believing was God's doing, not yours (so that it wouldn't be works), he would do a better job at it than that. Don't you?

Your whole premise, first question, is grounded in two different true biblical answers.

For the elect, especially the "newbie" Christian,it is a matter of discerning the scriptures while learning to trust the leading of the indwelling holy spirit.
Think of it as a baby learning how to walk and talk. It is a whole new world for them to enter from the one of crawling, being carried, and speaking baby language before.

It is a process.

For the nominal Christians, the fake, it is chaos. A language and relationship they will never know.

Which is why they think , for example, when living in the language still and the ways of the world, while maybe wearing a little gold cross, makes them saved.
It doesn't. They are lost. And in the end they'll find that out when the posing is over with and the hellish reality of that fact hits home. Far too late to do anything but suffer eternally.

See, not only does God know who are truly his own , so too does Satan know the fakes that belong to him.

 

[Behold]

People of the Osas persuasion are saying that one's 'act' of believing (trusting) comes from God,

Who told you that?

See, the way you phrase it, sounds like one of the "pre-destined" elect, heretics, who teach that God causes some to be saved and causes others to be damned.
Or, as you state it, the very faith of a person, is caused by God or not.
So, that's impossible.
God does not cause you to believe,....>He does not force it. He would not make you...
If He did this, then free will would not be involved.

What God did, is offer Jesus as our reconciliation, John 3:16. And all who go to that Cross, after "faith comes by HEARING"...after they have heard the Gospel, and are drawn to the Cross by the Holy Spirit, being convicted in their conscience, and they REPENT OF THEIR UNBELIEF<, and TRUST in Christ.......= If you do that, then God causes the blood atonement to deal with your sin, and He then deals with your dead spirit by making it BORN AGAIN, as "One with God and Christ".

So, all this "well the OSAS people say"... garbage.
What is that nonsense?
Get away from it.

 

[Behold]

YOU are the one who says a child of God stops believing, and stops being saved. @Tong2020 ,@Behold ,@Blood Bought 1953 , myself, well, I know to be careful with my speech around you.

Some commentary liar, has taught both justbyfaith and ferris bueller that "faith" saved them.
So, they have this idea that Faith is their savior, and if they lost their faith, they lost their savior.

Well, fellas, ONLY JESUS SAVES.
A.) Final Answer.

The good news is that God accepts our faith ONE TIME< to give us the New Birth. = Born again.
You can't stop being born again.
Once you are born again, you are always born again.

Even common sense and a touch of logic should teach anyone who has a brain that you can't stop being '" BORN"".
And you certainly can't undo what God has CREATED= as your SPIRITUAL BIRTH.

IT's really just the fact that legalism has ruined most believer's faith, in this world.

Some who teach "end times", teach "final apostasy" as, turning from Christ.
But, i dont think so.. When in fact its turning from GRACE to LEGALISM< that is the biggest ERROR of Apostasy, against the TRUE faith, that is world wide rampant within "christianity", today and till the Great Trib starts.

 

[Corlove13]

Of course, but not because that is what saves them.

Tong
R2978

You know...well.....I would say I begg to differ..but if you can argue your point I'll listen...

 

[Ferris Bueller]

What are you thinking is the point of the parable?

Retain the word of God and produce it's fruit.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

Please explain persevering in repentance and believing.

To continue.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

But you don’t consider yourself a mature Christian yet?

14The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 15But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.​

Life's worries, riches, and pleasures are not choking out the word of God in my heart. I'm retaining the word of God and producing a crop in perseverance. So, according to the passage above, am I immature, or mature?

 

[Ferris Bueller]

And what I’m saying is that, in the church, even in the early church in Corinth and Galatia, there are nominal Christians and true Christians. That it is not conclusive that those who are said to have fallen away are true Christians or includes true Christians.

It's very clear that he is talking to born again church members......

now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! Galatians 4:9-10​

 

[Ferris Bueller]

For as I have pointed out, true Christians, if they fall away, it is impossible for them to be brought back to repentance.

Ultimately, yes.

 

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
Of course, but not because that is what saves them.

You know...well.....I would say I begg to differ..but if you can argue your point I'll listen...

You must go to the word of God and there you listen what God have to say. I’ll share to you my thoughts here which I learned from my reading of God’s words in scriptures.

Salvation of any man is by grace. God saves him through faith in Him and in Jesus Christ whom He sent. Man have tried, even perhaps their best effort, to attain to everlasting life, by various ways and means, but to no avail. They ever failed and fall short. Why man fails is testified and told us in scriptures. There are many reasons why. But to sum those up, I’d say it’s pride and greed and selfishness.

Tong
R3009

 

[Tong2020]

Tong2020 said: ↑
What are you thinking is the point of the parable?

Retain the word of God and produce it's fruit.

That sounds good. However, that is not the point of the parable, at least in my reading.

Tong
R3010