Johnlove said:
[SIZE=16pt]Read who Jesus said would enter the kingdom of Heaven.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt](Matthew 7:21-23) “It is not those who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, who will enter the kingdom of Heaven but the person who does the will of My Father in Heaven. When the day comes many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?’ Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, you evil men!”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Notice the people who Jesus was talking to were those who had been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Those people were not living God’s will, and he told them they would not enter into heaven.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Now read who Paul said would not enter Heaven.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt](1 Corinthians 6:9-19) “You know perfectly well that people who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God: people of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites, sodomites, thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanders and swindlers will never inherit the kingdom of God.”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Now ask yourself, why would God need to become man if he wanted sinners to live with him forever? If God wanted to live with sinners, he did not need to come hear to defeat Satan/sin.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt](1 John 3:8) “He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work” [/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Notice John tells us that Jesus came to destroy sin. [/SIZE]
Greetings, friend. Thank you for your reply. I have been away, but would like to reply to your comments made to me. I will limit it to these above.
Ist point : Jesus was
not speaking to those who had the gifts of the Spirit but to those who only
claimed to have them. His declaration was
" I never knew you" . His promise was that He and the Father would come and make their home with us. This is fulfilled by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Therefore no one in that category is someone whom He 'never knew'. Never means never. It does not mean 'used to know you'. These are they who
never had a relationship with Jesus. In one place, we see Him knocking at the door of the lukewarm church asking to come into them. They were neither hot, because of no indwelling, and neither cold, because they were followers of Jesus....but without His power or presence, being wretched, blind, poor, miserable, and naked. This is the point of Jesus' statement. John17:3 states that eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son. Those in your quote from Jesus could never have been given eternal life in the first place. It is given by faith. These in the passage were focused on their
own works and accomplishments, not in
His work and accomplishment. They were of works, not faith. The will of the Father is to believe on His Son. We do His will that way. The moral law was never part of that passage. It has to be understood in light of the gospel, not the law.
In relation to your next point, God most certainly does not want sinners in His presence. But His solution has nothing to do with our performance. It has to do with a new identity in Christ. His solution is to make us a new creation that does not nor cannot sin. This is a process that has not yet been completed, but has begun. He does not identify the born again believer according to any sin, but according to the righteousness and obedience of ONE MAN, (refer to Rom.5). Those who are judged by God are recognized according to their sin. Our promise from Jesus is that we will not come under such judgment (John 5:24). We cannot be identifed as sinners. This is because He is the One who is solving the sin issue. Do you really think that He is reduced to depending on us to solve it? That has been proven in the first covenant to be no solution at all. Man cannot change his own nature.
As for your last comment in this quote....agreed. Jesus came to destroy sin. But this is not what you are giving us. You are interpreting things in a way that puts the responsibility on the believer to be the one who destroys his own sin. What this amounts to is that you are telling us that we are given the task that man has failed in doing and that God said He would do.
I will remind you that the very first transgression was that of Lucifer when he determined to leave his God given role and take on his own role and agenda, which is described as sitting on the throne as God Himself. Well, my friend, here is one way we can committ the same transgression: we can attempt to do His job. We can attempt to take on His role. And this my friend is what you are proposing. You are telling us that it is our role to remove sin from our own lives. Furthermore, this is what you insinuate will justify us for eternal life. How in the world then can you also tell us that justification is by faith? Your way is that justification is by works. The tragedy is that you seem to be blind to this.