No one who follows Christ gets away with not being a sacrifice.
you have carnal Christians, or those who through their carnality use grace as an occasion for the flesh. Some believe they are not saved, I believe they are saved by the skin of the teeth, but nonetheless, saved.
some pastors and commentators that believe in carnal christians:
Jonathan Edwards-
"Indeed the Corinthians themselves who abounded in gifts tended to be carnal Christians."
Chuck Smith-
The Bible categorizes every man in one of three categories: natural, spiritual and carnal. Everyone falls into one of the three categories. The natural man is bad news. He walks in darkness and is alienated from God. The spiritual man has been made alive by the Spirit of God and is controlled by Him.
The carnal Christian, however, has enough of the Lord to be saved, but not enough of the Lord to rest in that salvation. He has enough of Christ to be miserable in the world, but too much of the world to be happy in Christ. That's a terrible place to be. - Chuck Smith- Answers for Today.
Chuck Smith in C2000 through the Bible series-
but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ ( 1Co 3:1 ).
Now the issue arises, and people often question, is it possible to be a carnal Christian? A carnal Christian is one who has received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, but does not yet have victory over the flesh and thus, still walks, many times, under the control of the flesh. He does believe, he has received Jesus as his Savior, but not as his Lord, for the flesh is still ruling over him. And he needs deliverance from that power of the flesh that has a hold on his life. So Paul describes this as the conditions of those in Corinth.
He cannot talk to them as spiritual, for they are still carnal, but he does call them babes in Christ. And so he acknowledges that they are in Christ, but unfortunately, they are babes. There is a natural development and growth physically even as there is and should be a natural development and growth spiritually. There is a time when being a babe in Christ is a beautiful, glorious thing. I love to see natural babes in Christ.
Lewis Sperry Chafer on Carnal Christians-
"This truth alone accounts for the existing difference between the spiritual Christian who “discerns all things” and the carnal Christian who cannot receive the deeper and more vital truths which are likened to strong meat (1Co 2:15; 1Co 3:1-3)."
The third would be the "most literal" view.
it breaks systematic theology of hell #1, secondly, it breaks the context to shoot out some random comment about following the Lord, and thirdly- if everything sacrificed referred to everyone, then it would be everyone universally (saved and not saved that it was referring to), since that doesn't make sense, we must use the golden rule to to modify the "everyone" to only being "some" why not modify it to match the context of the passage?
It's hard to know which of these you would like me to respond to. That last one makes the assumption that if one does not believe in an infinite number of years of punishment, one does not believe that Christ's sacrifice was necessary.
Jonathan wesley adheres to my view:
Verse 49. Every one...(that)* is cast into hell, shall be, as it were, salted with fire, preserved, not consumed thereby whereas every acceptable sacrifice shall be salted with another kind of salt, even that of Divine grace, which purifies the soul, (though frequently with pain) and preserves it from corruption.
Parenthesis mine*
Wesley, J. (1999). Mark (electronic ed., Mk 9:49). Albany, OR: Ages Software.
try countering the famous wesley.
What if hell was not what you think it is? Would you still follow Christ?
I probably would never have been a christian, because annihilation seems to weak a thing for an eternal God to deliver to wicked men.
At any rate, my view is that everyone will be salted with eternal fire, just as Christ himself was. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." (Matt 16)
This is not just a cosmic retirement plan, denying oneself now to save up for future happiness, this is entering into the world of God's grace where it rains on both the just and the unjust. Laying down one's own life for the people who are currently murdering you is not a strategy, it is eternal life shining out of a half-dead man.
thats fine, but you have only one (really sketchy) verse that supports your view of being salted with fire and it not referring to eternal hell.
What do you do with all the pictures of hell as presented by
ENDLESS PUNISHMENT:
SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR, AND REASONABLENESS OF
FUTURE ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D.,
Nehemiah Adams states:
FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 49
hand and foot.” They “ cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion,” not with candidates for heaven, under discipline, but “with the hypocrites.” He is '' thrust out.” Christ uses the expressions, “ lose his soul; “ “be cast away; ““salted with fire;” “grind him to powder;” “son of perdition”; “ “slay them before me; ““ seek me and not find me; “ “ gather the good, and cast the bad away;” “great gulf fixed;”
“die in your sins;” “where I am ye cannot come.” In various parts of the Bible we meet with phrases of the like tenor, -- such as “ wrath to come; “ “ shame and everlasting contempt; ““ torment us before the time; “ “ reap corruption; “ “ wages of sin is death; “ “ more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment; “ “mist of darkness forever and ever.” Indeed, these incidental expressions, interwoven everywhere throughout the Bible, assume that the doctrine of future, endless punishment for sin is a matter of course. The common mode of referring to the future implies it. “ Because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee away with his stroke; ““then a great ransom will not deliver thee.” “I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when
your fear cometh.” The numerous passages of this tenor do not suggest any idea of future clemency.
Paul thus declares the end of the wicked, “ The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that knew not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe, for our testimony among you was believed in that day.” That this does not apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, as the Papists and some Protestants would have us think, appears from the next chapter, in which the Thessalonians are told that “ that day “ is not “ at hand,” because the “man of sin” was first to be revealed.
Then Peter follows him, and says, “ But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
Thus, while the Bible satisfies us that the redemption made by Christ is a final effort to save men, we do not wonder that those who reject the Godhead of Christ and his sacrifice for sin, reject also the idea of endless punishment. There is no adequate necessity for a divine Saviour with his vicarious sacrifice, if there be no such penalty annexed to the law of God. Every man is then his own redeemer, either by obedience or by suffering.
But the evangelical believer looks into the. manger and upon the cross, and sees there his God incarnate. He sees, in that Christ, a sacrifice for his sins. The world laugh him to scorn.
They demand whether he believes that his God is dying; and every form of intellectual ridicule is poured upon him. He steadfastly maintains that “ the Word was God,” that “ the Word was made flesh,” that this incarnate Word was on the cross, “ a ransom for many,” “ a propitiation through faith in his blood,” his sufferings a substitute for the sinner's punishment. The believer looks to find some necessity for such an incarnation, and for the sacrificial death of such a being. He cannot find it in the need of example, moral suasion, or representation of the divine interest in him; but, in the declaration that Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, he sees the appropriateness of the incarnation to give a divine worth and efficacy to sufferings which are to atone for sin. There is no revelation to be compared with this: “ God was manifest in the flesh,” and, he “was manifested to take away our sins.” By all the methods of imagery, symbolism, predictions, and most minute, pathetic delineations of his coming, his life, death, and resurrection; by appeals from his own lips, and those of men “ in Christ's stead; “by that perpetual memorial of him, and of his sacrifice, the Lord's supper, men are admonished, and, “ as though God did beseech them,'* urged to accept pardon through this infinite provision made for the forgiveness of sin. This produces the effect, generally, upon the mind, of a last effort.
It might have been supposed that the work of Christ would suffice for the present dispensation, and that men rejecting or neglecting it would, in a future state, be approached by those influences which belong peculiarly to the work of the third person in the Godhead. But Christ said, ''It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” Something more than ordinary divine influence is meant here by the Comforter; for the Saviour's being in the world would not of course keep divine influence out of it, or prevent the disciples from receiving comfort in God. A special, divine agency is here recognized, and, by all the laws of language, a special, divine, personal agent.
His object is to reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. All which is implied in the idea of moral omnipotence is thus made to bear upon the hearts and minds of men, to effect their reconciliation to God, through Christ.
Resistance to these efforts in a certain way, it is declared, shall have the effect, however long a time before death it may be made, to consign the sinner to hopeless condemnation; for '^ whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”
