Hi haz,
Excuse my probable misuse of the term 'OP'.
What I meant was under the topic 'Sinless Perfection', you said, in regards to some examples of bad behaviors/lifestyles:
" I have no idea how to weigh these things in eternal terms."
I was questioning how such thinking about the gospel applies when 'sin' was dealt with on the cross?
Sin was dealt with on the cross from
God's point of view, but it is not dealt with in our lives
until we have accepted His terms through which we may enter a relationship with Him.
This is why Paul wrote:
2 Corinthians 5:20
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech [you] by us: we pray [you] in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.
And:
1 Corinthians 5:1 It is reported commonly [that there is] fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as
named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
Before going further with this narrative, I want you to see the Mosaic Law equivalent.
Leviticus 20:11 And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness:
both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.
Deuteronomy 22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die,
[both] the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
1 Corinthians 5:3 - 5 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, [concerning] him that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your glorying [is] not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? 7 Purge out therefore the old leaven...'
I hope that you can see Paul is not in any confusion as to the issues at hand in that situation.
He is not talking about a man and woman who are free to commit themselves to each other to become one flesh and remain one flesh. He is talking about the younger man's fornication, which also consists of adultery against his father's marriage, causing his father's wife to break wedlock with (commit adultery against) her husband. This is all
very serious. This young man gave his father grounds to divorce his wife, entirely through walking in the flesh instead of the Spirit. This sin had deeply damaging, life-changing consequences for
two other people.
Do you see that?
1 Corinthians 5:11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous,
or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
Paul says the man's local assembly of which he is/was part, is to
discipline both him, and themselves also, through repentance. We know he means repentance, from verses in his following epistle to them, when he says:
2 Corinthians 7:9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance:
for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.
What do you think he means by 'that ye might receive damage by us in nothing'? Please answer.
Later in the same epistle he exhorts others thus (to repent and get right with God):
2 Corinthians 12:21 [And] lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and [that] I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.
Through this correspondence from Paul, we see that sins committed after first receiving Christ have to be dealt with appropriately both in relationship to the people they affect, and in relationship with God, having an understanding of the eternal consequences should repentance (and thereby, a change in behaviour), not have been sought by the man who had sinned in that way.
My comment which you quoted from Sinless Perfection, was put in two contexts: 1) that in giving an example of the sin, the potential narrative is incomplete. This is in keeping with Mark's example of wanting to know whether one sin condemns a Christian eternally. Unless we know how they behaved after they sinned, how can we begin to suggest the eternal outcome? Ezekiel 18 offers direction, but the Holy Spirit is not in view in Eze 18, and He may be - if all my examples were of Christians. 2) In the end, the only person with the whole overview of an individual's life and heart, is Jesus Christ, and my first priority is the salvation of my own soul; as Paul said 'a conscience void of offence toward God and men'. Acts 24:16.
The great difference between the Atonement made with the blood of animals, and the Atonement made by the blood of Jesus Christ, is that there was no clearing of the whole conscience under the Mosaic law. All the apostles comment on this in the NT.
Thus, it is not biblical theology to separate the experience of a clear conscience in the believer, from the Atonement made by Christ.
In the same way, it is not bibical theology to talk of the Atonement made by Christ once in history, for the redemption of all creation, as if its benefits can all be imputed to the believer free from any respons(ibility) on the believer's part to show by walking in newness of life (the resurrection of Jesus Christ at work in his heart being outworked through his body Rom 6:4) that he is now free from the power of sin as well as forgiven.
If he sins again, he must repent, (have a change of heart towards that behaviour) and when he knows he has been forgiven, live differently from his heart. This is the application of the gospel to the individual's life, without which it is fair to question his salvation. Why? Because Paul is clear in Romans 6 that
if we are reckoning ourselves dead to sin, the consequence of yielding our bodies (members) to righteousness, is the production of
non-
sinful actions leading to eternal life. He calls it fruit unto God - holiness.
Here is what Paul said about the difference between the Mosaic law with regard to conscience, and the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ.
Acts 13:39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
By this we see that even under the law of Moses, there was a genuine longing in the hearts of those trying to keep it - created by the awareness of sin which it brought - to be delivered from both the contol of the fallen nature, and, the consciousness of past sins.
It is utter nonsense to talk of being freed from the consciousness of sins one has not yet committed. God is not so daft. He is the rawest, keenest, most piercingly primitive realist about the state of the human soul, and because of that, He give His own blood to redeem us from death and forgive us our sins. This redemption is the very opposite of a carte blanche to sin.