dzheremi
Coptic Orthodox non-Egyptian
- Aug 27, 2014
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Meanwhile, fast-forward to the very next chapter after the one you quoted of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, and what do we find?
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
Gee, it's almost like we do or know isn't in itself good enough, because we can (and do) know intellectually what is right, even as we practice other things!
This is why the graceless, commandment-filled theology and soteriology of Mormonism doesn't work, by the way. Only in our Lord's coming and His life, death, and glorious resurrection do we find the answer to our problem(s), not in our own knowledge of what we are to do, or our ability to repent of it...and I write this even as a Christian of a very traditional Church (est. 1st century AD, during the lifetimes of the apostles) which keeps to the traditional sacrament of confession very stringently.
This is what I was trying to get at in the "Come Unto Christ" thread (in which you participated) when I said that Christians don't have 'ordinances', by the way...it's not that we don't have things that we are to do, like baptism, confession and so forth, but that we do not look at them in themselves as securing salvation. Only Christ our Lord, God, and Savior does that or can do that. The sacraments/mysteries are our means of participation in and with God as workers in His Vineyard, "partaking in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), so they are in themselves not 'optional' or to be discarded, but they do not in themselves save anyone, or else we could say that everyone who has ever received communion in the Orthodox Church is thereby saved. Yet the scriptures themselves testify otherwise when they warn of receiving unworthily (1 Corinthians 11:29), and indeed the liturgy itself testifies otherwise, when the priest washes his hands and prays for the worthy partaking of holy communion on his part, the part of his servants, and the part of the congregation, and testifies that each one's partaking of communion be on his own soul (i.e., he is washing his hands of any who are deceitful towards God and partake when they should not).
As I understand it, the Mormon "ordinances" are absolutes, and even performed on dead people for that very reason (e.g., baptism for the dead) -- dead people who thus have no real way of cooperation with God according to traditional Christianity, which does not believe in the soteriology of Mormonism. (After death preaching and acceptance of Mormonism; for Christians, the Harrowing of Hell was a one-time event undertaken by our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ, not repeating or needing to be repeated by anyone, since of course Christ did not mess it up the first time!)
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