Great! Thank you. God be praised!
Yeah, there's always a 'but' coming. Hey. GrailHunter. Nobody ~ nobody ~ is saying that. That's a heresy called antinomianism ~ something I've said at least three times, here ~ and to my knowledge, no one is advocating that in any way.
Great! So you are a "OSAS" too! That's great, because that's clearly what the Bible teaches. But that is not to be seen as some kind of license to sin, to "sin all we want," or even at all. Like you said, sin is sin, and words mean things. Of course!
Dude. Listen:
Once we are saved ~ once we have been born again of the Spirit, then we are
of God, rather than of you-know-who. So then our
desires ~ because we have been given a new nature/heart ~ are
to please God, and
to not sin, not for our own sake but for His! So we
strive against sin. So we are not still sinners in the sense that we don't willfully go on sinning.
However, because of we are still in this fallen world and
still not perfect (and actually far from it), we are still prone to sin. We can't,
in this life, escape that, as Paul laments in Romans 7.
But
because we are in Christ ~ we have been born again and are seated with Him in the heavenly places, as Paul says in Ephesians 2 ~ there is now therefore (because we have been saved)
no more condemnation ~
consequences, yes, but no more
condemnation ~ for sin for those who are in Christ Jesus, as Paul says in Romans 8:1.
NOTE: Regarding consequences, I hope you know as well as I do that God disciplines those whom He loves, even as a father disciplines his son, and through this discipline we are blessed by the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:5; Psalm 94:12; Proverbs 3:12; Hebrews 12:4-11; Revelation 3:19)!
And by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in us ~ His work that we call sanctification ~ we
are being made perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, as James 1:4 says... like Christ. And God will bring this good work to completion at the day of Christ (Philippians 1:6).
Surely you see this; I know you can. So yes, there is nothing in the Bible that intimates even slightly that "we can sin all we want and still go to heaven." The very idea of "sinning all one wants" itself is indicative of
being an unbeliever and not in Christ and that God is not at work, by His Spirit, in that person at all, but rather God has, as Paul puts it in Romans 1, given them up to dishonorable passions, to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. And these folks are, as Paul puts it in Romans 9:22, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction whom God endures with much patience.
And why does He do this? Well, as Paul goes on to say in Romans 9:23-24, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory ~ even us whom He has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.
I appreciate your thoughts. And I wholeheartedly appreciate all your Scriptural citations, but they fit perfectly with what I have just said. Scripture agrees with itself, you know.
Grace and peace to you!
