Uncovering the Devil's Strategy

[Lizbeth]

Does God show mercy to hypocrites? Or does He rebuke them...for their own good? Did the Pharisees think Jesus was merciful? With the merciful God shows mercy. God loves the righteous. But with willful and stubborn sinners He shows wrath. He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

You err in assuming that everyone who is not in the "higher walk" are hypocrites and prideful.

 

[Dash RipRock]

Actually, that doesn't happen.

So you believe if a Christian starts living in sin they are still saved? That's what Charles Stanley taught who was considered to be the leading authority of the false eternal security doctrine crowd who also rejected the whole counsel of God and only believed in a few happy verses.

there would be too many Scriptures made untrue.

The eternal security crowd claim scriptures warning of falling away are lies since they are the cherry pickers among us.

What I'm saying is, you've made up your mind that regeneration can be undone

No, God's Word teaches that if one sins they become corrupt.

The eternal security crowd claims Christians can live in sin and still be saved it's all good up in the hood which is of course why so many of the eternal security crowd lives in sin.

They love to proudly boost in their sinfulness proclaiming that they sin everyday in thought word and deed always quick to proclaim they are SINNERS!

I believe the correct way to understand the Bible is to use those passages with the most direct and clear statements to interpret other passages with more than one possible interpretation.

That's the deception satan has used to trick the eternal security crowd in to rejecting God's warning that those who sow to the flesh reap corruption which is mocking God claiming we do not reap what we sow (Gal 6:7,8)

Salvation is only applicable to those who abide in Christ, but the eternal security crowd claims it's all good if a Christian turns away from the Lord and abides in satan walking in sin after the flesh.

They do this because they have been deceived by the devil in to NOT accepting all of God's Word which ends badly. That's too bad for the eternal security crowd because they have been warned in God's Word.

Just like Adam and Eve, they were warned and they decided to walk with the devil instead of with the Lord. Too bad so sad.

I believe the Holy Spirit is far stronger than that.

OK so it's settled once again. The eternal security crowd believes they can live in sin, in rank rebellion against the Lord and still be saved.

 

[marks]

No, God's Word teaches that if one sins they become corrupt.

I've shared with you what God's word states. You haven't commented on those passages, only giving your reasons for disbelieving them. And that's not good. You should believe the Bible.

You call it "cherry picking", I call it the whole counsel of God. You are "reverse cherry picking" when you deny those passages. But the fact is that they say what they say. And you have to deal with that.

Much love!

 

[marks]

OK so it's settled once again. The eternal security crowd believes they can live in sin, in rank rebellion against the Lord and still be saved.

Don't put your malignant words into my mouth. You apparently don't understand about the things of salvation. I'm here to help you, though I don't expect you to lay down your pride.

Much love!

 

[Dash RipRock]

You apparently don't understand about the things of salvation

I understand what the Lord says in His Word

The eternal security crowd has proven time and time again they don't believe all that the Lord says.

This of course explains why so many of these people live in sin just like those in the world who reject the Lord.

If Christianity became illegal there wouldn't be enough evidence to get convictions on the eternal security crowd!

I'm here to help you, though I don't expect you to lay down your pride.

That's what the demons keep saying. They just want to help people to go from light in to darkness and if one does not believe the deceptions of the demons, they are of course full of pride and arrogance for putting what God says first and not following the devil.

 

[marks]

I understand what the Lord says in His Word

If that were so you would understand what these passages I've shared say. You've never disputed their meaning, you've just ignored them in your replies. Yet the Word of God remains. You cannot dispute them, because they are written so very plainly. All you can do is deny that they say what they say.

Much love!

 

[Episkopos]

You err in assuming that everyone who is not in the "higher walk" are hypocrites and prideful.

More false accusations. At least you are consistent. Anything that is not overly simplistic and dogmatic...you reject. The truth is beyond your grasp.

There are the humble who are called as guests to the wedding feast. But there are the workers of iniquity who make false claims.

 

[Kokyu]

As we know, good exegesis consists of using the inductive method, in taking many scriptures, and deriving a general conclusion from them.

Well, no, not quite. Good exegesis begins in the immediate context of a verse or passage from which one is most certain to derive the best understanding of the verse or passage. Having obtained from this immediate context a proper understanding of a verse or passage, one may expand to the context of the entire book, finding corresponding, qualifying and clarifying statements pertaining to the verse or passage. Finally, one may move to the most general context of a verse or passage, which is the entirety of God's word, drawing from it other corresponding, qualifying and clarifying statements that apply to the verse or passage under study.

When, then, I encounter Christians who try to explain a particular verse or passage by moving immediately to other books entirely from that in which the verse or passage appears, I recognize that they are trying to play fast-and-loose with what the verse/passage is saying. Immediate context is king when it comes to good hermeneutics and any divergence from this rule will inevitably produce interpretive error. There is no rule, though, that I've found that the false teacher wants more to deny/ignore than this one. It too often confounds their false doctrine, you see.

Building a doctrine on only one or two verses or passages which are unclear or not directly related to the issue, compromises the conclusion.’

The whole of Scripture is vital to securing the truth of a particular doctrine, yes, but the meaning of any particular verse or passage is always best understood from its immediate context.

John’s first letter was written to counteract the heresy which was affecting the church and was a treatise for Christians in general as there is no mention of a specific church as was contended by Lampe in his appeal to Theodoret.

John makes no explicit reference to Gnostic heresy in 1 John 1. None. And, actually, he makes no such reference in all of his first letter.

The apostle is declaring to the whole world, his disapprobation of the doctrines maintained by the early or proto Gnostics who taught that Jesus was by birth a mere man but that 'the Christ' descended on Him at His baptism.’ These Gnostics, who taught that man could be righteous in spirit and still sin in the flesh, contended that the apostles had added commandments not given by Christ concerning the doctrine of sanctification. John devotes the greatest part of his epistle to the confirmation and enforcement of his doctrine.

This is entirely supposition, a theory. There is not one explicit reference to "proto-Gnosticism" or to its nascent doctrines in the entirety of 1 John.

1:7 if we say we have no sin (as in Gnosticism, my insert) we deceive ourselves 1:8 but if we confess our sin, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Here John shows where the deceivers depart from the truth. Their teaching was that they had no need of this cleansing, as they did not consider immoral actions as sin due to matter being evil which was escaped through having ‘special’ knowledge and not in keeping God’s law. They maintained that a child of God could still sin and continue to have fellowship with God, a concept which was known as ‘spirit salvation’.

This completely ignores that John repeatedly used "we," "our," and "us" in his remarks in 1 John 1:6-10. Had he been referring to these supposed "proto-Gnostics" in the first chapter of his first epistle, he would surely have used the pronouns "they," or "them," or "those." But these pronouns don't appear even once in the passage in question. Instead, John is carefully fixed upon himself and fellow Christians.

The early fathers on the other hand, taught that we must at least be on the road to theosis or union with Christ and this starts with Purification, or knowledge of the sin within, with the desire that we will be cleansed from all sin not that it might remain within.

It doesn't matter one whit, really, what the "Early Fathers" taught. They had no special dispensation of spiritual insight, no divinely-inspired authority to establish doctrine for the rest of us. They had the Scriptures just as we do and had to apply proper reasoning, sound hermeneutics and prayerful study to God's word just as we do, coming as best they might by these means to a right understanding of it. So, what they had to say about Christian doctrine is interesting, I guess, it's of some historical note, I suppose, but their views are by no means binding on other believers, or even correct, in many instances. This is why there was often such... vivid disagreement among them over doctrine.

We can see that John is comparing walking in the light to walking in darkness that is, walking in the flesh compared to walking in the Spirit. He is describing two different opposing state which corresponds perfectly with the teaching of the Apostle Paul when he talks about the 'carnal' or fleshy, against those who were walking in the Spirit.

This all carefully avoids dealing with what I've pointed out from the text of the passage itself concerning John's use of certain self-inclusive pronouns and the present-continuous tense of his verbs. Your post reminds me very much, actually, of high school students of mine who submitted essays that tried to obscure a lack of understanding of the subject for the essay under a mountain of obfuscating and irrelevant verbiage.

In verses 7 and 9, John says that the benefit of walking in the light are:-



1)We have fellowship with one another in the unity of the Spirit (agreement)

2)By confessing our sins we will be forgiven

3)We will then be cleansed by the blood of Jesus from all unrighteousness and sin.



Whereas if we walk in the flesh:-



1)We are deceived and remain in our sin

2)There is no truth in us

3)We make God a liar by denying our need for cleansing from all sin.

1 John 1:6-10
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;
7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

Where does John use the phrase "walk in the flesh"? Nowhere. Why, then are you using the phrase in explication of his words?

On what basis are our sins forgiven in the present-continuous sense in which John wrote that they would be as we "walk in the Light"? Well, simply refer to verse 9, as I already pointed out. As we "walk in the Light," we are being cleansed in this present-continuous way because we are confessing our sin to God. But this means that while we walk in the Light, there are occasions of sin we will have to confess! This rather puts a huge crimp in the sinless perfection doctrine, it seems to me...

Where in the passage above from 1 John does John write "and remain in our sin"? Again, nowhere. This is your addition to (and contortion of) his words.

As far as I'm concerned, you'll have to do a lot better than you have so far if you want to make your erroneous sinless perfection doctrine even remotely plausible in the light of 1 John 1:6-10.

 

[Lizbeth]

Immediate context is king when it comes to good hermeneutics and any divergence from this rule will inevitably produce interpretive error. There is no rule, though, that I've found that the false teacher wants more to deny/ignore than this one. It too often confounds their false doctrine, you see.

Where is the Holy Spirit in all this, since He is the one leading us into all truth? He is the one we need to be relying on, more than the carnal intellect of man. We need "ears to hear" what the Spirit is saying in the word do we not?. And in scripture, the Lord sometimes changes gear and blurts out something not related to the main context. I'm not saying to ignore context all the time, we generally need to take a whole passage at a time rather than cherry pick and isolate a single verse, but keep in mind that God and the Holy Spirit are not confined to man's literary rules or rules of logic. And we are told to compare spiritual with spiritual....the bible is a spiritual book written for the heart/spirit rather than the carnal intellect.

 

[Lizbeth]

More false accusations. At least you are consistent. Anything that is not overly simplistic and dogmatic...you reject. The truth is beyond your grasp.

There are the humble who are called as guests to the wedding feast. But there are the workers of iniquity who make false claims.

The truth is simple. It has to be since it is only revealed to little children.

Unfortunately you're the one being dogmatic, while I appeal for and see room for mercy and grace for those who haven't yet "attained" but are following the Lord the best they know how up to now, and trying to get where ever He wants them to be. And it is your posts that are full of assumptions, insinuations and false accusations. There is a big contrast between the negative, beat-down approach I usually see here and the encouraging, UP-lifting, faith building approach of other witnesses...........it's supposed to be for the JOY that is set before us, no? Someone needs to set the JOY before us so we can see it, one would think.

It's as though you seem to take any disagreement personally and spend all your time lashing out and defending your self when someone has any point of disagreement with you. It might be that some of it is a reflection of your disappointment with yourself for not remaining in the "higher walk". (and I use quotation marks because that is not a biblical term and it's a red flag to use non-biblical terminology to form a dogmatic doctrine out of it, as opposed to just using man-made terms descriptively to help the understanding.)

 

[Lizbeth]

The apostle is declaring to the whole world, his disapprobation of the doctrines maintained by the early or proto Gnostics who taught that Jesus was by birth a mere man but that 'the Christ' descended on Him at His baptism.’

Gosh no. He was "God come in the flesh" right from conception...so much so that when Mary was pregnant with Him and went to visit Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist, baby John jumped in her womb for joy (because of being in the presence of God). It's sometimes amazing the things that people come up with in their attempts to explain or understand something. I'm sure we all grapple with things, but it was very wrong of them to turn their grapplings into doctrines.

These Gnostics, who taught that man could be righteous in spirit and still sin in the flesh

To my understanding, I think they may have been right about this point though. Paul saying, if I do that which I don't want to do, it is no longer I who sin, but sin living in me......old man vs. new man. Our new man is "created after the image of He who created him"...perfect and spiritual (heavenly). But we still have an unspiritual old man of the flesh nature who interferes. Which we are told to "reckon" as being dead and crucified with Christ. We are still contending with our old man until he is potentially completely put under our feet. At which times one is walking in that "reckoning" of the old man as being dead....conquered, defeated. Until then there is the principle of all things have been put under the feet of Jesus but we do not yet (necessarily, until we do) "see" all things put under. (I wonder if seeing is linked to experiencing....when we receive the revelation (see) that all things have been put under our/His feet, we will then experience it?)

From what I glean, when someone is walking in the spirit, they are walking in their new man, above their old man and flesh....the high way of holiness....because the old man and flesh are under their feet at those times. Reckoned as being dead, though not dead in a literal way....I don't think that will happen until our flesh dies literally. That's why it is always possible to return to walking in the flesh, in this life, from what I can see.

(I'm not able to follow everything that is being discussed but hope you don't mind me butting in a bit on this part.)

 

[Behold]

Evangelists call people as guests to the wedding feast of the Lord. Guests are NOT saints.

"""Evangelists"""" LEAD unbelivers to The Cross of Christ, so that they may be forgiven their Sin by Jesus's Eternal Sacrifice, and then given
"the Gift of Righteousness" thereby becoming born again as a "new Creation in Christ".

You teach that "The Cross is not about Forgiveness".

That's a lie, and you certainly like to share them, @Episkopos

 

[VictoryinJesus]

To a bent person anything straight looks bent...because they are looking down their own crooked way of thinking.

Now that reminds me more of
Titus 1:15 Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

Sounds like unto them that are defiled and unbelieving anything pure looks defiled and unbelieving …because they are looking down their own defiled mind and conscience. (Their own crooked way of thinking.)

That appears evident in how things people do wrong that rub us the wrong way the most, is usually things we see in ourself (although we may not want to acknowledge it) and we don’t like it.

All who say I am a false teacher are themselves false teachers. All who say I preach another gospel are just condemning themselves, since they are following the ways of men and a false conjured gospel that rewards sin.

With all due respect…I’m sure they have read the passage where Jesus said if one speaks of himself, if one seeks his own glory…then that doctrine is false. And warning bells go off. It’s hard to tell (just my opinion) if by the things you share, how you’ve descended to a higher walk …is it boasting of yourself and your glory or …do you speak of God? I get you think it’s not about you. But also the ones you keep pointing to as false are convinced they also don’t speak of themselves or seek their own glory. You call them false, and then get offended, when they call you false back? I also struggle with telling whether you are puffed up and high on your own things, or as I think you are convinced you are trying to free them from their self proclaimed delusional religion? I do think you contribute good things and studies and ask some great questions. But I also have always questioned is it about your highest achieving or as I think you suggest God Himself elevated you to the highest ever walk.

 

[MatthewG]

Dishonest and false. You are oversimplifying Jesus as a religious symbol to be embraced. Evangelists call people as guests to the wedding feast of the Lord. Guests are NOT saints. Guests are NOT the Bride. The call of a human is not the same as a direct call from heaven.

Jesus said to fill His house with guests. An evangelist does this. Read Matthew 22.

Maybe you have attended a wedding yourself? Maybe as a bride and maybe as a guest. Were you able to discern the difference? Did you wear your wedding dress to someone else's wedding? What would people think of you if you did that? What does the bible say about those who sit in the wrong place?

I believe that when Jesus returned, it also signified a small amount of Gentiles at that time which were in Jerusalem, whom were faith, watching, waiting and looking for his return. (They knew as the time drew nearer, we have reports in the bible concerning that.)

So those people invited to come to the wedding, were part of it whom were of faith and part of the bride of Christ in that day.

 

[Kokyu]

Where is the Holy Spirit in all this, since He is the one leading us into all truth? He is the one we need to be relying on, more than the carnal intellect of man. We need "ears to hear" what the Spirit is saying in the word do we not?. And in scripture, the Lord sometimes changes gear and blurts out something not related to the main context. I'm not saying to ignore context all the time, we generally need to take a whole passage at a time rather than cherry pick and isolate a single verse, but keep in mind that God and the Holy Spirit are not confined to man's literary rules or rules of logic. And we are told to compare spiritual with spiritual....the bible is a spiritual book written for the heart/spirit rather than the carnal intellect.

In the post to which you're responding here I wrote:

"They had the Scriptures just as we do and had to apply proper reasoning, sound hermeneutics and prayerful study to God's word just as we do, coming as best they might by these means to a right understanding of it."

You'll find no place in Scripture where the Spirit acts contrary to sound reasoning, or acts in contradiction to the laws of logic of which God is the Ultimate Source. This isn't to say God doesn't call His own to act beyond their limits of reason, though (think: the sacking of Jericho, or Gideon's defeat of the Midianites). He likes to demonstrate to us His supernatural wisdom and power and does this by acting in ways in our lives that exceed what we could have imagined or accomplished on our own. But God doesn't ever do this, as I said, contrary to Reason or Logic. So, I'd be very careful in thinking that the Spirit teaches in some way independent of, or even in opposition to, reason, logic and sound hermeneutical rules of interpretation.

What is the alternative in your mind to the "carnal intellect of man"? To what does God, the Spirit "speak" if not our intellect (carnal though it may be)?

Yes, we need "ears to hear" what the Spirit would say to us. But what does this mean, exactly? Is there any hearing that we can do without our intellect, our minds and our capacity to reason?

I don't know what you're thinking of when you mentioned Jesus "changing gears" and "blurting out something." What does this have to do with the value of understanding a verse or passage in its immediate context?

I don't know what you mean when you say "God and the Holy Spirit are not confined to man's literary rules or rules of logic." In fact, they are, because the rules of logic, in particular, are from them. And insofar as rules of interpretation (hermeneutics) reflect reason and logic, they are also of God.

Everything we encounter in Scripture expresses some form of logic, some line of reasoning, and requires our minds, our intellects, to comprehend. Take your mind out of the equation of thought and communication and what do you have? Well, when a person is brain dead or severely brain damaged and incapable of thought, they are sometimes referred to as a "vegetable" or in a "vegetative state." The idea expressed in these descriptions is that, without a properly-functioning mind, a person is nothing more than an unaware, inert lump of tissue, incapable of conscious action, like a carrot, or a stick of celery.

So, if God is going to interact with us, He must limit Himself to our capacities of mind; for we simply cannot comprehend what exceeds those capacities. And God has to interact with us always through our minds, just as He made us to do. So it is that God says to Israel, "Come, let us reason together" (Isa. 1:18); so it is that both Jesus and Paul were regularly "reasoning from the Scriptures" with those in the synagogue (Mk. 6:2; Jn. 18:20; Ac. 18:4; 19:8) so it is that we are told to renew our minds (Ro. 12:2), and be of the same mind (Ro. 12:16; 1 Co. 1:10), and with our minds serve the law of God (Ro. 7:25), and so on.

1 Corinthians 2:12-13 (NASB)
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

When Paul wrote "combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words," with what do we comprehend his statement? What part of us makes sense of the words he used, of their meaning? Our minds, of course. Even in consideration of spiritual truth we cannot get away from the involvement of our minds. Nor are we taught in God's word that we should expect to. Spiritual truth is not against logic and reason which originate with God, but is predicated necessarily upon these things. Just consider the scriptural statement above from Paul. It is expressing a series of truth-propositions by way of language referents (words) and rules (grammar), which is all entirely and prosaically human. On a mechanical level, Paul's words, his manner of communicating truth propositions, his forms of reasoning are no different than any atheist, or Muslim, or even Satanist might use. This is because basic, mundane structures of language and reason are necessary even to the most spiritual ideas and discussions. Without them, and our intellectual capacities of comprehension, Paul would be writing incomprehensible gobbledy-gook.

 

[Dash RipRock]

I've shared with you what God's word states.

No the eternal security folks share bits and pieces of what God's Word states and conveniently leave the parts out that show a Christians can actually become corrupt after having been born again which is either bring ignorant of the text or is being dishonest.

Too many people have been deceived and indoctrinated by doctrines of demons in to only believing passage that support the indoctrination they've been fed by the false teachers from the fake religious cult that they follow.

Gal 6:7,8 very clearly tells us that when one sins which is what sowing to the flesh is, as in NOT being led by the Holy Spirit to do things God says are sinful, they shall of the flesh reap CORRUPTION.

Those claiming a Christian can sin and not reap CORRUPTION are mocking God according Gal 6:7,8 which is what the evil spirits leading these people are leading them to believe which is in direct opposition to what the Lord warns about in His Word.

All one must do to get back in to right standing with the Lord is to forsake their sin, confess it as sin before the Lord, and make no provision for the flesh to continue in sin going forward

Proverbs 28:13 - He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

1 John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Proverbs 28:13, and 1 John 1:9 is proving that a person is unrighteous unless they forsake their sin and confess it and only then are they cleansed from unrighteousness which demonstrates yet again that Gal 6:7,8 is true

Of course the eternal security crowd claims it's OK for Christians to live in sin as they claim they are still saved and still going to Heaven even as they proudly claim to be sinners.

They teach the devil's favorite deception which is the proven false "security in sin gospel" which leads people to believe they don't have to confess or forsake their sins and all future sins are already forgiven so they are free to continue living in sin as they turn the grace of the Lord in to lasciviousness

2 Peter 2:20 - For if after they have escaped the pollution of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

1 John 1:6 - If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:

If that were so you would understand what these passages I've shared say. You've never disputed their meaning, you've just ignored them in your replies. Yet the Word of God remains. You cannot dispute them, because they are written so very plainly. All you can do is deny that they say what they say.

The false claim of the bible twisters is that some things God says are more true then other things God says which they got from the demons leading and guiding their lives of deception.

God's Word puts conditions on salvation and that condition is:

Acts 26:18 - To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins

The eternal security crowd continually claims it's OK for Christians to live in sin as they claim they are still saved and still going to Heaven even as they proudly claim to be sinners.

Romans 8:13 - For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Notice that's thru the Holy Spirit? The eternal security crowed needs to repent and start being led by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ rather than the evil spirits of satan which is who is leading them currently as they oppose the whole counsel of God specializing in cherry picking buffoonery!

 

[marks]

No the eternal security folks share bits and pieces of what God's Word states and conveniently leave the parts out that show a Christians can actually become corrupt after having been born again which is either bring ignorant of the text or is being dishonest.

Too many people have been deceived and indoctrinated by doctrines of demons in to only believing passage that support the indoctrination they've been fed by the false teachers from the fake religious cult that they follow.

Gal 6:7,8 very clearly tells us that when one sins which is what sowing to the flesh is, as in NOT being led by the Holy Spirit to do things God says are sinful, they shall of the flesh reap CORRUPTION.

Those claiming a Christian can sin and not reap CORRUPTION are mocking God according Gal 6:7,8 which is what the evil spirits leading these people are leading them to believe which is in direct opposition to what the Lord warns about in His Word.

All one must do to get back in to right standing with the Lord is to forsake their sin, confess it as sin before the Lord, and make no provision for the flesh to continue in sin going forward

Proverbs 28:13 - He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

1 John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Proverbs 28:13, and 1 John 1:9 is proving that a person is unrighteous unless they forsake their sin and confess it and only then are they cleansed from unrighteousness which demonstrates yet again that Gal 6:7,8 is true

Of course the eternal security crowd claims it's OK for Christians to live in sin as they claim they are still saved and still going to Heaven even as they proudly claim to be sinners.

They teach the devil's favorite deception which is the proven false "security in sin gospel" which leads people to believe they don't have to confess or forsake their sins and all future sins are already forgiven so they are free to continue living in sin as they turn the grace of the Lord in to lasciviousness

2 Peter 2:20 - For if after they have escaped the pollution of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

1 John 1:6 - If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:



The false claim of the bible twisters is that some things God says are more true then other things God says which they got from the demons leading and guiding their lives of deception.

God's Word puts conditions on salvation and that condition is:

Acts 26:18 - To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins

The eternal security crowd continually claims it's OK for Christians to live in sin as they claim they are still saved and still going to Heaven even as they proudly claim to be sinners.

Romans 8:13 - For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Notice that's thru the Holy Spirit? The eternal security crowed needs to repent and start being led by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ rather than the evil spirits of satan which is who is leading them currently as they oppose the whole counsel of God specializing in cherry picking buffoonery!

Unless you deal with the passages I've shared with you, you are wasting your time - you are the cherry picker. And unless you stop your false claims of what others think, you have no credibility.

Much love!

 

[Hepzibah]

@Kokyu Well, no, not quite. Good exegesis begins in the immediate context of a verse or passage from which one is most certain to derive the best understanding of the verse or passage. Having obtained from this immediate context a proper understanding of a verse or passage, one may expand to the context of the entire book, finding corresponding, qualifying and clarifying statements pertaining to the verse or passage. Finally, one may move to the most general context of a verse or passage, which is the entirety of God's word, drawing from it other corresponding, qualifying and clarifying statements that apply to the verse or passage under study.

When, then, I encounter Christians who try to explain a particular verse or passage by moving immediately to other books entirely from that in which the verse or passage appears, I recognize that they are trying to play fast-and-loose with what the verse/passage is saying. Immediate context is king when it comes to good hermeneutics and any divergence from this rule will inevitably produce interpretive error. There is no rule, though, that I've found that the false teacher wants more to deny/ignore than this one. It too often confounds their false doctrine, you see.



The whole of Scripture is vital to securing the truth of a particular doctrine, yes, but the meaning of any particular verse or passage is always best understood from its immediate context.

What you are doing here, is justifying your cherry picking. Of course, the immediate context is the start, that goes without saying.

John makes no explicit reference to Gnostic heresy in 1 John 1. None. And, actually, he makes no such reference in all of his first letter.



This is entirely supposition, a theory. There is not one explicit reference to "proto-Gnosticism" or to its nascent doctrines in the entirety of 1 John.

It is clear whom he is taking about and gnostics and arians were heavily refuted at that time. You must be a fundamentalist as you are handling scripture after that tradition.

This completely ignores that John repeatedly used "we," "our," and "us" in his remarks in 1 John 1:6-10. Had he been referring to these supposed "proto-Gnostics" in the first chapter of his first epistle, he would surely have used the pronouns "they," or "them," or "those." But these pronouns don't appear even once in the passage in question. Instead, John is carefully fixed upon himself and fellow Christians.


It doesn't matter one whit, really, what the "Early Fathers" taught. They had no special dispensation of spiritual insight, no divinely-inspired authority to establish doctrine for the rest of us. They had the Scriptures just as we do and had to apply proper reasoning, sound hermeneutics and prayerful study to God's word just as we do, coming as best they might by these means to a right understanding of it. So, what they had to say about Christian doctrine is interesting, I guess, it's of some historical note, I suppose, but their views are by no means binding on other believers, or even correct, in many instances. This is why there was often such... vivid disagreement among them over doctrine.

They spoke the same language, lived in the same culture and more importantly, had great saints which we do not find in these dark days. They disagreed but the main body of their teaching was regarding theosis where there was no-one refuting that doctrine.

They were not infallible were much more likely to understand Paul better than us.

This all carefully avoids dealing with what I've pointed out from the text of the passage itself concerning John's use of certain self-inclusive pronouns and the present-continuous tense of his verbs. Your post reminds me very much, actually, of high school students of mine who submitted essays that tried to obscure a lack of understanding of the subject for the essay under a mountain of obfuscating and irrelevant verbiage.

And you are ignoring texts that back theosis up.

1 John 1:6-10
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;
7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

Where does John use the phrase "walk in the flesh"? Nowhere. Why, then are you using the phrase in explication of his words?

On what basis are our sins forgiven in the present-continuous sense in which John wrote that they would be as we "walk in the Light"? Well, simply refer to verse 9, as I already pointed out. As we "walk in the Light," we are being cleansed in this present-continuous way because we are confessing our sin to God. But this means that while we walk in the Light, there are occasions of sin we will have to confess! This rather puts a huge crimp in the sinless perfection doctrine, it seems to me...

Where in the passage above from 1 John does John write "and remain in our sin"? Again, nowhere. This is your addition to (and contortion of) his words.

As far as I'm concerned, you'll have to do a lot better than you have so far if you want to make your erroneous sinless perfection doctrine even remotely plausible in the light of 1 John 1:6-10.

And you will have to give me the information I have requested, on what you mean by sinless perfection. At a guess, I bet you say it means we will never sin again.

Because you show no understanding whatsoever on what that doctrine actually says, instead of your presuppositions, and will not tell me what your understanding of what the doctrine actually means, you make this conversation impossible to continue and I don't want you to harden your heart any more. Thank you.

(Lizbeth's name will not cut)

 

[Hepzibah]

Gosh no. He was "God come in the flesh" right from conception...so much so that when Mary was pregnant with Him and went to visit Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist, baby John jumped in her womb for joy (because of being in the presence of God). It's sometimes amazing the things that people come up with in their attempts to explain or understand something. I'm sure we all grapple with things, but it was very wrong of them to turn their grapplings into doctrines.


To my understanding, I think they may have been right about this point though. Paul saying, if I do that which I don't want to do, it is no longer I who sin, but sin living in me......old man vs. new man.

I think he was referring to unintentional sins before he was fully sanctified when the battle takes place but which is to cease.

Our new man is "created after the image of He who created him"...perfect and spiritual (heavenly). But we still have an unspiritual old man of the flesh nature who interferes. Which we are told to "reckon" as being dead and crucified with Christ. We are still contending with our old man until he is potentially completely put under our feet. At which times one is walking in that "reckoning" of the old man as being dead....conquered, defeated. Until then there is the principle of all things have been put under the feet of Jesus but we do not yet (necessarily, until we do) "see" all things put under. (I wonder if seeing is linked to experiencing....when we receive the revelation (see) that all things have been put under our/His feet, we will then experience it?)

Yes I believe that is the revelation when we have given our all to Him.

From what I glean, when someone is walking in the spirit, they are walking in their new man, above their old man and flesh....the high way of holiness....because the old man and flesh are under their feet at those times. Reckoned as being dead, though not dead in a literal way....I don't think that will happen until our flesh dies literally.

Flesh means more than the body. We are walking in the flesh or the Spirit and there is no mixture. No in between state. If we sometimes walk in the Spirit, then it is still the flesh. This is plainly seen in Genesis and the two trees as I have said, the two spiritual laws of the universe.

That's why it is always possible to return to walking in the flesh, in this life, from what I can see.

Indeed we can.

(I'm not able to follow everything that is being discussed but hope you don't mind me butting in a bit on this part.)

No problem sis.

 

[Lizbeth]

"They had the Scriptures just as we do and had to apply proper reasoning, sound hermeneutics and prayerful study to God's word just as we do, coming as best they might by these means to a right understanding of it."

Oh good, sorry I missed that.

You'll find no place in Scripture where the Spirit acts contrary to sound reasoning, or acts in contradiction to the laws of logic of which God is the Ultimate Source.

We need to keep in mind that God's ways are not man's ways and His thoughts are not man's thoughts...they are higher. So I believe He may act or speak contrary to what we think is sound reasoning at times, lol. We need to get hold of and submit to His ways/thoughts, not expect Him to bow down to our level.

We are told in the bible such things as to not lean on our own understanding…..and that the carnal mind is enmity with God…..and that the natural man cannot perceive the things of the Spirit.

On the issue of context, though it is usually useful and needful, it isn't a hard and fast rule 100% of the time....I've noticed in the old testament how some messianic prophetic words are seemingly "inserted" out of the flow of the context of the rest of the passage. Kind of tucked away and hidden in there. God doesn't always follow our general literary or linguistic rules.