Sinless Perfection?

[Xian Pugilist]

There is nothing to discuss,perfection in the flesh is a lie created by liars,told by liars and believed by liars

Then Paul is a liar and shouldn't be in the Canon. You got GREAT positions on that position since Paul said...

He and others WERE perfect.
That he taught different things to the perfect than the not yet perfect,
that his job was to prepare us to be perfect when Christ returned.

The problem is, you freak out over the word PERFECT and don't take the time to learn what it means....

 

[Rach1370]

Hi Rach,

As I've read this page, although there is much I could comment on, one thing has stood out (from your posts).
I don't believe these 'thoughts' are from you (or your new heart). And I believe you should stop taking ownership of them, while at the same time asking the Lord to bring to your attention any blindspots or issues which have made you vulnerable to attitudes which accommodate such thoughts.

Hey Dragonfly! No, I don't believe they come from my new heart either...don't think I implied that I did. My new heart shies away from such things and wants them gone. It's my new heart (and the holy spirit) that makes me aware such things are not good or godly, and to grow away from them.
My point was that even though we have been born again, shadows of our old selves linger, and would pull us back into slavery should we take our eyes off Jesus and stop walking with him. Not that I am implying that we can gain or loose our salvation by our acts...good or bad. But we see the idea of 'slipping' back into old bad habits, or new bad ones, in Galatians...1:6; 2:4,11-14; 3:1-3; 4:8-20; 5:1-10.
No one is perfect in and of themselves, even born again people. In God's eyes, under Christ's blood we are seen that way, but we cannot just live life pretending that everything we say and do is now perfect. To do that rids us of any and all responsibility and in doing so does away with the need to 'put these things to death'.

No I didn't miss the point. I added some colossians 2 flavor to it. Which is talking about people naming other's sins and enforcing sins like don't say this, don't eat/drink that, don't touch this.... blah blah blah which miss the point of the Gospel.

So, according to you the gospel means not just freedom from sin...but freedom to do whatever we want. Take what we want, sleep with who we want, think what we want and interpret scripture however we want.
Do you think that when scripture (and therefore Christians) say 'don't covet' or 'don't sleep around before you're married' that we're about enforcing miserable laws?? Laws, that according to the bible itself, we cannot possibly hope to keep?
You are missing the point. The bible doesn't call such things sin, and call us to stop them just because God wants us white knuckling it through life with a blandness that approaches tofu. Sin=slavery which = misery, despair and eventual death. Following God, however...stopping all this sin = joy and wonder and freedom.
I don't say "stop sleeping around you dirty so and so's"...I say you're harming your souls and leeching away happiness and the true bonding of two people that God intended for marriage.

you said>>>>>>Now, if you want to get picky....sure...maybe (and that's a really big maybe) you could argue that if 2 people sleep together they are 'married' in God's eyes, but I think that's a seriously faulty premise<<<<<<<<<<<<

No, that is how Christ defined it to the woman at the well. Once they have joined they are one flesh is how the OT pictured it as well as the Jewish tradition etc... I just offered some Biblical concepts to help broaden your view and pull more Bible into it. Sorry.

No, it most certainly is not how Jesus defined it to the woman at the well. The passage goes:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:16-18 ESV)

The woman had had five husbands who had either died or divorced her. When Jesus says the one you now have is not your husband, he implies that merely living together does not constitute a marriage. A marriage requires some kind of official sanction and public ceremony at which a man and woman commit to the obligations of marriage and the community then recognizes that a marriage has begun (see John 2:1; also Song 3:11; Mal 2:14; Matt 9:15). Sexual relationships prior to marriage where without question thought to be morally wrong (1 Corinthians 7:2, 7:9; 1 Thess 4:3).

you said>>>>>>> But fine, say you want to argue that...how many people today do you know of, who don't get married, but then go on to be faithful to the single person for the remainder of their days?<<<<<<<<<<<

Irrelevant, has nothing to do with what is a sin or not.

Wrong, it's not irrelevant...or at least to the argument you were supporting. You said that if 2 people sleep together, they are then 'married in the eyes of God', regardless if they went to the commitment and bother to hold an official wedding ceremony where they showed to man and God they were covenanting together.
My point was this....if that is so, and just sleeping with someone makes them married, then there are a lot of people around who have more than one spouse. Which would bring us to another verse that says that marriage is for one man and one woman.
So you see your premise cannot work....

you said.....If you want to point me towards Col 2 to try and take away scriptural basis for the marriage covenant that God himself instituted and Jesus and Paul reiterated...go ahead, but your missing the mark by quite a distance<<<<<<

That wasn't the point of col 2. Perhaps you should have read and pondered the point. Or not. I didn't mean to stir so much headache. sorry.

you said>>>>>>>>>
Peas and carrots. I'm not mixing them up, they go together if a Christian is genuine. Anyone can admit that they've done something wrong, even unsaved people. They might even say 'sorry'...but confession means nothing unless it comes hand in hand with biblical repentance.<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Well 1 john 1:8-10 disagrees but clearly that doesn't matter to you. So I'm not sure how to behave here. Confession isn't repentance. They are totally different things. You confess until you have repented. After you have repented you'll never make that confession again because you'll never cross that line again.

You said I should read Col 2 in regards to people 'making up rules'. The topic of conversation was if sex outside marriage was a sin or not, you pointed me to Col. If your point was not that I was 'making up a rule that God endorses the marriage covenant he set up himself'...then I boggle to think what your point was...because clearly it came out of left field.

1 John 1:8-10 talks about people denying they have sin, and that those who do deny it, are liars. I wonder how it can disagree with me when I was saying that we do, in fact, sin, and that we need to repent. How does it disagree with me, when the next passage says this:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (1 John 2:1 ESV)

But in regards to the 'confession and repenting' going together, I fail to see how 1 John speaks to that at all. It seems rather straight forward and simple to me. If you have confession by itself, you have nothing. Saying "oh yeah...that was probably wrong", doesn't really get you anywhere, does it? If you have someone throwing out an 'sorry' when they don't really think or admit they've done something wrong...again, that means nothing. But if you have someone saying, 'wow...that thing I just did was really wrong....I'm very sorry I did that and hurt you", then you have something....may we even call it biblical repentance?

I never said I was perfect. Are you always going to ignore the point and try to make it personal? How "christian" of you? Whether I am or not is irrelevant. I've never raised from the three day death either, and I will still teach resurrection. Is that a problem for you?

you said>>>>>>>>>>Riiight. So, that's why Paul and the other authors of the NT spend so much time telling us to repent if and when we sin, move forward towards Christ, grow away from our old selves. It would also explain how Peter and Barnabas were found in sin by Paul (in Galatians), and how Paul himself claims to still sin:<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Paul said he was perfect too Rach. Phil 3. Why do you ignore the parts you don't like? That thing that he struggled with, apparently in romans 7 that makes him do what he doesn't want to do blah blah..... he said he no longer had it, flesh, in 7:5. You have some dilemmas to work through.

Funny, I thought I was addressing the point. And disagreeing with someone isn't "making it personal". It's very simple....you say you are without sin. Being without any sin means one is perfect. The bible says that no one but Jesus is perfect. So my question merely begs you to show me the impossible. You see, I am much more likely to take God's word through scripture over that of someone I don't know, who claims to be perfect.

I'm sorry....Paul said he was perfect?? After he admitted he sinned and was the 'foremost' of sinners? After he called Peter out of sinning? Please provide the exact verse where "Paul said he was perfect"...because I don't think it exists. Certainly not in Philemon. And I find it strange that you claim he 'rid his flesh' several verses before he claims to STILL SIN!
Look, this is not personal...how can it be, I don't know you at all. This is purely about truth...what the bible is saying. You clearly think the bible is saying one thing, I think you are very, very mistaken. In fact I can't manage to see how you find anything in these verses that support your point. I don't mind being wrong...in fact, I love the times that God reveals to me something...the wonder that this new truth shows in my life!! But He always lets me know of the areas I need to grow in by casting doubt on my understanding of things. Here, there is no doubt, at all, and there are just some things that cannot be pulled out of scripture, no matter how we distort, twist or mutilate it.
This reply has already gone on to long, so I won't be answering the rest of your post. But I must say that I am not upset...not at all. But the truth must be stood up for and error pointed out. It's not up to me ultimately to lead you to truth, God must do that...but we are called to 'teach sound doctrine and contend for the faith'. So, that's what I've done.

 

[Strat]

Then Paul is a liar and shouldn't be in the Canon. You got GREAT positions on that position since Paul said...

He and others WERE perfect.
That he taught different things to the perfect than the not yet perfect,
that his job was to prepare us to be perfect when Christ returned.

The problem is, you freak out over the word PERFECT and don't take the time to learn what it means....

Perfect can also mean mature,mature people need forgiveness as well.

 

[dragonfly]

Hi XP,

Sin=slavery which = misery, despair and eventual death. Following God, however...stopping all this sin = joy and wonder and freedom.
I don't say "stop sleeping around you dirty so and so's"...I say you're harming your souls and leeching away happiness and the true bonding of two people that God intended for marriage.

You can't get to God avoiding sin. You can avoid sin and run away from God. The only way to get to God is learning to love. 1 john 4:16-18/ matt 5:43-48.

No, it most certainly is not how Jesus defined it to the woman at the well. The passage goes:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:16-18 ESV)

The woman had had five husbands who had either died or divorced her.

So you will avoid the obvious that would be straight with Jewish tradition (Jesus was a jew who grew up in and used pictures from that Jewish tradition....) that joining sexually is becoming one, which is a marriage, and make up some possiblility of divorced or died or whatever when there is NOTHING ANYWHERE to suggest that. Heheheh, I should go teach Algebra to third graders, probably be more on the same page.

When Jesus says the one you now have is not your husband, he implies that merely living together does not constitute a marriage.

I am glad you are in the mind of GOD and HE sent you to interpret His canon.

A marriage requires some kind of official sanction and public ceremony at which a man and woman commit to the obligations of marriage and the community then recognizes that a marriage has begun (see John 2:1; also Song 3:11; Mal 2:14; Matt 9:15).

John 2:1 noted there was a marriage ceremony doesn't say the ceremony was necessary.
Songs has "wedding" in the verse but doesn't support your claim.
Mal 2:14 says he had a wife, that he had an agreement, but nothing about a ceremony. In fact I could use that verse for MY position that was the Jewish Tradition.
matt 9:15 uses a wedding ceremony as an example/metaphor but doesn't say it's required.

So, what's your point?

Sexual relationships prior to marriage where without question thought to be morally wrong (1 Corinthians 7:2, 7:9; 1 Thess 4:3).

So what. That doesn't mean they were not one flesh. When you put the pieces together you have one. When they join sexually and swap fluids, they are one. If a child came forth that is proof they are one.

Wrong, it's not irrelevant...or at least to the argument you were supporting. You said that if 2 people sleep together, they are then 'married in the eyes of God', regardless if they went to the commitment and bother to hold an official wedding ceremony where they showed to man and God they were covenanting together.
My point was this....if that is so, and just sleeping with someone makes them married, then there are a lot of people around who have more than one spouse.

Yeah, an adulterous world, why is that so much for you to accept?
1 Cor 616 Or do you not know that he who is joinedGe2.24\"]4[/url] to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, Mt19.5\"]l[/url]“The two will become one flesh.”
See also Gen 2:24 i think...

Which would bring us to another verse that says that marriage is for one man and one woman.
So you see your premise cannot work....

That doesn't interfere with the premise in any way. It says it would be inappropriate to have more than one wife, LIKE SOLOMON was so sure to stick to one wife..... :|
I really really feel you are more interested in being right and a know it all than discussing.

If I may begin with the last line which I've quoted from you, you are not 'discussing' your points at all, though they may be all valid thought. The way your excellent posts read, your well-considered interpretations are offered in seriously declamatory tone in places. Don't be so surprised when a declamatory tone is returned to you. :huh:

Now on an even more positive note, I 'hear' what you're saying about two people becoming one flesh without a ceremony........ but that would not be a Jewish marriage, which had been preceded by a period of unconsummated espousal complete with contract (of marriage).

It is this - the contract - which you have not mentioned once. But it was a necessary part of the marriage procedure, and each wife of one man would have been married to him with a contract. That's why God carefully lays out the terms of divorce, within the law. God does this for slaves and captives. Interesting, eh?

If they have rights from God, then what does a freeborn woman have? She has at least the same rights as the other (perhaps, lesser-in-status) wives.

Moving back to an early comment you made about Rach's assumptions of what the woman at the well had experienced, I think you were a bit to quick to make light of the fact that Jesus accepted she had had five husbands. That meant she had had five marriage contracts. I know she was Samaritan, but there were many similarities in culture.

And the fact that the man she now had was not 'her husband' could mean several things. It could mean that she had not been divorced from her fifth husband (ie, no 'bill of divorcement'), or, that she had no contract of marriage with her current partner, or, that she had left her husband for her current partner, and actually her husband wanted her back. In other words, she may have been an adulteress in the terms Paul describes at the beginning of Romans 7.

I don't want to argue about these points. I'm just making you aware they need to be added to your congitations.

 

[Xian Pugilist]

I praise Jesus for delivering me from this body of sin and death, giving me to now walk in newness of Life transformed and breathed new Life in Christ, serving righteousness without sin! Yea!

Why do you assume since Paul was delivered you are now? According to Paulian theology, if you still have the sinful nature, you aren't yet delivered from that body.

Hi XP,


If I may begin with the last line which I've quoted from you, you are not 'discussing' your points at all, though they may be all valid thought.

I'll start here as well. Yes, I was. After I had been told I said things I hadn't said, and what I had said was flat out ignored, when it wasn't misrepresented, and then some personal comments made, I went out of my way to make the point solid and flip the behavior back at it's origins. If you don't like how I said it, I'd ask you to consider I don't like being ignored, misrepresented, told I said things I didn't, or that I believe things that I don't. If you are going to get on a soapbox and tell me I'm wrong, I'm cool with that, but when you don't show it you just lambast me, EVEN IF IT IS THROUGH PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE SMILES, it's not a behavior that is appropriate nor that I will suffer with no response. So, let's keep apples in the apples cart, k?

The way your excellent posts read, your well-considered interpretations are offered in seriously declamatory tone in places.

I appreciate the thought behind it, but please don't patronize me. I started off conversant. When it was declared I was wrong for reasons I didn't hold or for things I didn't say, then,.... yes, I got to declamatory status. I find it odd, people are OK with someone committing those offenses but against someone defending against them in kind. One of the true ironies/hypocricies of the Christian Chat Forums.

Don't be so surprised when a declamatory tone is returned to you. :huh:

Then, if you believe this, you should not be griping at me, but who I responded to.

Now on an even more positive note, I 'hear' what you're saying about two people becoming one flesh without a ceremony........ but that would not be a Jewish marriage, which had been preceded by a period of unconsummated espousal complete with contract (of marriage).

No one said it would be. I hope we can stick to what I said.

It is this - the contract - which you have not mentioned once. But it was a necessary part of the marriage procedure, and each wife of one man would have been married to him with a contract. That's why God carefully lays out the terms of divorce, within the law. God does this for slaves and captives. Interesting, eh?

No, it's a stretch and missing the point. How does this deal with scripture that says ONE FLESH is married. And if you bump uglies with someone you are ONE FLESH, thus married. AND how do you explain this same process occuring in varying ways in cultures that never HEARD of the God of Abraham, OR in cultures that were marrying before Moses and Abraham were born? Before the first part of the Bible were written, people in cultures impossibly far away to have been influenced by the biblical stories were being married.

HOW does this mean, that marriage is defined by a faith, that didn't define it until after others were being married?

If they have rights from God, then what does a freeborn woman have? She has at least the same rights as the other (perhaps, lesser-in-status) wives.

What does that have to do with if you have sex with someone, with no ceremony, you are one flesh. Thus you are married. Thus if I were living with my wife, but we weren't married by the State and didn't hold that license I'm married under God, not living in sin?

Moving back to an early comment you made about Rach's assumptions of what the woman at the well had experienced, I think you were a bit to quick to make light of the fact that Jesus accepted she had had five husbands. That meant she had had five marriage contracts.

No, I didn't make light of it. I made the argument that assuming it was five marriage contracts is NOT THE ONLY CONCLUSION so it's not an absolute as it was presented. So you come to stand by your friend, which is admirable and try to defend everything, but you dont assess, nor address, the reasoning I presented. I find this pointless at that point.

I know she was Samaritan, but there were many similarities in culture.

And the fact that the man she now had was not 'her husband' could mean several things. It could mean that she had not been divorced from her fifth husband (ie, no 'bill of divorcement'), or, that she had no contract of marriage with her current partner, or, that she had left her husband for her current partner, and actually her husband wanted her back. In other words, she may have been an adulteress in the terms Paul describes at the beginning of Romans 7.

I don't want to argue about these points. I'm just making you aware they need to be added to your congitations.

If I hadn't done so already, and made statements that preempted most of what you said,......

I think this is a tangent that deserves it's own thread.

ONE comment I made as an aside has become the topic. I don't care what you and Rach believe a sin is. That's between you and God. I find it unnecessarily oppressing to make believe things are sins that aren't as they do nothing to the substance of a relationship with God. That's the point in Col 2.