Search results

That's too bad; they can be very helpful. Again, no offense, but this seems a very closed-minded thing to say... So do I... The problem is (at least in certain instances) what someone thinks the Bible states, and/or not fully understanding what the Bible states. It does, and I addressed that...

God is not the author of sin. Do you not understand that we have a dual nature? In other words, our "old man," as Paul calls it, is still with us, even as we are a new creation in Christ. This is why Paul exhorts us to "put off the old man and put on the new." This is what we call "the...

<chuckles> Maybe you think some of us are more powerful than God... <smile> To be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth, yes, 1 Timothy 2:4... know it well... <smile> Sure. I understand the... pointedness... of your question, but... Okay, let me just pose you, personally, this...

Hmmmm... Yes, reading Hebrews 11 would be good... <smile> I'm not really disagreeing, SW, but wouldn't it be more appropriate to consider the faith we have as a motivator, per se? I mean, we have this assurance from God, and the Spirit convicts us of these things not seen, and we are...

God is... a bit... more powerful than any of us. <smile> No, He will. <smile> Right, Philippians 2:13; I pointed that out. Again, though, why can we work out our salvation? Well, because it is God Who is working in us to will and work according to His good pleasure. Think about it...

God grows us toward holiness through a lot of different means, and one is marriage. This is part of what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 7:14... "the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband." And in Ephesians 5:31-32...

Good. <smile> If God has begun a good work in us, He will bring it to completion at the day of Christ (Philippians 1:6). Not 'might,' God's grace, but 'will' ... He WILL bring it to completion at the day of Christ. Yeah that's kind of a clumsy way to put it, really. It is inevitable that we...

<chuckles> We make... good (God-pleasing) choices... with regard to works ~ and do them ~ because we have been born again of the Spirit and thus have this new heart and this salvific faith, which, again, is God's assurance of our salvation and conviction by the Holy Spirit. It might click with...

<chuckles> It is, and it's not ~ in two different senses. Again, we are saved, and we are being saved at the same time. In the former, it's that we have received God's mercy and compassion, and have thus been born again of the Spirit of God... through faith, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. In...

Not "dear," but PinSeeker. :) Or, just a 'yes' would do... :) Well yes, if we didn't believe, that would certainly be outward evidence, both to us and to others, that we don't have God's assurance of things hoped for or conviction by the Holy Spirit of things unseen. Sure. But good works...

There's nothing wrong with that, as long as one does not understand them to be one and the same thing, and that belief is a result of faith ~ God's assurance and conviction by the Spirit. Grace and peace.

Our belief in God... and our will to do His will... is because God has given us new birth by His Spirit, put His Spirit in us. He gives us this new heart, and because that, we come to believe, and to do good works. We are God's workmanship. created for good works (Ephesians 2) Grace and peace...

Well, God doesn't like disobedience from those whom He has adopted, so no in that sense. But if you mean Abraham had the ability to disobey, of course he did. But because God had called Abraham, Abraham's desire... his will... was no longer to disobey God, but to obey Him. You see? His will...

I think what we should do is remember what faith is. Fortunately, God defines that for us... "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Yes, once we have it, it is ours, but the point is that we did not give it to ourselves; we cannot assure...

Marriage is a covenant... between God and husband and wife. In a Christian marriage, it is a calling from God. Husband and wife are called to be "one flesh," as Paul puts it in Ephesians 5, and in that way share an intimacy and a oneness that is likened to the same relationship ~ on a lesser...

Oh my goodness... Grace and peace to you, grafted branch.

Okay, good... Actually, I would say that's a false dichotomy. The proper way to see it is, for we who are saved, who have been born again of the Spirit, we both have been saved and are being saved (so in that sense not yet fully saved) at the same time. Saved ~ having received God's mercy and...

The church and the New Jerusalem are the same thing, ewq1938. Two ways ~ one concrete and the other symbolic ~ of referring to the same thing... the same body (the body of Christ)... see what I did there? ... of folks. Ohhhh, there is... <smile> Just not in the wooden sense that we know it...

Okay, why? And the question there really is twofold... not only "How do you define and back up NOSAS?" but also "How do you define and thus reject OSAS?" Ah, well, I say that if "OSAS" is understood correctly, one's position with regard to the millennium of Revelation 20 has no impact on it...

This gets into the whole ordering... mis-ordering, actually... of the events described in various passages in Revelation 19-21, which I addressed a few posts ago. No one "returns back" to, well, anywhere, much less heaven. The only "leaving" or departing is a) that of Satan, "seen" in...