Repentance has to be accepted by God, not endorsed by people based on certain verses. A new life will bear fruit of the Spirit. Only God can understand our hearts.
1 John 1:9:
If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and
will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
God wants, and is waiting, to forgive those who repent. Jesus told us to pray "forgive us our sins", when we pray to God.
A good person will show his good works, and I don't think he will deliberately reject Jesus.
Someone can be a good person, do good works and not believe in Jesus - that's my point. Some people are humanists. They believe that the human being is the highest power, has tremendous potential, for both good and evil, and is in charge of their own destiny. Such people may do a great amount of good; they may found charities, raise money, help sick people etc.
These good works do not make them Christian.
A formula of accepting certain verses doesn't guarantee salvation!
If Jesus is your Saviour, if you have accepted him as such, then you ARE saved from your sin.
As I said, you will receive full, complete salvation - or wholeness - when you die. In the meantime the Spirit is, or can be, living in you, transforming you into Jesus' image and likeness - this is called sanctification.
We are not giving him eternal life. Let Jesus decide on that. That may be his last hope. We can't guarantee that as mortals.
WE can't give eternal life, of course not. Jesus gives eternal life to all those who come to him, John 6:40. That is God's will; that everyone who comes to, and believes in, Jesus will have eternal life.
Jesus decided on that. Not we! But that condition is not always people experience. Quoting that many don't undergo baptism and suffering-- a part and parcel of Christian life!
No, that's not everyone's experience, you're right. The majority of people will come to Jesus, believe and repent, become Christians and be baptised. But that verse does show that a person can call out to Jesus with almost their last breath, repent, believe in him and they are saved. Paul says that if someone confesses Jesus is Lord, (which no-one can say, and mean, without the Holy Spirit), and believes in their hearts that he was raised from the dead, they are saved.
I know it was Paul who said that, and you don't always accept Paul, but there it is.
I am not interested in dictionary definition for a disciple. It is very clear that you are discarding the call of Jesus! How can you expect eternal life?
I have eternal life; I am following, not discarding, the call of Jesus thank you.
Many doctrines based solely on Paul, such as, 'faith alone', 'once saved is always saved', 'speaking gibberish needing questionable interpreter','predestination' etc., are the byproducts unsupported by the preaching of Jesus!
PEOPLE make doctrines and give them names. Just because we may not understand, or agree with, a doctrine, or find another doctrine which contradicts/challenges it, doesn't mean that that is the fault of PAUL.
The Holy Spirit was sent to propagate the Gospel, Jesus never said many writings will follow that need to be studied by holding as scripture. It is the Holy Spirit, not the OT Scripture that leads to truth eventually.
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of everything that he had said. When Peter knew that his life was coming to an end, he said that he would make sure that they (the church) had a way of remembering everything he had taught them. 2 Peter 1:15.
In those days, not many people could write but they had a strong oral tradition. So for years after the resurrection, people would have repeated his parables, stories and teachings and made sure they were passed on that way. Paul wrote letters, on scrolls, that were sent to the churches and passed around. Later still they began to be passed round all the various churches.
The disciples believed that Jesus would return to earth in their lifetimes. When it looked as though they might die before that happened, they began to write accounts of his life and teachings, so that future generations would know.
The Holy Spirit inspired these to be written, inspired what was written and inspired those who put them together to form the Bible. The Bible is God's word, his account of how he revealed himself to mankind and his revelation to us of who he is.
No. Show me where He tells us to repeat this to proclaim His death as a remembrance in the Gospel books.
I've already said that it's not in the Gospels - that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
The book of Acts records both communal and communion meal. People again mix up. Paul discarded important communal meal and brought in the ritual of communion as his brainchild!
No Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the Lord's Supper - 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
He said that when they came together for a meal, some were going straight in and starting to eat, without waiting for anyone else, so that these latter people went hungry. He also criticised some people for getting drunk, and later said, "when you come together to eat", (1 Corinthians 11:33).
This is describing a meal, not "the ritual of communion". If Paul had taught them to observe the kind of ritual we have in a lot of our churches today, there would not have been a problem. No one can get drunk on a thimbleful of non alcoholic wine; no one takes 50-60 morsels of bread because they are eating to alleviate their hunger.
The Corinthian church were correctly eating a meal - the Lord's Supper. Paul's criticism was not in the nature of the meal, but the way in which they ate it; selfishly, eating as much as they could for themselves, letting others go hungry and therefore not able to share the food.
The ritual of communion as we have it today was brought in by the various churches; it was not how Paul practiced it, nor, I believe, how he would have wanted it. Sorry, but in this particular instance, you can't blame Paul.
Whether apocryphal or biblical, it hardly matters for me as long as you can filter out portions that don't conform with the preaching of Jesus.
That's the problem. That is a BIG problem, and I don't think you see it; if you do, you don't accept it.
We may sometimes hear people say, "the Lord told me that you should ....", "God has revealed that the church must believe .....", "Jesus has told me that .....". We can't believe everyone who says such things and makes such claims - they could be anyone, and may not be hearing from God at all, be pushing their own agenda or may be saying that "God" wants us to do conflicting, or dubious, things. So we need some standard; something to test these words against to find out if God did in fact say them, or whether the claimed message is what he wants. That standard is the Bible. As I have said before, like it or not, that is how it is.
The Bible is God's revelation to us of himself, his plan and his will. If someone claims that God said something, or acts in a certain way, and it is contrary to what the Bible reveals about his nature, or will; we don't accept it.
For example: someone comes up to you in the street and said, "the Messiah has returned, is in Marks & Spencers', has healed me and will be doing more miracles at 11.00; you must go and see him". Could that message be true; SHOULD you go and see and believe in him? No, because Jesus has already said, "many will come claiming to be me" and warned us not to listen to them. How do we know that Jesus said this several hundred years ago? It's been written down and is in the Bible.
Someone else may say, "yes, Jesus was God - a special manifestation of God who did miracles. But he wasn't a man and didn't die for us". Do we believe that? No, because John told us to test the spirits and said that if anyone does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, they are not from God. How do we know John said this? It's in the Bible.
The example that I usually give is that of "Rev" Moon, who claimed that he had a vision of Jesus, and was told that he (Jesus) had failed and that "Rev" Moon was to be the 2nd Messiah. Apparently, Moon was supposed to continue Jesus' mission on earth, and he was to succeed.
So did we believe, and follow, Moon? No of course not. The message that "Jesus" gave him in his vision, contradicts what is written in the Gospels. Jesus came to give his life as a ransom for many and said, "it is finished", before he died. Jesus did his Father's will and achieved his mission. As a result, the "Moonies" are a cult and NOT part of the Christian church; they contradict Scripture. This also goes for the JWs, Mormons and any others who deny the deity of Jesus, the trinity and other doctrines.
So the Bible contains the word of God and God's revelation and CANNOT be on a par with apocryphal books. You have said that you accept some of Paul's teachings; great. But you clearly reject others and have called him an arrogant manipulator with an agenda. Paul's epistles are in the Bible, and are part of the revelation of God that is accepted by all mainstream Christian churches. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
It seems that you don't distinguish between any book - as long as they contain the words of Jesus, you are prepared to accept them. Really? How do you know which words of Jesus are authentic if you have no standard to measure them by? Just as an example, in the Gospel of Thomas - an apocryphal book which some say was written by the apostle Thomas -, Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man." Really? What does that even mean? Should we all go around eating lions because "Jesus said so"? And how in the world does a lion become a human being anyway?
Do you see what I'm saying?
You may believe that the canon of Scripture was man made, or that the Bible contains some of the words of God and it is up to the Spirit to show you which ones, or that Paul was ok but can only be partly trusted and some of his words are false, or that other books contain the teachings of Jesus and are equal to the Bible. You may believe all of that passionately, but I'm afraid it's just not the position of the church.
That is because I love Jesus, and I don't want anyone to come between Jesus and me. Catholics have Mary and Protestants have Paul--both deviations from the truth.
I'm not denying that you love Jesus. But Jesus tells us that if people accept us, they accepted him; and that if the world hates us, it's because it also hates Jesus. Paul was called by Jesus, and when he heard the voice and said "who are you Lord?" the response was "I am Jesus, who you are persecuting". Paul was persecuting human beings - believers - but he was told that he was, in fact, persecuting Jesus himself. John says that anyone who loves the Father also loves his child.
Paul was a servant of Jesus, called and anointed by Jesus. You have said that you agree with some of his teachings, and call him a saint. How is it that you love, and accept, Jesus, but criticise, and partially reject, one of the men he called to take his Gospel to the nations? Not accusing you of anything - I don't get it.
When one goes over any process over and over again, it becomes a ritual which gets distorted with passing of time. Jesus also said not to repeat meaninglessly by rote!
1) It can do, but it's up to us to make sure that it doesn't.
2) No, Jesus criticised the Pharisees who said prayers over and over again, but neglected other things like compassion, and also said that we do not need to use lots of words when we pray, because God already knows our needs.
Jesus visited the synagogue, at least once, during his ministry, and went to feasts at the temple. Both of those had services, or acts of worship which were probably based on repetition. In the OT, God told people to learn his words, and his prophets often used the phrase "thus saith the Lord". Read Psalm 136 - every verse contains the line, "his love endures for ever". God is not against repetition.
One example: he said to imitate him--a big obstruction and a compromise with his limitations as a human being!
Paul said, "follow me,
as I follow Christ." He was not perfect, knew it and never claimed to be. He would also have not implied that people follow him instead of Jesus.
