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Pleased or grateful to have been rescued?
And He judges both the saved & unsaved.Well, if being saved doesn't depend on me - why say I am saved ?
God, Who knows my heart, my entire life (before I live it), the frontside and backside of eternity, and the above eternity, will judge; glory to Him +
And He judges both the saved & unsaved.
The reason you are saved & the reason it doesn't depend on you are the same - God's mercy.
I will.Yes, He does.And all is up to Him.
I have limited knowledge - so I'll leave it up to Him, knowing He is merciful.
But I won't claim to know my future.
I will.
I have His assurances, & I believe Him.
Yeah,...quote=seeingeyes;That depends on what you mean by 'saved'. If 'saved' means 'when I die, I'm going straight to the pearly gates', then, in truth, none of us have any idea whether we are 'saved' or not. I mean, we can place our hope in the promises of God, but then if we are more concerned about our own post-death situation than anything else, then we have missed the gospel completely.
Well, it's not like He hasn't told us anything about His determinations.That's why it's better to leave such determinations up to our Judge.
That wasn't MY experience on the works wagon. My wife & I both were very active participants in-reach, outreach, & foreign missions. The more I tried to do enough to feel "OK", the less "OK" I realy felt.If we follow him, laying our lives down for others as he did, keeping our eyes on the Father, as he did, then we end up needing a lot less assurance that we'll 'be OK'.
Not being "OK" is not being saved. God is not "with" the unsaved.Maybe we won't 'be OK', but our Father will be with us all through that valley. In this life and in whatever comes next.
Same to ya.God bless
Same here, so don't even THINK about believing in yourself. That's a bad roll with fixed dice.I believe Him as well; it's 'me' that's the dicey part
Yeah,...
by "saved" I do mean we enter heaven, but our works get judged first.
Well, it's not like He hasn't told us anything about His determinations.
That wasn't MY experience on the works wagon. My wife & I both were very active participants in-reach, outreach, & foreign missions. The more I tried to do enough to feel "OK", the less "OK" I realy felt.
The more I worked, the more critical I became of myself & others.
Not being "OK" is not being saved. God is not "with" the unsaved.
Some would say believing is a work while others say believing isn't a work.
Absotively posilutely. Most people have never read the bible.quote=seeingeyes;Yes, but don't you think that there will be folks who are surprised by where they end up?
That's what soteriology boils down to,... not that I prefer everything boiled.Ahh shoot, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make this a 'faith vs. works' thing. That's another thread (one we've all posted in too many times!).
Major truth, that. When I was fighting depression at 15, I realized hard labor toward another person or other people's good immediately lifted my depression. I could cover my butt, but not for long. It would be a no-rest-for-the-wicked situation.What I meant is that love requires us to take our eyes off ourselves, which we can't do if our primary goal is to make sure our own butts are covered.
.I'm not trying to make some grand theological point here, just a practical one. If you pop your head into Christian Advice now and again you'll see the youngin's constantly asking, "Is this a sin?", "Will that send me to hell?" They can't tie their own shoe laces for fear of offending a Holy God
Right. I get fear & loathing type responses: If we're predestined then it doesn't matter ,so why preach? Why not sin freely? It's like they have no concept of being motivated by gratitude.The fact is though, that no one can follow Jesus out of fear. Everything he did he did out of love...not for fear of future consequences or even hope of future reward. Christ cannot be bought nor threatened. Neither, then, can any of the children of God.
First, to dispense with semantic ambiguity, God is omnipresent, so He is always "with" us in that sense, but not with us in the sense of being "on our side".But that's only true after we're dead?
I already said it did not depend on me. But what is sad is taking an unbiblical hymn and thinking it's true. Blessed assurance is a myth. Titus 3:7
Clark A. Calvinist: Because, the Spirit of Promise bears witness with my spirit that I am a son of God, and I examined myself to see if I was indeed in the faith. According to scripture, my new nature is that of a converted man. "Christ in me" enabled me to repent (turn from my sins) and gave me a love of truth and righteousness and holiness. And since these things are the essence of God and since fellowship with this holy and righteous God for all eternity is the essence of heaven, this is where I now belong and where I long to be.Al N. Arminian: How do you know that you are one of God's elect?
How does this: "That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."I already said it did not depend on me. But what is sad is taking an unbiblical hymn and thinking it's true. Blessed assurance is a myth. Titus 3:7
Your statement seems at the end to place faith above sacrament in terms of assurance.I'm going to have to disagree on this one with both Calvinists, on the one hand, and Arminians, Catholics, and Orthodox on the other.
I don't believe, as Calvinists do (or at least Calvinists in the Puritan and Dutch Reformed traditions) that we should look for signs of our election, whether an inner peace or sense (as the hymn says) or in our actions (Pietism). I don't believe we can find complete assurance in them.
However, I do believe- and this is a particularly Lutheran way of looking at it- that we can find complete assurance in the sacraments, because God has sealed visible signs with the power of his gracious, ever-present word. We are identity as adopted children of God in baptism, and that fundamentally marks us out as saved. We hear our baptized status affirmed and renewed in the absolution proclaimed whenever we repent, even if our repentance is imperfect. And we partake in the eschatological judgment when partaking of Christ's body and blood, and pass through that judgment to participate in the marriage feast of the lamb in his kingdom.
What more assurance could we possibly want or need? If we believe that God has sealed and signed these visible elements to his gracious promise of forgiveness, and that through them he imparts to us his very own nature and makes us one with him, then I assert that we cannot possibly have more assurance of our salvation.
I may be overstating my case a little, since I do not believe in the perseverance of the saints, nor do I believe that every recipient is a faithful recipient. However, if we do receive faithfully, and continue to receive faithfully, then we have already received and are still regularly receiving the adoption, forgiveness, and final favorable judgment which will be made visibly manifest at the parousia.
My thoughts exactly, it would seem to me if one wanted to rail against something as being false they would first study it to understand what they really mean... LOL his outline of Calvinism is a mile off.Do you have a citation for that or is that your interpretation of what Calvin wrote ?
Exactly, that view of anything being dependent on man (the prescient view) puts our Creator at the mercy of His creation; if God wants people in heaven, He has to hope that man will freely choose His way of salvation.I don't really see how that is true. If salvation is dependent upon anything we do but can choose not to do, God merely offers salvation--which is quite a different matter.
Your statement seems at the end to place faith above sacrament in terms of assurance.
Being Orthodox I'm not even willing to say I'm saved but have hope I will be saved.
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