we could not be members of that Church unless the summation of our lives were pleasing to Him.
This isn't what the Bible says. We are not included as members of Christ's Bride, the Church, we are not saved, by the "summation" of our living. Confession of sin, repentance from a life lived apart from God, and trust in Christ as one's Saviour and Lord are at the heart of the Gospel. If one is saved by the sum total of the content of their living, then one is not saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone (
Eph. 2:8, 9) as Scripture says. Again, what you're describing is works-salvation, not the Gospel.
no work we can make will enable us to inherit the Kingdom of God by our own hand(plz read we don't do it our self). Only by being aligned with the only Man to have that inheritance can we hope to share in that inheritance, which is His Kingdom.
Well, now you appear to be contradicting yourself. "No work will enable us to inherit God's kingdom," you say and then you assert that only by aligning with Christ can we share in his inheritance. From what you've written in earlier posts, by "alignment" you mean godly living which is a work we do. Scripture, though, says salvation is a gift of God obtained by saving faith in Christ totally apart from any godly living or "alignment" we perform.
In most Christian Theology the Holy Spirit is God. So my saying God gives a Christian a Gift of Grace in order to have FAITH to believe - is just not that different than someone attempting to describe HOW God does this.
I don't agree. I think too often Christians think God gives them spiritual
things (faith, love, joy, peace, etc.) in order to live the Christian life when in fact what God gives us to live rightly before Him is
Himself in the Person of His Spirit. There is no separation between the Fruit of the Spirit and the Spirit Himself; God's power is given to us
in the Person of Spirit. God does not dole out to us bits and pieces ("graces") of love, and joy, and peace that are a kind of spiritual currency separate from Himself. No, God's love, joy and peace, His faith, is found only
in Him. To want these things is to want God; to ask for more peace or spiritual power is to ask for more of
God. This may seem like nit-picking to you, but understanding what I have explained here is, as far as I'm concerned, terribly important (in no small part because so many believers separate God from the spiritual fruit and power He imparts to them).
I was a Baptist a long time. There was a lot of emphasis on just saying "I believe", the Sinners Prayer....etc. and not once did I ever here someone tell me that the only way I can really believe, is if God first gives me His Grace to believe.
Well, if you'd attended the Baptist churches that I have, your experience in this regard would have been very different.
Rather puts at least some doubt on those who do not endure.
Mt 24 13 but that man will be saved who endures to the last.
And the only reason any man "endures to the end" is because he is genuinely saved and thus motivated and empowered to endure by the Holy Spirit.
If doom can slip upon the believer in the Final days, why would there be no escape if faith cannot be lost.
2 Th 5 1 There is no need, brethren, to write to you about the times and the seasons of all this; 2 you are keeping it clearly in mind, without being told, that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 It is just when men are saying, All quiet, all safe, that doom will fall upon them suddenly, like the pangs that come to a woman in travail, and there will be no escape from it.
This passage does not say that doom will fall upon
believers. Paul writes of "men" who say "All is quiet, all is safe" in a generic sense; he is not meaning Christian brethren else he would write "you" as he does in the verses preceding verse 3.
If no loss possible, why watch and be ready, why speak of God wanting something we claim we already have “won”.
2 Tim 5 4 Whereas you, brethren, are not living in the darkness, for the day to take you by surprise, like a thief; 5 no, you are all born to the light, born to the day; we do not belong to the night and its darkness. 6 We must not sleep on, then, like the rest of the world, we must watch and keep sober; 7 night is the sleeper’s time for sleeping, the drunkard’s time for drinking; 8 we must keep sober, like men of the daylight. We must put on our breastplate, the breastplate of faith and love, our helmet, which is the hope of salvation. 9 God has not destined us for vengeance; he means us to win salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who has died for our sakes, that we, waking or sleeping, may find life with him. 11 Go on, then, encouraging one another and building up one another’s faith.
Why should believers "watch and keep sober"? Because, as Paul explains, this is the proper behaviour of those who know Christ. What's more, if it were a natural thing for Christians to live watchfully and soberly and to armor themselves with faith, love, and the hope of salvation, Paul would not have to write to those he calls brethren, those he thinks of as saved, to urge them toward such things. Paul no where in this passage warns the believers to whom he is writing of the loss of their salvation. He simply explains the proper way for those who are saved to behave and why. In fact, Paul remarks in the passage above that "God has not destined us for vengeance" which seems to support a once-saved-always-saved position.
How can we go back from something we already “won” and what is the “teaching” thing if belief is all I need?
2 John 7 Be on your guard, or you will lose all you have earned, instead of receiving your wages in full.[2] 9 The man who goes back, who is not true to Christ’s teaching, loses hold of God; the man who is true to that teaching, keeps hold both of the Father and of the Son.
I prefer the NKJV rendition of this verse and the passage in which it stands:
2 John 1:7-9
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
8 Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward.
9 Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.
In context, the apostle John is warning of the deception of those who denied Jesus as the Messiah incarnate (likely Gnostics). John calls them "deceivers and antichrists" and urges his readers to avoid believing their heresy as it would result in the loss of a "full reward." This does not mean necessarily a loss of one's salvation, however (see
1 Corinthians 3:15). Verse 9 simply confirms that accepting false teaching concerning Christ cannot lead to genuine salvation. It does not indicate a SAL (saved-and-lost) doctrine.
Since the "work" is not finished until we finish this life, am unclear how to claim something is over until it is over.
Well, here's where we diverge: I don't see that the Bible teaches that our salvation is only completed at the end of our earthly lives. Paul writes of salvation as a completed fact, not a future eventuality. So does Peter and the apostle John.
Ephesians 2:4-6
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
Colossians 1:12-14
12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,
14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
Titus 3:5-7
5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
6 whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
7 that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
1 Peter 1:22-23
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
1 John 3:1-2
1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
1 John 3:14
14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.
1 John 5:13
13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
And so on.
Yet, at the end of that ministry Saint Peter did the one thing God told Him would get Him booted with the goats before His Father. So the "work" in Saint Peter's life was interrupted, but fortunately for us his life did not end there and we see him later with his faith having been restored to him (A WORK OF GOD - not his).
What's pertinent to our discussion in Peter's story is that having denied Christ, he is never treated by the risen Christ as apostate. He is never openly and explicitly condemned by Jesus. Peter appears to be accepted by Christ as a disciple when they meet again after Jesus' crucifixion. This doesn't seem, then, to support an SAL position. Mind you, since salvation was only possible post-Calvary and Peter's denial happened
prior to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, Peter could not have lost his salvation by denying Christ as he did. At the time of his denial of Christ, Peter had no salvation to lose. Also, Peter did not deny Christ because of a lack of faith but because of a fear of harm.
Now some here keep trying to tell me the Apostles could not have been considered justified/righteous as we think of ourselves today because, after all Jesus hadn't died yet. But how can we fathom a concept of justification/righteousness in God's eyes apart from having first been given by Him the Faith to respond to His Call and believe God and totally commit our self to Him - which is exactly what the Apostles were doing in spades for three years!!!!!
Actually, for much of the time the disciples followed Jesus they demonstrated serious confusion or misunderstanding about him and what he had come to earth to do. Certainly, they had no understanding of Jesus as the final, perfect Atonement for sin he had come to earth to be. Whatever they believed about Jesus, they could not have believed in him as their Saviour, as the Lamb of God whose shed blood took away their sin, until after his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection. And since trusting in Jesus as one's atonement is essential to being born-again, none of the disciples could have been born-again prior to that atonement being made. Whatever relationship to Jesus the disciples had before Christ's crucifixion, it was not - and could not - have been as born-again believers.
If you want to contend for the notion that the disciples were all saved before Christ's crucifixion, you must explain why Christ needed to die on the cross. If it was possible for the Twelve to be saved without Christ's crucifixion, why is not possible for all to be saved without the atonement of Christ on the cross?
I can agree the Spirit moves and works in us. But the Spirit would not dwell in our temple absent the Faith God already Gave us.
The Spirit
is the faith we have to believe. He is working in our minds and hearts to bring us to faith in Christ long before we are ever saved.
As you should have learned at CF or in life already, most Christians hold their beliefs as Biblical.
Actually, on CF, I encounter many more "believers" offering their opinions than offering biblical wisdom and truth.
When I repeatedly say GOD DOES IT and the reply is basically "NO, you are wrong to say we do it our self because God does it and does it this way" - then the Protestant is telling me they have not only not listened/read what I said - they don't even want to consider we may have said much the same thing because the Catholic must be wrong.
My concern has never been about your Roman Catholicism but about whether or not your statements are biblical. It seems you expect your Catholicism to be an issue whether or not it really is.
And that there is why many Christians, including Catholics, talk about an assurance of salvation and not certitude.
Paul seemed to think certitude about one's salvation was both possible
and necessary:
2 Corinthians 13:5
5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless indeed you are disqualified.
Selah.
.
