Could we love Jesus, if He did not love us first? (1 John 4:19
We love him, because he first loved us.) Yes! The focus is on our love for Him. I have no idea why you would think that negates our focus on His love for us! We would be extremely ungrateful recipients of His love if we did not utilize it to its full enabling potential to love Him in return. That is the best way to focus on Jesus' love for us, by returning that love to Him, and to others. "If ye love me, keep my commandments."
I think of peter compared to John, peter said Lord i will do it, i love you i never will give you up and at the first hurdle he denied Jesus three times, though he never lost his salvation, John on the other hand simply rested on Jesus, the only thing he declared himself was the most loved disciple, our love is always conditional, changeable unreliable, that's why the love God has for us is far more important..
Who said, or even implied that the debt becomes unpaid? A fully paid for gift can be rejected by the intened recipient, and that does not change the paid status of the gift. It is simply a waste of precious resource.
if the debt is paid in full and we accept that, how can we then be lost as the debt is paid, it cannot become unpaid
That would be because none exist! Who is a saved person that was "saved" before enduring to the end? That statement you made is an oxymoron. One probable exception is if and when a person has their calling and election made sure, as Peter once mentioned.
yet john 3:16 says believe on me and you will have everlasting life, saved... romans there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, we can go wrong, we can fail,sin but it will not be held against us, as our debt is paid..
(2 Peter 1:10
Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: )
That is a topic that would be best served in another thread, but the bottom line is if we have to "work" to attain that calling and election. Peter made it clear that we do have to give diligence and make it happen.
why are you trying to do the work that Jesus has done, you were slaves to sin but now you are slaves to righteousness, once everything we did God saw as sin, now God sees us as righteous as we have the righteousness of Jesus upon us
But please, by all means, share the scriptures you were referring to that suggest we can be saved before we have endured to the end!
If you still sin, you never passed from death to life.
are you claiming you are without sin, because we all know what scripture says about that, do you really think you or anyone else can live a sinless life
I think there is a warped comprehension going around of what it means to "rest". A yoke represents work! Christ's yoke is easy, because without it (in comparison) the torment is overwhelming! Doing the works that Christ gave us to do is what frees us from the overwhelming burdens that the worries and conflicts of the world place on our shoulders. We simply need to open our eyes to the current events around us all over the world, and see how the cause and effect of becoming ungodly as a people comes back to bite us in the back side with vengeance!
The saddest part about this concept of "saved by grace alone" is when people think they are justified to continue in sin because it is no longer counted against them as sin, due to an imaginary umbrella that protects them from the effects of sin. If we still sin, we have not departed from evil. And that is the sad and scary part. Job declared that understanding is the result of our departure from evil. If people believe they have departed from evil, but still do evil, they are deceived, and that would explain why they don't understand!