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Struggles by Non-Christians
I think I'm unregnerate, reprobate, vessel of wrath, despairing, tried all I can think of
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<blockquote data-quote="ajcarey" data-source="post: 74374353" data-attributes="member: 420009"><p>My response to your first paragraph: You are on the right track there. He has promised to save those who believe on His Son, which means forsaking commitment to and regard for sin to keep His Word since He is a Great and Holy King whose atonement is applied to those who welcome His reign in death to self, knowing that they need His atonement for sin and have no hope of making their own atonement. He demands no denial of what He calls sin nor harboring of sin along with a wholehearted willingness to do whatever He says. He offers continued cleansing to those with such a heart though they will not be absolutely perfect in their performance. But we do need to have a perfect heart that is surrendered to Him and resolved to obey Him to be eligible for His atonement. The books of 1 John and Hebrews especially explain this. "And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it." (Luke 8:21)</p><p></p><p>My response to your second paragraph: No, we don't trust we have a new nature before we follow Him. Acts 5:32 and Ephesians 1:13 show how the Holy Spirit is given after we repent and believe. The fact is that God's Spirit is striving with you already and when He accepts your repentance He will come inside you, dwell in you, and bear witness that you're a child of God (Romans 8:16). But if you wait until He comes inside you first before you are surrendered to Christ and striving to follow Him then it's never going to happen. Look at the conversions of the righteous in the Bible: Abraham, Moses, Zaccheus, Paul, etc all acted in faith to side with the Lord- they didn't wait until they felt saved or had been given new natures. They repented and chose to do what is pleasing to God- and we can be sure that the moment they were resolved in that choice they were born again, yet the focus was on doing what they needed to do to side with the Lord rather than feeling converted before they did so. He empowers those who are already willing by His Holy Spirit; and this is not a work of the flesh because the Holy Spirit was already striving with them and they yielded to that striving and cooperated from there. They were then given the Holy Spirit inside to enable them in performing what they were already set upon doing in their hearts- pleasing God, coming into line with Him, God's righteous truth prevailing to the extent that was in their power to bring about, etc. "31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." (Acts 5:31-32) </p><p></p><p>Jesus' example proves that we are never too spiritual to be beyond fearing God (see Hebrews 5:7). But I suspect your fear is a dread because you are yet outside His boundaries, and thus you have a guilt related fear. That will go away when you get inside His boundaries and you have nothing to feel guilty about because His Law will not then have any contention with you- provided that you do plead the blood of Christ and ask for mercy rather than think you're earning His favor- and that would be the one and only way you could be in danger of looking at yourself and not Christ in the sense the Bible warns about. You still need to submit to His boundaries and renounce your sins before you can plead for His atonement. So in doing that also renounce any thought in yourself that you deserve His favor and agree with the self-evident truth that you would go to hell if you got what you deserved. Even if you were totally faithful every day the rest of your life you would still be eternally indebted for how you've already turned from Him and incurred His just wrath against you. Your submission to His law and commitment to please Him needs to happen for you to be saved, but it is not a matter of making your own atonement- it is a matter that no one can be in God's favor and justified before him who is not submitted to His authority and in line with His law. Christ's atonement doesn't give us a way to get around that; it gives us a way to come back to that place of submission and to be accepted though legally we ought to die anyways. Just look at the examples of the righteous and the wicked in the Bible and you'll see this truth illustrated. No one was justified before they repented and sided wholeheartedly with God's Law (which included the demand to have atonement for sin done God's way). Those who understood God's justification right and cooperated with Him strove to please Him to show that they renounced their sin, didn't believe the enemy's lie that God's commandments don't have our best interest behind them, that they wanted the true God to be their God, and that they chose to make His interests and values their own. We should want to follow them because they ultimately followed Christ, that is a necessary aspect of working out our own salvation, and those who won't do so remain God's enemies in the realm of Satan's darkness. It is a false piety that is sadly very common which claims that our complying with God's own instructions and directions opposes Jesus. That is a concept which is foreign to Scripture. What we find rather opposing Jesus in the Bible and throughout history are people trying to invent ways to get around complying with God's instructions and directions under a guise of piety and humility which in reality are false piety and false humility.</p><p></p><p>"Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? 2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word." (Isaiah 66:1-2)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ajcarey, post: 74374353, member: 420009"] My response to your first paragraph: You are on the right track there. He has promised to save those who believe on His Son, which means forsaking commitment to and regard for sin to keep His Word since He is a Great and Holy King whose atonement is applied to those who welcome His reign in death to self, knowing that they need His atonement for sin and have no hope of making their own atonement. He demands no denial of what He calls sin nor harboring of sin along with a wholehearted willingness to do whatever He says. He offers continued cleansing to those with such a heart though they will not be absolutely perfect in their performance. But we do need to have a perfect heart that is surrendered to Him and resolved to obey Him to be eligible for His atonement. The books of 1 John and Hebrews especially explain this. "And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it." (Luke 8:21) My response to your second paragraph: No, we don't trust we have a new nature before we follow Him. Acts 5:32 and Ephesians 1:13 show how the Holy Spirit is given after we repent and believe. The fact is that God's Spirit is striving with you already and when He accepts your repentance He will come inside you, dwell in you, and bear witness that you're a child of God (Romans 8:16). But if you wait until He comes inside you first before you are surrendered to Christ and striving to follow Him then it's never going to happen. Look at the conversions of the righteous in the Bible: Abraham, Moses, Zaccheus, Paul, etc all acted in faith to side with the Lord- they didn't wait until they felt saved or had been given new natures. They repented and chose to do what is pleasing to God- and we can be sure that the moment they were resolved in that choice they were born again, yet the focus was on doing what they needed to do to side with the Lord rather than feeling converted before they did so. He empowers those who are already willing by His Holy Spirit; and this is not a work of the flesh because the Holy Spirit was already striving with them and they yielded to that striving and cooperated from there. They were then given the Holy Spirit inside to enable them in performing what they were already set upon doing in their hearts- pleasing God, coming into line with Him, God's righteous truth prevailing to the extent that was in their power to bring about, etc. "31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." (Acts 5:31-32) Jesus' example proves that we are never too spiritual to be beyond fearing God (see Hebrews 5:7). But I suspect your fear is a dread because you are yet outside His boundaries, and thus you have a guilt related fear. That will go away when you get inside His boundaries and you have nothing to feel guilty about because His Law will not then have any contention with you- provided that you do plead the blood of Christ and ask for mercy rather than think you're earning His favor- and that would be the one and only way you could be in danger of looking at yourself and not Christ in the sense the Bible warns about. You still need to submit to His boundaries and renounce your sins before you can plead for His atonement. So in doing that also renounce any thought in yourself that you deserve His favor and agree with the self-evident truth that you would go to hell if you got what you deserved. Even if you were totally faithful every day the rest of your life you would still be eternally indebted for how you've already turned from Him and incurred His just wrath against you. Your submission to His law and commitment to please Him needs to happen for you to be saved, but it is not a matter of making your own atonement- it is a matter that no one can be in God's favor and justified before him who is not submitted to His authority and in line with His law. Christ's atonement doesn't give us a way to get around that; it gives us a way to come back to that place of submission and to be accepted though legally we ought to die anyways. Just look at the examples of the righteous and the wicked in the Bible and you'll see this truth illustrated. No one was justified before they repented and sided wholeheartedly with God's Law (which included the demand to have atonement for sin done God's way). Those who understood God's justification right and cooperated with Him strove to please Him to show that they renounced their sin, didn't believe the enemy's lie that God's commandments don't have our best interest behind them, that they wanted the true God to be their God, and that they chose to make His interests and values their own. We should want to follow them because they ultimately followed Christ, that is a necessary aspect of working out our own salvation, and those who won't do so remain God's enemies in the realm of Satan's darkness. It is a false piety that is sadly very common which claims that our complying with God's own instructions and directions opposes Jesus. That is a concept which is foreign to Scripture. What we find rather opposing Jesus in the Bible and throughout history are people trying to invent ways to get around complying with God's instructions and directions under a guise of piety and humility which in reality are false piety and false humility. "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? 2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word." (Isaiah 66:1-2) [/QUOTE]
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I think I'm unregnerate, reprobate, vessel of wrath, despairing, tried all I can think of
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