The "there must be something wrong" gives away your own flawed opinions. Who says something must be wrong?
I'd think there might be something wrong with
any of us if we looked around ourselves- and inside ourselves-and then proceeded to think that all is well, no problems here on planet earth with the human species.
Are you actually suggesting that God isn't omniscient and didn't see that coming? Because that is exactly what your comments suggest.
Hmm, nope, didn't even hint at that far as I know. Anyway, God allows, for a season and for His purposes and according to His wisdom, the sin/evil that results from the abuse of the good gift of free will.
No, only believers, not "man" will reach perfection. But not in this lifetime. Only when they step into eternity without their sin nature.
Yes, and yet all men have the potential to reach it; our wills are the main impediment. And the “journey to perfection" as it’s been called is to begin
here in any case with perfecting already happening even if, as you say, it won’t be completed until the next life-and even though Jesus exhorts us to be perfect as His Father is perfect. Because that quest is the right orientation for man, in line with God’s will. Again, the NC is not about forgiveness only. And while we can never achieve God’s infinite perfection, man has a perfection and telos proper to his nature, as all creation does, even though with man that perfection is obtained through a process, where our wills are involved-like a flower that participates in its own blossoming. That participation is a necessary component of man’s justice/righteousness, of who he was created to be.
And man posesses no "sin nature", as if something was added at the Fall. Rather fallen man lacks communion with the Trinity, a disordered state as anomalous as the sin it inevitably fosters.
Adam was created with freedom. God gave him 1 prohibition. Adam was free to obey that prohibition or rebel against that prohibition and eat. Adam chose to eat.
Yes, he did so, alright.
Huh? Are you suggesting that God was "missing in him"? Absurd.
Yes, missing. While we can't even live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28) apart from God, fallen man is nonetheless apart from God, which is exactly why Jesus tells us, "Apart from Me you can do nothing." John 5:15. And
yet, we don't even have to believe in His
existence, let alone his goodness, mercy, and love. And that lack of faith, from the lack of the “knowledge of God" that all men now experience from birth, means that man is lost, dead, sick. Yes, God is very much missing in us, and in our world. Adam opted to “depart” from God so to speak, and we all inherit that same separation now.
Rom 2:14,15 tells us that God created humanity with a conscience. iow, "the law written on their hearts". Paul was comparing/contrasting Jews, who had the Law and by that knew what was right from wrong, and Gentiles, who didn't have the Law but had "the law written on their hearts". That's the conscience. By which even Gentiles (rest of the human race) knows right from wrong.
Yes, man has a conscience, the voice of God in himself, aka the "natural law", the law written on his heart. But Adam was the first to ignore and deny that voice, to overide it, and that conscience is dimmed, corrupted, and often suspected, doubted, and overriden as a matter of course now in fallen man, because the breach with God had been made. As Augustine said regarding the Law,
"God wrote on tablets of stone that which man failed to read in his heart."
Each human must come to see the error in this position, with the help of experience in a world where sin/evil reign due to freedom from God's direct moral control, ignorant of and unsubjugated to Him, combined with the grace and revelation that He gives to draw us into the light of the truth and away from that darkness and ignorance. Until we know God we're truly lost, not even knowing where we came from, if anywhere, what we're here for, if for anything, and where we're going, if anywhere. God is our true home.
I know you're only trying to cheapen the idea of eternal security, but Jesus clearly taught it from
John 5:24 and
John 10:28. Like it or not.
Once given eternal life, the recipient shall never perish. That is the teaching of Jesus.
Jesus also taught that we must obey the commandments to gain eternal life and Paul instructed that we must do good and put to death the deeds of the flesh in order to live. And this in no way conflicts with John 5:24 or John 10:28 because Jesus, John, James, Paul, et al knew that with the New Covenant man was
still obligated to be personally righteous but that this was now
possible under that covenant, by our being
with God, under grace, living by the Spirit, having been justified-made just-by faith. The difference that faith makes is that now we depend on God for our righteousness, not on ourselves. To put it another way, faith does not stand alone as the definition of righteousness for man, rather it places man in
union with that righteousness, with God, a
just state of being in and of itself. To the extent that we remain in that union, evidenced by how we live, we have eternal life. We can die just as easily as we’ve rose to newness of life, however, by returning to our old life which means, regardless off any profession of faith, that we’ve separated ourselves again from that vital union that man was made for. Talk is cheap, while love
acts, for the good of others and the glory of God, by its nature. Again, faith, hope, and love are all gifts of God,
and daily choices for us.
“…if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Cor 13:2
“Without love faith may indeed exist, but avails nothing.” Augustine
The New Covenant is about who we
are, who we become, on the inside, not just about what we believe.
in whom also believing, you were signed with the holy Spirit of promise, Who is the pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of acquisition, unto the praise of his glory.
