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This is indeed a great comparison. Piety is based on righteousness whereas purity is about holiness...being pure as God is pure...or perfect as God is perfect. Piety is what we bring to holiness...leaving room for things that are above and beyond us....making room for God. Humbling ourselves...

I think it's important to see the distinction between maturity and purity. We work out maturity over time...but purity is a gift of God by grace through faith. Entering into the kingdom realm means we are being empowered to walk as Jesus walked...without sin. The blood of Jesus cleanses from ALL...

I think organized dogmatic religion takes away from the kind of spiritual intimacy that God seeks with us. It was Bono who said something like... once the Holy Spirit leaves the room, religion takes over. Holiness is about being swept up into God's presence...so that we are two places at...

Jesus said, they that are not against us are for us. Gandhi did more Christian things...with great courage...than most modern believers even think is possible. Yet while he followed Christ in his own way...living as if Jesus was real and worthy of obedience, he never claimed to be part of the...

The irony in your statements is that only the self-righteous seek to take away the righteousness of the righteous. God justifies. But a dogmatic religion MUST condemn all who are not similarly conditioned. If you take away the judgmentalism of dogmatic religion the whole rotten structure comes...

I'm agreeing with the verse about the high calling which is to put on Christ...who is already holy. Putting on Christ means putting on HIS holiness and HIS perfection. It is..."no longer I". No learning there...just watching and experiencing...on that level. I think most people have received an...

You will always be able to find something contradictory when there is no understanding of the difference between righteousness and holiness. Why do so many only see the negative things in their context of a comparison to holiness when no one seems to walk there? We will be judged according to...

That is how Luther lays it out. ...yes. But Paul? No. Once a person gets Luther's ideas into one's head...it becomes too easy to fail-safe to that level of doctrine. If we want to progress further into the higher walk...we need to let go whatever encourages us to remain eating samples of grace...

This is error. The HOLY don't sin. The righteous sin...as the bible teaches. There is none righteous that never sin. A righteous man acknowledges his sins...and therefore God can forgive him. God justifies the repentant heart....declaring it just. Go back to the bible and do an honest...

I think we can get into a kind of circular reasoning about this...one that doesn't take into account the whole counsel of God. When Jesus said...I came NOT to call the righteous to repentance....most modern believers thinks he meant "self-righteous". But this is the opposite of what it means...

Amen. God calls sinner to repentance, and draws the righteous into the higher walk. Jesus didn't come to call the righteous to repentance....those that are well don't need a doctor.

That seems more like human identity. Spiritual identity has to be in comparison to the life that is in Christ. Have you experienced eternal consciousness through the new birth of Christ?

We all begin our physical lives here as a helpless child. Without our parents we could do nothing. As we got older we developed a means to cope with, and even thrive in, this world. We tend toward independence. How strange then to be told by the Lord to go back to our helpless state..being...

The Israelites would have seen a bull (representing power) not a calf, as something to venerate. The Hebrews tended to make fun of false gods. Like Beelzebub....which means "lord of the flies" (basically dung that attracts flies). So then a derogatory way to portray the "sacred bull" idolatry is...

Spiritual balance is very hard to achieve. If we are "doing" what we ought to do ...we don't need to claim to "be" anything at all. in fact, it's an ego trap to claim to be anything. As Jesus said...we should not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. Sometimes trying to "be"...

My job is to faithfully report the truth that has been shown to me by God. Whether people receive that as something good or something evil is not my concern. God quickens those He wants...but it is by the "foolishness" of preaching that the gospel message is spread. In the church it is through...

Nice conversation. I changed my tack because it wasn't working. My purpose here is not to be right or force the truth on people. I merely responded in the same way I felt that certain people needed. I have been on the forum for a long time...and I have tried every conceivable way to get through...

I have already posted the key to understanding the parables. You can always look for that thread. The Ego-centric gospel sees the man in the cited parable as a person reading the bible, declaring themselves "born-again", and in so doing becoming immunized to the truth at any real depth..and...

Hi Rev. :) I notice how thoughtful of a process you are laying out in your post. And most believers won't interact with you since most of them are satisfied with the evidence already received...whether that be an explicit faith in God or because of a dogmatic stance that conforms to what they...

I never said it was not for us. It was not written directly to us. Paul was addressing real people then, people that he knew, with real lives and real experiences. Although people here will whine and rail against an actual experience and intimacy with God...the bible comes to us by that very...