In regards to
1 Corinthians 3:
Well, just because they are called brethren, does not mean they are saved brethren.
This is the straightforward, natural reading of the term "brethren." Go back to Paul's remarks in the chapter just before and he says some things that make it pretty clear he thought he was writing to fellow born-again believers:
1 Corinthians 2:12
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
1 Corinthians 2:16
16 For "who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
Who is the "we" of whom Paul is speaking? Himself, obviously, and the Corinthian believers to whom he is writing. And it is those who have received the "spirit which is of God" and who possess "the mind of Christ" that Paul calls "brethren" in the first verse of chapter 3. So, yes, Paul did mean to say that he considered the Corinthians - carnal, envious, and divisive though they were - to be fellow members of God's family. He made this even more plain when, just a bit farther in to chapter 3, he wrote of the Corinthian believers:
1 Corinthians 3:9
9 ...you are God's field, you are God's building.
We have, here, then, people Paul identified as genuine believers but who were living in sin. Instead of suggesting their salvation was in danger, he wrote that, even if all they had built upon the foundation of Christ their Saviour was burnt up in the Final Judgment, they would
still enter into heaven.
1 Corinthians 3:11-15
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.
14 If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.
15 If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Quite a different message here than the one you're purveying, Jason.
In
1 Corinthians 5 we learn that we are to cast out that wicked brother from among us (who is committing sexual immorality within the gathering body of believers).
11 "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person." (
1 Corinthians 5:11-13).
I'm afraid this just makes my case for me. Paul clearly implies that the man to be "put away" was a member of the family of God, a
brother in the faith, and not one who was outside it. Paul, then, seems to have believed that one could be a genuinely saved person and still be guilty of very serious sin.
Peter talks about children who are accursed.
"Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:" (
2 Peter 2:14).
This is a deflection, an attempt at obfuscation, but I will address it anyway. 2 Peter 2 is taken up entirely with a discussion of false teachers, identified in verse 1:
2 Peter 2:1
1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
It is these false prophets who are the "accursed children" to whom Peter referred. Nothing in Peter's long description of them, however, suggests that they were ever truly born-again. They were "pernicious" in their ways, covetous, exploiting people with deceptive words, walking according to the flesh, adulterous, and so on. If they were "children," they would have been, given Peter's description of them, of their father
the devil (
John 8:44). That you would try to make it seem like Peter was describing believers, children of God, shows just how much you'll contort Scripture to make it say what you want it to say. Yikes!
I have heard the Eternal Security Proponent boast about how they cannot cease from sin more times than I care to count. Why would Peter describe a trait to false propehts if it is the same trait as believers?
A lion and a house cat share some traits. They both have claws, and teeth, and fur; they both have tails, and whiskers. Only an idiot, however, would mistake a house cat for a lion, or vice versa.
1 Corinthians 3 is talking about your motivations behind your good works. Are they works solely based upon the Lord or a little bit so as to please men? Works that are not solely done out of love for the Lord will be burned up. Those who defile their temple by committing grievous sin will be destroyed.
Clearly, Paul was not referring to a person's immortal soul but to their physical body. He had only just made it clear in the verse before that all of a believer's works could be burnt up in the Final Judgment and yet they would still be granted entrance into God's kingdom.
Over the many centuries since Paul wrote his epistles, many have died as a consequence of their sexual promiscuity. Syphilis, typically contracted through sexual contact, killed many millions in earlier centuries. Even today it results in stillborn babies, birth defects, and serious pregnancy complications. AIDS has a similar effect among the sexually promiscuous in modern times, having killed millions also. Paul was right: God has and will destroy those who defile their "temple" sexually.
James 5:19-20 refers to the reader as brethren and if anyone of us brethren errs away from the truth and is converted back again (by another faithful believer), they should know that they have helped to save a soul from death and help to cover their sins (no doubt because they got them to repent of their sins to the Lord for living a prodigal life of sin).
So, now you want to say that "brethren"
does refer to born-again believers? Convenient. You were trying to suggest it didn't mean that when Paul used the term in his letter to the Corinthians. This is a dishonest way to handle Scripture, Jason.
James 5:19-20
19 Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back,
20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
Does "wander from the truth" indicate a loss of salvation? I don't see why it should. A mathematician may make a mistake in his calculations and "wander" from a correct answer, but this doesn't mean he is no longer a mathematician, only that he is a mistaken one.
Does "one among you" indicate a fellow born again believer? Possibly. But possibly not. I have taken friends of mine to family events but their presence among my relatives doesn't make them family. Especially in light of James' description of "the one among you" as a "sinner" and not a brother, it seems to me he is not referring to a person who had wandered away from their salvation but to a person who had not yet been saved. I don't see, then, that this passage helps your case any.
In the Parable of the Prodigal Son we learn that a brother can be dead and be made alive again (See
Luke 15:32).
"Dead" was a figurative description by the father, referring to the loss of
fellowship between himself and his son, not their
relationship. The Prodigal was always his father's son no matter how wretchedly the Prodigal lived. So, again, this doesn't help your case any.
Paul is not telling the brethren to come together for the worse as in reference to how he is not concerned with their sin.
??? Did I say that he was? No. But Paul
does identify sin among genuine
believers. Their sin did not, in Paul's mind, mean they were no longer saved. That's why I cited the passage. Paul is very critical of the bad behaviour of the Cornithian believers but he still thinks they are believers. Evidently, a Christian can be be truly born-again and yet sin (and sin badly).
The OSAS interpretation on
1 John 1:8 does not work because it would contradict a normal reading on
1 John 2:3-4.
A natural, straightforward reading of John's words is exactly the reading I give it. And such a reading confounds your ideas about sin in the life of a born-again believer. The passage in the second chapter of 1 John is speaking of sin as a persistent and common way of life, not as an occasional instance of disobedience.
They were gnostics and they falsely believed that sin was an illusion or it did not exist.
At the time of John's writing, gnosticism was in its nascent state, not yet known as the gnosticism you are thinking of. And John makes no clear, direct references to gnosticism in his remarks in
1 John 1:8-10. It seems to me that you're grasping at straws here to avoid the plain meaning of John's words.
Galatians 5:16 is something you are ignoring here.
It says we are able to not fulfill the lusts of the flesh if we walk in the Spirit.
This verse does not work in your belief because you no doubt take the OSAS interpretation on
1 John 1:8 that says you will always be in sin of some kind. So you are not able to not fulfill the lusts of the flesh by walking in the Spirit as
Galatians 5:16 says. That verse does not exist for you or it is a verse you have to change into saying something else.
This is the sort of poor thinking that plagues all of your posts. Walking in the Spirit enables me to avoid fulfilling, or being controlled by, the lusts of the flesh, but it does not mean, therefore, that I am
totally clear of all sin any more than a cancer patient who takes drugs that alleviate the symptoms of his illness is therefore cured of cancer. The patient may still have leukemia, though the drugs have suspended the symptoms of the leukemia. In the same way, walking in the Spirit suspends my sinful indulgence of my flesh, but this doesn't mean I'm totally cured of all sin.
What the passage from Galatians 5 indicates is that Paul believed genuine Christians would struggle with the impulses of their flesh and be unable at times to obey the Holy Spirit. He did not think, though, that this meant the Galatian believers were unsaved. He appears to me, instead, to be simply describing a common state of affairs among Christian people.
