Is God a do as I say not as I do God?

Fervent · Sunday at 7:27 PM

Jeff Saunders said:
Is not the connotative meaning just someone’s opinion on what they or a group thinks something means in the a particular context, but it’s still someone’s opinion and they have an agenda that they are trying to prove. A dictionary is just the agreement of what words mean at the time.

Technically speaking, both connotative meaning and denotative meaning are people's opinions of common usage. But neither are purely opinion based, but have to do with how the word is used and in the kinds of contexts its commonly found in. Words, in and of themselves, don't have a meaning as if anywhere a word is found the same concept is in play. Thinking as much is an exegetical fallacy known as the word-concept fallacy. Instead, the meaning of words depends partly on their common usage but more directly on the context in which they are found. Meaning primarily rests much higher than the word level, somewhere between the sentence level and the paragraph level. So dictionaries are of extremely limited value because they say nothing of what kinds of contexts the words are typically found in to shed light on various connotations that exist for the word.

fhansen · Sunday at 11:59 PM

Jeff Saunders said:
God has said,1 Cor 12:5-8 love keeps no record of wrongs, Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father says-Matt 4:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,love tolerates all things,has faith in all things,hopes in all things, endures all things,Love never fails -Jam 2:8 Love your neighbor as yourself-2 Cor 5:19 not counting peoples trespasses against them.
I in scripture this is what we are told to do to others and what God is like and doing.
According to Western Augustin Christianity, once your leave your temporary mortal body, if you miss understand what God has done or you outright reject humans ideas of God, He will burn you eternally or annihilate you.
How is this view of God not make him into a God who says do as I say not as I do?
Please no answers of Gods ways are higher than ours, that's a copout.

God loves His creation lavishly, but He will not force it to love in return. While love is an aspect of God’s very nature, for His creation love is necessarily a choice, and God wants us to come to value and choose it, in order to be like Himself for our own highest good, wholeness, peace, happiness, justice, etc. He covets that choice, that right use of our freedom that comes as we unite with Him via faith. But He will not override our wills to reject it, to reject Him.

Aaron112 · Monday at 1:22 AM

Yahweh is Righteous in Judgement and requires Judgement.

Aaron112 · Monday at 1:26 AM

Clare73 said:
Nothing more needs to be said other than this view of God is not Biblical.

You replied correctly.
Without the Creator's Judgment , the false gospel is destroying souls daily, millions or billions.
Souls that never are resurrected to LIFE!
And woe (with great anguish and sorrow and pain) to those, to anyone, who brings a false gospel.
"Nothing more needs to be said..."
As Written: When anyone brings a false gospel, do not talk to them, nor have a meal with them, lest you share in the punishment they themselves receive for their guilt.

BelieveItOarKnot · Monday at 5:05 AM

2PhiloVoid said:
I haven't been. But if eternal salvation for "all" is true,

There is no if. Jesus is the Savior of the world, by His Own claims.

2PhiloVoid said:
it's conceptual structure isn't evidenced by epistemic analogy to "loving our neighbors as ourselves."

Let's draw a simple line here:

In scripture there are people and there are devils. These 2 parties basically occupy the same space, that is, our own sorry hides. We all engage the tempter internally. I'd start there as a lot of believers seem to forget this part.

And IF that is true, I believe it is true, THEN not "all" are saved, are they? Because the devil and his messengers do go to hell.

People however are their "captives" and Jesus came to set them free AFTER this present life OR when the devil and his messengers are put away entirely ala Matt. 25, whichever comes first.

So, walking in the same pair of shoes are one who will be saved, and one (or more) who will not be saved.

BelieveItOarKnot · Monday at 5:12 AM

Clare73 said:
In the context of the rest of the NT, the meaning of 2 Co 5:19 is the second one; i.e., all who believe, both Jew and Gentile.

Unfortunately for your claim that distinction is never mentioned in 2 Cor. 5:19 or anywhere else.

Jesus isn't counting sins against people and wasn't counting yours against you before you ever showed up or believed. We just became reconciled to the fact of it, at His determination

Gregory Thompson · Monday at 5:15 AM

Jeff Saunders said:
God has said,1 Cor 12:5-8 love keeps no record of wrongs, Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father says-Matt 4:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,love tolerates all things,has faith in all things,hopes in all things, endures all things,Love never fails -Jam 2:8 Love your neighbor as yourself-2 Cor 5:19 not counting peoples trespasses against them.
I in scripture this is what we are told to do to others and what God is like and doing.
According to Western Augustin Christianity, once your leave your temporary mortal body, if you miss understand what God has done or you outright reject humans ideas of God, He will burn you eternally or annihilate you.
How is this view of God not make him into a God who says do as I say not as I do?
Please no answers of Gods ways are higher than ours, that's a copout.

The books opened on the day of judgment are people's hearts. Since people cannot forgive others deep within their hearts (no control over that) they would be judged based on how they judge others.
God remains God.

BelieveItOarKnot · Monday at 5:20 AM

fhansen said:
God loves His creation lavishly, but He will not force it to love in return

Love comes from God to start with.

We don't conjure it up ourselves NOR is God in need of the conjuring up of some types of substandard psuedo love of anyone that would never come close to His Love for all people.

The fact that any love even exists within anyone is proof that they know God and are born of God, 4 step prayers notwithstanding. 1 John 4:7

And God does force Himself upon everyone. Not one thing exists in the entire universe without His Involvement. Any positions that seek to carve out God from His Own creation is by its own definition, Godless

2PhiloVoid · Monday at 6:43 AM

BelieveItOarKnot said:
There is no if. Jesus is the Savior of the world, by His Own claims.

Let's draw a simple line here:

In scripture there are people and there are devils. These 2 parties basically occupy the same space, that is, our own sorry hides. We all engage the tempter internally. I'd start there as a lot of believers seem to forget this part.

And IF that is true, I believe it is true, THEN not "all" are saved, are they? Because the devil and his messengers do go to hell.

People however are their "captives" and Jesus came to set them free AFTER this present life OR when the devil and his messengers are put away entirely ala Matt. 25, whichever comes first.

So, walking in the same pair of shoes are one who will be saved, and one (or more) who will not be saved.

Did you learn these "simple" steps of logic and hermeneutics in college classes on Logic and Hermeneutics?

If so, I'd go to the registrar, withdraw and ask for your money back.

In the meantime, I'm going to affirm Hitler stake in Hell. And I'm pretty sure that there, he'll stay.

bling · Monday at 9:40 AM

Jeff Saunders said:
God has said,1 Cor 12:5-8 love keeps no record of wrongs, Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father says-Matt 4:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,love tolerates all things,has faith in all things,hopes in all things, endures all things,Love never fails -Jam 2:8 Love your neighbor as yourself-2 Cor 5:19 not counting peoples trespasses against them.
I in scripture this is what we are told to do to others and what God is like and doing.
According to Western Augustin Christianity, once your leave your temporary mortal body, if you miss understand what God has done or you outright reject humans ideas of God, He will burn you eternally or annihilate you.
How is this view of God not make him into a God who says do as I say not as I do?
Please no answers of Gods ways are higher than ours, that's a copout.

You ask a good question, but it requires lots of words to answer.
God Loves everyone, but "Love" is a transaction and not just one sided. God does His part perfectly, but man as the receiver of that Love has a part to play. Man must humbly accept that Love (forgiveness, charity, help, mercy, grace) as pure undeserved charity and thus will automatically Love back in proportion to the Love he has received (Luke 7).
Our part as Lovers (forgivers) is to Love everyone, but not all will accept our Love as pure undeserved charity, thus the transaction has not been completed for them (Matt. 18).
God sends people to hell and annihilation not out of a human type of vengeance and not to help them, but out of Love for others who can be helped to fulfill their earthly objective, by knowing the downside is real. Those who go to hell and annihilation have while on earth shown to God there is nothing more, He can do for them to have them accept and complete their earthly object and thus take on a lesser objective.

Jeff Saunders · Monday at 10:15 AM

fhansen said:
God loves His creation lavishly, but He will not force it to love in return. While love is an aspect of God’s very nature, for His creation love is necessarily a choice, and God wants us to come to value and choose it, in order to be like Himself for our own highest good, wholeness, peace, happiness, justice, etc. He covets that choice, that right use of our freedom that comes as we unite with Him via faith. But He will not override our wills to reject it, to reject Him.

What scripture says that God will not override our wills ?

fhansen · Monday at 10:58 AM

BelieveItOarKnot said:
Love comes from God to start with.

We don't conjure it up ourselves NOR is God in need of the conjuring up of some types of substandard psuedo love of anyone that would never come close to His Love for all people.

The fact that any love even exists within anyone is proof that they know God and are born of God, 4 step prayers notwithstanding. 1 John 4:7

And God does force Himself upon everyone. Not one thing exists in the entire universe without His Involvement. Any positions that seek to carve out God from His Own creation is by its own definition, Godless

And? You certainly offered nothing new here other than to only show that you don’t quite understand that, while love is a gift of grace, it’s also, necessarily, a human choice, to accept, express, and act upon that gift. We have none of it apart from Him but He nonetheless most definitely will not force it upon us; it would be something else, not love, if He did so. That’s basic Christianity along with an understanding of what love is to begin with. Hell, it can be said, is the absolute rejection, and privation, of love.

fhansen · Monday at 11:44 AM

Jeff Saunders said:
What scripture says that God will not override our wills ?

well, for one thing, He wants none to perish, and yet some will:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise,as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Pet 2:9

But it’s broader than that. It’s in every word of Scripture. There’d be no reason for revelation, for us to know His word and will to begin with, if all He was going to do was stock heaven with a portion of His creation and hell with the rest at the end of the day. His purpose has never been to create automatons.

God beckons us, He informs and prompts and moves and calls us to Himself. But grace is resistible; we can refuse and reject it at any point in time.

Come all you who are weary…

Ask, seek, and knock….

Anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice…

If you remain in Me ..

Look, I stand at the door and knock! Anyone who opens the door…

All who wash their robes will be victorious

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.

“Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”

He calls, admonishes, exhorts, instructs: to be vigilant, to strive, to persevere, to do “for the least of these”, to invest our talents, to refrain from sin, to love, to obey, with eternal life at stake: to, first of all, turn to Him in faith in order to be able to do these things and to have life and life abundantly.

Strong in Him · Monday at 12:03 PM

Jeff Saunders said:
God has said,1 Cor 12:5-8 love keeps no record of wrongs, Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father says-Matt 4:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,love tolerates all things,has faith in all things,hopes in all things, endures all things,Love never fails -Jam 2:8 Love your neighbor as yourself-2 Cor 5:19 not counting peoples trespasses against them.
I in scripture this is what we are told to do to others and what God is like and doing.

Agreed.
Although those verses are all NT; I'm not sure they saw God in the same way in the OT.

Jeff Saunders said:
According to Western Augustin Christianity, once your leave your temporary mortal body, if you miss understand what God has done or you outright reject humans ideas of God, He will burn you eternally or annihilate you.

I don't know exactly who it is who are putting forward that argument. I don't agree with it and it's not Scriptural.
Misunderstanding, doubts and not being able to accept the Good News because of some hurt or trauma, and knowing that God loves you because you have experienced it but choosing to reject that love, are two different things.
God knows us through and through, Psalm 139 - he knows our hearts, our motives etc. He knows if a person has truly rejected him or if they have just not been able to hear the Good News, have misunderstood the Good News, have joyfully received the Good News but are plagued with fears and doubts, or had joyfully received the Good News, had fallen away and refused to repent and ask for forgiveness.

I don't believe he "burns" anyone - and if he were to annihilate someone permanently, what would have been the point of the Gospel?
Why send Jesus to preach eternal life and die to reconcile mankind to God if there's only annihilation after death? We might as well all live as we want - murderers and charity workers, evil people and good would all suffer the same fate. What would be the point?

When Jesus taught us to love our enemies, Matthew 5:46, he went onto say "if you only love those who love you, what good is that? Even the pagans do that. You must be perfect as God is perfect." Matthew 5:48.
Jesus was always preaching against hypocrisy - if God did not practice what he demanded of us, he'd also be a hypocrite.

Jeff Saunders said:
Please no answers of Gods ways are higher than ours, that's a copout.

In this case, that argument does not address the question/problem. There are times, though, when that might be all we can say.
We are finite, mortal beings, with finite minds and understanding. God is infinite, eternal, majestic, all-powerful and so on - of course there will be times when we do not, and cannot, understand him.

Fervent · Monday at 12:32 PM

2PhiloVoid said:
Usually, the disconnects here are found among those who think ethics comes before epistemology, logic, and metaphysics.

The part I find most perplexing is the nastiness that so many UR proponents press their claims with. If their concerns are principally ethical, you would think they would conduct themselves with utmost care...but instead they respond with backbiting and disdain with the slightest resistance.

2PhiloVoid said:
Those who put ethics first are often driven by their emotions as a heuristic, all of which makes for a terrible metric by which to read the Bible.

Clare73 · Monday at 12:46 PM

Jeff Saunders said:
Ok I looked up cosmos in several Greek dictionaries and they said it means the whole universe, but some lexacons do include the world as a possible usage of the word.

Wherever you find "world" in the NT, the Greek will be "kosomos."

fhansen · Monday at 12:53 PM

BelieveItOarKnot said:
Unfortunately for your claim that distinction is never mentioned in 2 Cor. 5:19 or anywhere else.

Jesus isn't counting sins against people and wasn't counting yours against you before you ever showed up or believed. We just became reconciled to the fact of it, at His determination

God both enables and demands reciprocity to His love.:

"For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." Matt 6:14-15

Jeff Saunders · Monday at 12:56 PM

fhansen said:
well, for one thing, He wants none to perish, and yet some will:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise,as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Pet 2:9

But it’s broader than that. It’s in every word of Scripture. There’d be no reason for revelation, for us to know His word and will to begin with, if all He was going to do was stock heaven with a portion of His creation and hell with the rest at the end of the day. His purpose has never been to create automatons.

God beckons us, He informs and prompts and moves and calls us to Himself. But grace is resistible; we can refuse and reject it at any point in time.

Come all you who are weary…

Ask, seek, and knock….

Anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice…

If you remain in Me ..

Look, I stand at the door and knock! Anyone who opens the door…

All who wash their robes will be victorious

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.

“Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”

He calls, admonishes, exhorts, instructs: to be vigilant, to strive, to persevere, to do “for the least of these”, to invest our talents, to refrain from sin, to love, to obey, with eternal life at stake: to, first of all, turn to Him in faith in order to be able to do these things and to have life and life abundantly.

2 Peter 2:9 is not a wish but its what will happen, none will perish our will does not trumps Gods will, that's just mans arrogance that thinks mans will is stronger than Gods will. Do you really think that the sin that Adam committed is stronger that the sacrifice that Jesus did, i do not believe mans will is stronger than Gods will.
Yes God draws and seeks and all will bend the knee and confess with the tongue as scripture says 3 times, we were created to be in fellowship with God/Jesus/Spirit and God knew what he was doing and he has a plan to get it done. God did not start this thing without knowing that he could get the job done.
The above list no place says God can't violate our will, its just a list of some of the ways God call his people to himself.

Jeff Saunders · Monday at 1:11 PM

Clare73 said:
Wherever you find "world" in the NT, the Greek will be "kosomos."

Yes it is and maybe that's not the best translation, world limits the scope of what God has done and will do, The death and resurrection of Jesus affects the whole cosmos not just this world.
I still have not seen the reference that says world has two meaning like you have stated, I am sure you just forgot.

fhansen · Monday at 1:20 PM

Jeff Saunders said:
2 Peter 2:9 is not a wish but its what will happen, none will perish our will does not trumps Gods will, that's just mans arrogance that thinks mans will is stronger than Gods will.

Nonsense. God is sovereign, and can use whatever criteria He wants to work out his plan for man. if God's will we're always done then there would be no evil in His creation to begin with. Obviously, He values man's freedom even if the abuse of it results in evil, for a time, until all things are consummated and good and evil are no longer allowed to coexist..

In any case, He wants us to use our freedom correctly, rightly, having come to learn for ourselves of the perfection and wisdom of His will. And this is also why we're instructed to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".

Is God a do as I say not as I do God?

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