For New ChristiansThis forum is for new Christians to ask questions and be encouraged by other Christians. Here you can post your questions and talk about issues relating to new believers.
How do you know that you love someone in your life, such as a child, a sibling, a parent, or a friend?
My personal answer - the Lord Jesus Christ converted me and my walk began with Him on that day months ago and I haven't been the same since. I'm not perfect, but I'm as sure of my salvation as the sun will rise tomorrow.
But that is not the Gospel.
That is something you feel. That is something that happened to you, and is subjective and is not the source of salvation.
Salvation comes by the Grace of God (His free gift to you) - through faith in Jesus Christ, which comes by hearing and believing the Gospel.
That is what I am trying to get at here: The Gospel.
Which Gospel have you believed? Because, as Paul said, there is more than one Gospel, more than one Jesus, being preached in the world.
Man sinned, man fell, man died. No hope.
God loved, God saw, God provided.
What did God provide? He provided a man Who could keep the Law perfectly, to redeem us from the curse and atone for what the first Adam had done.
Having lived a perfect Life, He gave it up to die for sins not His own. Christ became "sin for us" and suffered the judgment of God that we might become the "righteousness of God, in Him" - that we might have Christ's merit, and Christ's righteousness, before the Father.
Nothing we have done has merited our salvation, and no experience (other than Christ's) is the basis of it.
It is solely through looking upon the Son, seeing Him, the True Christ of history, and the life and death He lived 2,000 years ago... and putting all of your hope and faith for anything into that alone, and nothing else.
May God confirm all of you who are His, deeply in the assurance of true faith in the true Christ that you might be filled with all confidence in the Holy Spirit, and joy, and peace unspeakable through Christ Jesus.
As you grow in Christ, our desire to practice sin gets less and less. You will never be sinless on earth-only in heaven.
__________________ Sola Scriptura is Eternal Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, 2 Peter 1:20. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams (October 11, 1798). Roe vs. Wade - 45 million **Proverbs 6:16-17 - states that there are seven things that are an abomination to the Lord; one of them is the shedding of innocentblood. The B.O. Must Go! Huckabee in 2012
That is something you feel. That is something that happened to you, and is subjective and is not the source of salvation.
Salvation comes by the Grace of God (His free gift to you) - through faith in Jesus Christ, which comes by hearing and believing the Gospel.
That is what I am trying to get at here: The Gospel.
Which Gospel have you believed? Because, as Paul said, there is more than one Gospel, more than one Jesus, being preached in the world.
Man sinned, man fell, man died. No hope.
God loved, God saw, God provided.
What did God provide? He provided a man Who could keep the Law perfectly, to redeem us from the curse and atone for what the first Adam had done.
Having lived a perfect Life, He gave it up to die for sins not His own. Christ became "sin for us" and suffered the judgment of God that we might become the "righteousness of God, in Him" - that we might have Christ's merit, and Christ's righteousness, before the Father.
Nothing we have done has merited our salvation, and no experience (other than Christ's) is the basis of it.
It is solely through looking upon the Son, seeing Him, the True Christ of history, and the life and death He lived 2,000 years ago... and putting all of your hope and faith for anything into that alone, and nothing else.
May God confirm all of you who are His, deeply in the assurance of true faith in the true Christ that you might be filled with all confidence in the Holy Spirit, and joy, and peace unspeakable through Christ Jesus.
How do you personally know the gospel is real? How do you know what you think is real, is really real? You asked for a testimony, not a recitation of theological knowledge. However, on that account, you are correct in your theology, but how do you know your Faith is real? Head knowledge? Subjectivity? Wasn't that your real question?
__________________ For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, W.W. Norton, New York, 1978, p. 116)
Guys, I would love to discuss this issue of how the Gospel impacts on its subjects in subjective recognition. It's a great point for discussion in General Theology. In fact, I think there's an extended thread about it there. Let's keep our focus here specifically on the OP and his posts, and not debate subtleties, as this particular forum requires and regulates, please.
__________________ "... not an unconcerned sitting of God in heaven, from which He merely observes the things that are done in the world; but that all-active and all-concerned seatedness on His throne above, by which He governs the world which He Himself hath made." John Calvin
To us, O LORD, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.
My question is, after you have been saved, are you supposed to be sin-free in your life? I am saved, but turned away from my faith for several years. I have recommitted myself to the Lord. I feel the Holy Spirit within me, but I still sometime do things that I think are considered sin. If I recognize it I confess it, and ask for forgiveness. I know sometimes do things that are sinful that I don't even catch. I want to be a good Christian, and I just wonder if I'm doing the right thing or not. Can someone tell me if I am supposed to be living a sin free life, and if what I'm doing is right. Thank you for your help. God bless.
Webers_Home generally hit it.
I've taken to a kind of imagery I started detecting in Paul's letters. It's just an inference, but it might be helpful. I picked up from Romans 6 and 2 Cor 5 that we're kind of like rebels in an empire of sin. We're part of the empire. We're still sinful creatures, and our Conqueror hasn't come to make place us as citizens of the good. But we've switched sides. We grew up in this empire, we're familiar with its ways, and in some ways our life keeps working through this corrupt existence. We just don't belong to it any more.
So a lot of what we do here is trying to learn the ways of the new empire, trying to live that way, becoming familiar with that way. So when it comes for real, when we're transformed or resurrected to this new world, we've grown into it.
__________________ "... not an unconcerned sitting of God in heaven, from which He merely observes the things that are done in the world; but that all-active and all-concerned seatedness on His throne above, by which He governs the world which He Himself hath made." John Calvin
To us, O LORD, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.
How do you personally know the gospel is real? How do you know what you think is real, is really real? You asked for a testimony, not a recitation of theological knowledge. However, on that account, you are correct in your theology, but how do you know your Faith is real? Head knowledge? Subjectivity? Wasn't that your real question?
I was asking Goodwin, namely, "what he was trusting for his salvation".
It is a personal belief and trust in an objective reality.
My question was the object of his faith, not the reality of his faith.
I believe that the people of this age are a very religious people, who have beliefs and faith in all sorts of things. But, it is faith in the true Christ of scripture and of history, and of the Gospel proclaimed by the prophets and the apostles, that is the saving faith I seek to confirm for all of God's children.
So, no, my question was not if his faith was real, but if he believed the object and the promise (of that object) to be, in fact, real.
Because we can and ought to trust in Him with all of our heart. We can be fully assured of the promise given to us by the Author and Finisher of our faith, and that He who has begun the good work in us will, indeed, finish it.
This is what drives a sin-free life. The sanctifying nature of God's grace received through faith. So, I seek to strengthen faith that I may enflame the working of grace, which leads naturally to a more sanctified state, and greater assurance and joy in the faith in Christ.
Goodwin - if you're still managing to follow - please don't be dismayed at the length and breadth of all of our replies. If we have not answered your questions, or you have new ones, please do post.
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