Dogmatic Certainties

[aspen]

When you follow both the Holy Spirit and the word of God you are set free from any ideological prison or circular reasoning that most modern believers get caught up in. People prefer dogmatic beliefs to a living faith. They prefer what is familiar to all things becoming new...and continuing to be new. People like the familiar so they ALWAYS go in circles. The circles of comfort and familiarity. But this is NOT being led by the Spirit.

And nobody can relate to you UNLESS you opt for a pre-existing ideological orbit around which people can still be at the center of. Who wants to break with the carnal order to be connected to God? The price is too unsettling for the vast majority of us..

Protestantism is based on dialectic reasoning

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Do you see justification as something that God does once in your life, or do we return to Him for fresh justification as needed?

Much love!

Ah, here we go!
The bible is a story of men going to God and going away from God. He often said, return to Me and I will heal you, give you back all you have lost, be merciful, etc.

Examine even just yourself. Do you go away from trust in Him and again back to trusting Him when you realize what you have done?

 

[marks]

Ah, here we go!
The bible is a story of men going to God and going away from God. He often said, return to Me and I will heal you, give you back all you have lost, be merciful, etc.

Examine even just yourself. Do you go away from trust in Him and again back to trusting Him when you realize what you have done?

So then justification is gained and lost as your faith waxes and wanes? I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, just to understand your view.

I see justification as God rendering us not guilty. I see this as happening under the old covenant as sins are covered by sacrifices, and when they would come in faith to God, like you said, confess, to say the same as God, agree with Him about their sin, they would be justfied, that is, declared not guilty of their sin.

Under the old covenant, this would be gained and lost, like Ezekiel 18, the righteous man who does evil, his righteousness is forgotten.

But that is his righteousness.

In being recreated as in the new covenant, reborn, again referring to Ephesians 4, our "new man" is created in God's Own pattern, in righteousness and true holiness. This is righteousness and holiness imparted to us by virtue of a new creation.

Not being our own righteousness, it is not gained or lost once given. I know many will disagree with me here.

The difference is in being accepted on the basis of my righteousness, but I falter, or being accepted based on Jesus' righteousness, which does not falter.

2 Timothy 2
11 It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:
12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:
13 If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

If we believe not, this is literally, If we are being faithless, present active, if that's us right now, yet He remains faithful, and in fact it's His faith in us that matters,

Galatians 2
19 For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
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.
21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

By the faith OF the Son of God, this is His faith, by which I live, just like the Septuagint translation of Habakkuk, the just, by My faith, they live.

Much love!

 

[Helen]

The irony is that they who don't claim they have talking bibles that speak to them...can be justified. It's the religious ones who claim their bibles are justifying them....the ones who are deluded into thinking the bible speaks to them...these are not justified.

We have a generation of brainwashed ideologues who are exhibiting a psychological pathology...which is passing for a living faith.

People are taking "the bible told me so" way too far. The bible as a narrative...while true...does not involve us. It is the Spirit that gives life.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

So then justification is gained and lost as your faith waxes and wanes? I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, just to understand your view.

God says a man believed and trusted God (had faith in God) and God counted the man as righteous because of his faith. So, what then would happen if the man did not continue in trust but instead turned away from it and back to trust in something else, say...trust in the worlds wisdom or in his own strength or abilities, for example?

You said earlier, well yes, of course I have wavered in my trust and have failed in it at times. So have I. We are talking about the righteousness that is by faith. We are also talking about a race of faith. When we turn away from trust, does God count a man as righteous because of his lack of trust?

This is all training, learning the obedience of trust. He takes us from trust to trust. From faith to faith. Have you ever heard anyone say how righteousness is a moving target? This is like saying...what makes a parent happy with a child is a moving target. When a parent is pleased with a baby even though the baby soils itself, will that same parent be pleased if that baby is 5 years old and still souls himself? Why not? The target to aim for to please the parent got moved. The parent wants the child to move from one growth to the next growth. From mastery of one thing to mastery of the next thing. What pleases the parent is a moving target.

God is like this too. He keeps moving the target. So what pleased Him when you were first born from above will not please Him if you dont grow more trusting. More is expected of you.

I believe this training in righteousness and learning the obedience of faith is to make us meet for His use and to move us into holiness.

 

[ScottA]

I am trying to connect with brothers. But there is something un-brotherly in the way...a lack of honesty and transparency. There is a great deal of false doctrine, brainwashing and dogmatic triumphalism that has spoiled the church. But many cling to that as if it was of God rather than from men...or worse....the enemy. So the churches have been fully infiltrated...if not by one false spirit...then another one that does an equal damage...but in another way. And there is so little discernment that each can justify itself against the other. The far right fundamentalist fascist churches attack the far left neo-marxist post modernist churches...and vice versa. Politics is from the devil...divide and conquer. But few know about that. Most "believers" are fooled by politics and are no wiser than anyone else in the world.

So maybe you yourself can't perceive that. We are all in play here. Nevertheless there is a depth of understanding that exceeds the common and shallow religious rhetoric that passes for theology in today's fallen churches. it blows the doors off it, really!

I concur.

And, believe me, I am not saying that what goes on is okay. I just recognize that there are actually two problems: 1) everything you said, and 2) the temptation to blame each other in tit-for-tat squabbling and standoffs within the family of God.

You mentioned politics, and I hesitate to make the comparison...but it is quite comparable. While it is absolutely terrible that one side seems to be completely fine without reconciling scripture with scripture and breaking all the rules, but name-drops only their own favored verses thinking they have every right to claim righteousness and truth...I just know that we are no better if we take up the same sword. But don't get me wrong, I am all for turning over a few tables now and then and calling woe. It just makes sense to remember that, however misguided, they might be brothers. Somehow, we need to find the balance of speaking the truth in love.

I suspect that those who do not, will not live up to "good and faithful", but rather, good but not faithful, as many do with the law and also with scripture.

 

[ScottA]

Protestantism is based on dialectic reasoning

I would say it was rather based on conviction in the spirit, and 1500 years of wake up calls.

 

[bbyrd009]

The pearl is that relationship we can have with Christ.

He said, with complete confidence

 

[stunnedbygrace]

I agree with these things.

The one thing I would say here is that a true and saving faith in Christ will in fact endure through to the end, little ups and downs notwithstanding, as we've been united to God, and recreated a new person.

Much love!

Well...there are many warnings for us. We should take them to heart. God saved some people before us but then later became displeased with them because they refused to keep trusting Him. They trusted Him for the big thing, stepping under the wall of water. Then, for 40 years, they refused to trust Him in anything else, including temporal matter s.

Paul was very clear, as clear, I think, as anyone could have been when He drew a parallel between we who have been saved and Israel who had been saved, when he said:who did God become displeased with? Wasn't it those He had saved?

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Who said anything about destroying them...?

 

[aspen]

I would say it was rather based on conviction in the spirit, and 1500 years of wake up calls.

only if you can prove it

 

[ScottA]

only if you can prove it

What proof is needed that the Holy Spirit moves in the hearts of men?

 

[Enoch111]

Well...there are many warnings for us. We should take them to heart.

Not according to the title of this thread and the OP. Christians are supposed to be mired in uncertainties (just like the rest of the world).

You are one of those who gave this is "Like": "And nobody can relate to you UNLESS you opt for a pre-existing ideological orbit around which people can still be at the center of."

So Christian truth is likened to any other ideology, which means that the warnings of Scripture are also a part of that ideology (which evidently should be shunned, according to the Gnostics among us). Do you see how subtly this thread is tring to undermine biblical Christianity (which is indeed dogmatic)?

 

[Mike Waters]

Great thread Episkopos. (spoiled only by those for whom "the hat fits").

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Paul . . .

1 Corinthians 10
5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
9 Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.

Overthrown, fell, destroyed.

We are disciplined, which is to train as you would a child, discipled instead of punished.

Even so, it's a serious warning. The thread sharing supernatural experiences, these who walked between what I think were 200 ft walls of water, everything else, and even still this is what happened!

And the purpose of this passage is to modify our desires. When we internalize this passage into our life, we have to understand that no matter what I had yesterday, visions and miracles (I didn't yesterday), that doesn't mean I can't follow some fleshy lust today.

But we need to know, that whatever the testing/tempting is, it's not to move us into sin, it's to move us towards the good that God wants to do in us.

2 Thessalonians 1
11 Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:
12 That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Much love!

So why were they destroyed for not having faith and when we fail in faith we are not? (Remembering of course that He was patient with them for 40 years as He tried to get them to trust Him.)

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Saved from slavery in Egypt, but not born again.

This is a little aside but I have wondered about it a lot. When Jesus spoke of being born from above by the Spirit and Nicodemus didn't understand, why did Jesus say, how can you be a teacher and not understand this?

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Our covenant is build on better promises.

While they were justified in a judicial sense, as we, our justification is also a new creation. Not just declared by God to be guiltless, but recreated into someone who is guiltless and without sin.

Our sanctification is to take what God gives to us, and put it to use in our lives.

Are we otherwise trying to make ourselves better so God will accept us?

Much love!

I can't say I followed this. God demanded trust from them and He demands trust from us. Why do they get destroyed for their lack of trust and we do not get destroyed for our lack of trust?

 

[stunnedbygrace]

When you say our covenant is built on better promises, is the promise that we will not be destroyed for lack of trust as they were?

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Great conversation, by the way! Thanks.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

I know the standard answer, but I want to think about this fresh . . .

i actually don't even know the standard answer...!