This is talking about entrance into God's plan of salvation.
The Bible no where uses the phrase, "entrance into God's plan of salvation." Salvation is not a "plan," salvation is a Person: Jesus Christ. (
1 Jn. 5:11-13)
For it talks about how we are also saved by the WASHING and REGENERATION of the Holy Ghost in
Titus 3:5, too (Words that you conveniently left out). So
Titus 3:5-7 is talking about Initial Salvation!
There is no such thing as "initial salvation." The phrase does not appear anywhere in Scripture. And as far as I'm concerned, the end of
Titus 3:5 just further makes my case for me. It is the shed blood of Christ that cleanses me from sin and the Holy Spirit who gives to me spiritual life. I simply receive these things; I cannot work to earn them, or contribute to my own salvation.
But you have to isolate this verse on the words you prefer to see and focus a laser beam on them (Ignoring the rest of the Bible).
Now you're just indulging in Strawman argument. I focused on the particular part of the verse that I did because it was pertinent to the point I was making. Doing so in no way indicates that I ignore the rest of the Bible. In fact, in my first post to this thread (post #54) I quoted
Titus 3:3-7!
In addition, if you were to skip back and read
Titus 1:16, you would also have to realize that a person can deny God by a lack of works, too. In other words, your Soteriology only works if you ignore the rest of what Scripture says (i.e. the rest of
Titus 3:5 and
Titus 1:16).
People deny God in their minds and hearts before they deny Him in their works. And those who do reveal not only their degeneracy but their unregeneracy.
Titus 1:16 speaks of spiritually unregenerate people, not those who are saved. This is very clear when you consider verse 16 in the light of verse 15:
Titus 1:15-16
15 To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.
I don't see, then, how this passage does anything to diminish what I pointed out from
Titus 3:5. No one is saved by dint of their own effort; good works have nothing to do with becoming an adopted child of God. The passage above does not deny this or qualify it. What it does explain is the relationship between what one thinks and believes and one's behaviour. Those who are defiled and unbelieving act like it. Those who are genuinely born-again, also act like it.
It is another gospel to teach that Jesus did not die so as to make us holy, blameless, and zealous of good works (See
Ephesians 5:25-27) (
Titus 2:14).
And your point is? I don't hold to such a view of the Gospel. Do you?
For the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness and that we should live righteously in this present world. Verse 9 (
Ephesians 2:9) is talking about the entrance. We are not saved by works when we come to God. We are saved by God's grace. From that point on, verse 10 (Which you conveniently leave out again) says that we are created unto Christ Jesus for good works.
Ephesians 2:9 says nothing about an "entrance." It speaks only of the absence of our good works in God's salvation of us. Verse 10 (which I left out for reasons of pertinency, not convenience) speaks of the consequences of one's salvation, the fruit of it,
not the means of retaining it. We are saved
unto good works, not
by good works.
Hebrews 12:14 says that without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. Jesus says in
Matthew 19:17, if you will enter into life, keep the commandments.
Hebrews 5:9 says that Jesus is the author of eternal salvation to all who OBEY Him.
Yes, and? Holiness and obedience to God's commands are the fruit of salvation. They are not, however, the means of it.
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.
So if salvation is inevitable for those who are saved, then how do you not see that as forced salvation? Inevitable suggests that it is the only outcome. When a person has one outcome or choice before them, then that would be something that is forced. So you believe in a contradiction.
No, there is no contradiction, only poor thinking on your part. If you should find yourself playing chess with the world's greatest chess master, who do you think will win? You are free to make whatever moves you like in the course of the game but right from the beginning, your loss of the game is certain. Have you been forced to lose? In a way, yes. But not in a way that suspends or contravenes your free will.
God works on a level far beyond any chess master, of course. He has known from before the universe existed how you would respond to His drawing, and convicting, and illumination of your mind and heart to His saving truth. He knew before He ever began to work to save you exactly how to do so to bring about your free choice to be saved. Against this sort of knowledge you stand no chance of resisting, not because you aren't free to resist - you are - but because every choice, every response, every thought and desire you might or will have concerning the Gospel God has foreseen and taken into account in His salvation of you. Does God force us, then, to be saved? Not in the sense in which, say, a police officer forces an arrest of a criminal. Our freedom to choose is not negated as it would be in such an instance. I don't, then, see any contradiction in my freely choosing to be saved and God's omniscient and overcoming power of persuasion that makes my salvation inevitable.
By the way, you ignored my question:
This is a non sequitur. Why could God not teach a person to deny ungodliness even if He forced their salvation? I don't see how the latter would prevent the former.
So you don't believe you are saved by cooperating with God?
I explained in my last post why I think the term "cooperating" is a poor one in describing the dynamic between us and God. As I said, God is not your co-pilot, He is your
life. "Cooperating" doesn't communicate this fact well at all.
Clearly you do not believe in holy living because you said, "Christ does not render us entirely free of our fleshly impulses and the sinful habits of the past." However, you cannot live holy if you believe you are slave to sin. That is a contradiction.
And...some more Strawman arguing from you. In fact, I do most certainly believe in holy living, but I don't think anyone is ever
in their condition entirely and perfectly holy. In our spiritual
position in Christ, clothed in his perfect righteousness, we are wholly sanctified, but in our daily living, our
condition, the truth of our fully sanctified position is worked out progressively. So it is that Paul writes,
1 Corinthians 1:2
2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours...
and the writer of Hebrews writes,
Hebrews 10:14
14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
This last verse is particularly interesting because it very clearly states our perfected position in Christ and also the
process of sanctification that goes on in the life of every believer.
But by what you said at the end of this post, you said you still battle with sin and are a slave to it.
No, I did not. What I actually wrote was:
"Our new life in Christ does not render us entirely free of our fleshly impulses and the sinful habits of the past. Our second birth does give us freedom from bondage to these things, however, and the wherewithal to live "godly in Christ Jesus."
I specifically state here that no believer is under the power of sin as they once were as an unregenerate person. But we still possess bodies with strong physical urges and needs against which we must sometimes battle. We also have established patterns of behaviour and thought that must be overcome. Being saved doesn't instantly alleviate us of the force of these things in our lives but we do, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, possess all we require to live godly in Christ Jesus.
Sin or bad fruit is mixed with good fruit?
No analogy is perfect. You aren't actually a tree, are you? You don't have actual branches, and roots, and bark, do you? No, you don't. Be careful, then, not to stretch an analogy too far. I have seen many apple trees bear stunted or rotten apples. Doesn't mean they aren't apple trees.
Those who fell away due to persecution and the care of this life (and riches) are those who believed for a while. They received the gospel with joy, but they did not endure in their faith.
There are kinds of belief, as the apostle James makes very clear. (
Ja. 2:19) The Parable of the Sower and the Seed shows that not every kind of belief, not every kind of positive reception of the seed of the Gospel, results in genuine salvation.
Sanctification is not an automatic thing that happens entirely for everyone who repents and believes in Jesus.
Oh, yes it is! See above.
We know that in
1 Timothy 5 that believing younger widows can cast off their first faith (
1 Timothy 5:12).
This is an obvious misrepresentation of the verse. The NASB offers clarity:
1 Timothy 5:11-12
11 But refuse to put younger widows on the list, for when they feel sensual desires in disregard of Christ, they want to get married,
12 thus incurring condemnation, because they have set aside their previous pledge.
Jesus says, "Abide in me." You have to abide in Christ. We do this by picking up our cross, denying ourselves, and by following Him.
Abiding in Christ is the ground out of which picking up the cross and self-denial arises. Abiding is not these things, however. The difference is one of being as opposed to doing. As I said, an apple tree brings forth apples because it is an apple tree, not in order to be an apple tree.
You cannot cast off your first faith unless you have faith.
Many people have "faith" in God, but their faith is not a saving faith, but merely intellectual, a faith of convenience and religious vanity. From this sort of faith "believers" fall away all the time.
Sin can harden a believer's heart and make them depart from the living God.
Yes, and? If they are truly saved, when they do become hardened and depart, God, being their loving Heavenly Father, will act to discipline them and draw them back into fellowship with Himself. (
He. 4:4-12)
So Sanctification is not some kind of guaranteed thing for every believer who receives God's grace. In fact, by what you said, how exactly are you in the Sanctification process? Do you find you are living more holy? But how is that possible if you are still a slave to sin? It makes no sense. Agan, you believe in yet another contradiction.
It seems you are so caught up in the tangle of your beliefs in this matter of salvation that you cannot actually comprehend any other perspective on it. I find that I am in a process of sanctification just as the Bible indicates I will be and that I am today a godlier man than I was ten or twenty years ago. How about you?
I have never said I was a slave to sin. Instead, in my posts in this thread I have indicated quite the opposite about genuine believers. What contradiction you think exists in my beliefs is more perceived than real, I think.
That is because
Ephesians 2:8-10 and
Titus 3:5-8 are talking about Initial Salvation and they are not talking about Sanctification (Which follows after one is saved by God's grace).
The phrase "initial salvation" does not exist in Scripture. Sanctification, as I have explained, is the consequence of salvation, not the means of it.
Hence, why you are confused and you trying to equate Initial Salvation with Continued Salvation or the next step or stage in the Salvation process (i.e. Sanctification).
None of these phrases exist in Scripture. There is no "initial salvation" or "continued salvation," only salvation, permanent and full.
Jesus says, "Abide in me." You have to abide in Christ. We do this by picking up our cross, denying ourselves, and by following Him.
No, we don't. We pick up our cross and deny ourselves
as a result of abiding in Christ. Goodness! Who has been teaching you about the Christian life?!
"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (
John 14:23).
The good fruit is from the Lord. So we can only bring forth good fruit if we CHOOSE to abide in Christ by obeying His commands.
5 "But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." (
1 John 2:5-6).
"He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (
1 John 2:4).
John 14:23 explains that love is the ground out of which obedience is to flow. When we love God, the natural by-product of that love is obedience. In such a circumstance, obedience is not a choice any more than the pumping of the blood through your body is a choice. How sad it is that you don't understand this.
Again, this is a contradiction. You cannot say that holiness and works of a believer is a necessary mark of showing a truly saved person if it is not truly a means of salvation in any way. That is false logic.
As I have said now a couple of times at least, an apple tree bears apples
because it is an apple tree. Bearing such fruit is the inevitable result
of being an apple tree. But the apple tree doesn't bear apples
in order to be an apple tree. Likewise, with the Christian believer. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not the means of it. There is absolutely no contradiction in this.
If holiness and works are not necessary for salvation, then you can live in sin and still be saved. Then again, you said below in this post that you can struggle with sin and still be saved. How exactly is that holy living again by struggling with sin? Jesus says we cannot serve two masters. Scripture says a double minded man is double minded in all his ways.
Yes, one can sin and still be saved. Willfully living in sin as a daily practice, however, is not consistent with the claim to be saved. A believer grows into a holy life as they grow in their faith and love of Christ. But this process of growth and change does not equate to double-mindedness and slavish bondage to sin. It is a false dichotomy to say that one is either living in perfect holy surrender to God or one is living in bondage to sin. This dichotomy totally ignores the continuum of change that characterizes every believer's walk with God.
Notice how you said that I would do those things? This is a false accusation. Nowhere am I suggesting that I would sleep with prostitutes, oppress the poor, and believe in Jesus with the thinking I was saved.
Glad to hear it! You're maybe just a bit too quick to take offense here, though.
I am suggesting that this is the line of thinking for the person who truly believes they are saved by God's grace alone and really mean it.
Well, I truly believe we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, totally apart from our works, but I don't hold to the thinking you want to ascribe to me here. Not at all.
Anyways, a person can harden their heart by the deceitfulness of sin. It is not impossible for a person to resist God after they had them in their life. Saul is a great example of this. He once had the Spirit of God, but the Lord departed from him. Why? Because of his sins (of course).
Saul did not possess the Spirit of God in anything like the way a born-again believer post Calvary does. Using him as an example of salvation lost is pointless. I will grant you, though, that sin does greatly hinder our fellowship with God (though, not our relationship to Him).
Context! Jesus said to those who did wonderful works to depart from Him because they also worked iniquity (sin) (
Matthew 7:23).
Matthew 7:21-23
21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
22 "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'
23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness .'
How could people who had done all the things described in this passage find themselves rejected by God? Is it not His will that people be free of demonic possession? Is it not His will that miracles should be performed in his name and people healed? Does God not want His will to be made known through prophesying? Well, of course God wants all of these things. But none of these things are at the
heart of God's will for us. And what is that, exactly?
Matthew 22:35-37
35 One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him,
36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
37 And He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart , and with all your soul , and with all your mind .'
It is entirely possible for people to do God's will and yet not be doing it. All miracle working, and prophesying, and deliverance from the demonic, if not born out of love for God, are spiritually worthless, though they are obedient to God's will. In fact,
all our righteousness is spiritually useless if it doesn't arise out of a heart of love for God. (
1 Cor. 13:1-3) But there are millions of people thinking they are Christians who go to church, tithe, who pray and read the Bible, who live morally circumspect lives, but who have no love, really, for God at all. And such people will find themselves one day hearing Christ say to them, "Depart from me, I never knew you." This is because they didn't understand that the ground of righteousness isn't an action, it isn't doing things, but is, rather, first and foremost,
a condition of the heart.
The narrow way is not OSAS.
You're quite right. The narrow way isn't OSAS but
Christ.
No. Jesus says we are to abide in Him. It is a command. It does not automatically happen. A vine can only grow if it is watered and it has the proper soil. Remember, the condition of your heart from the parable of the sower that I told you about?
Well, of course it doesn't automatically happen. We aren't actually branches and Christ isn't actually a tree trunk. We are volitional beings who can choose the degree of fellowship we wish to have with our Saviour. The vine-branch analogy explains to us how good, spiritual fruit is manifested in our lives. But we cannot even desire to abide in Christ if God's Spirit has not first placed such a desire within us. As Paul explained to the Philippian Christians,
God gives us both the desire and ability to do His will. (
Phil. 2:13) We don't cooperate with God in this, except to be receivers of His enabling work. And even our ability to receive, God has made possible. At every turn it is God giving us everything we need to be who He has called us to be. God, then, isn't merely working alongside us in a cooperative, team effort. He is to the believer their very life, the Source of everything they are and need as born-again disciples of Christ. This is far different, a far more intimate and dependent circumstance than mere cooperation suggests.
Right, so if Christ lived in Paul, then that means he could not have sinned.
This is not in the least biblical. Paul writes exactly the opposite about himself.
In
Romans 7:14-24 Paul is recounting his experience of struggling with sin as a Pharisee who was under the Old Law (when he was Saul).
This is neither stated nor implied in the chapter. Paul speaks of the nature and purpose of the law in the first half or so of the chapter but then goes on to describe the tension that there is within him between the good he knows to do as a follower of Jesus and the impulse of his flesh toward sin. He explains that a knowledge of the law is insufficient to bring about obedience to it. What is required is what he outlines in the first fifteen or so verses of the next chapter.
Paul says that they that are of the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit and they that are of the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. Obviously Paul was not minding the things of the Spirit but he was minding the things of the flesh in
Romans 7:14-24.
Most of what Paul writes in chapter 8 is not self-referential or in the first person. It is mostly "you" or "those who" or "if anyone" and such like, not "me," "my," or "mine." So, I don't see that you have any good grounds to assert Paul is describing himself particularly in chapter 8.
Please take note that
2 Corinthians 7:1 says we are to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh (sin) and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. This is not true if one is a slave to sin.
Think carefully about what you're saying here. Why are believers to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh, etc., if they are already perfectly holy as you want to propose every genuine believer is? Why must they perfect holiness if they are already perfectly holy as a matter of course as children of God?
As for your quoting of
Galatians 5:17: Again, you quote the verse out of context.
"
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (
Galatians 5:17).
Did you see that? Scripture is telling you to walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. But you believe you will always fulfill the lusts of the flesh, which runs contrary to this Scripture!
Again, a Strawman of my position. I don't believe that a Christian will
always fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Where in the world do you get that from?! I have, in fact, said quite the opposite! See above.