Xalith, if you don't like mocking, don't listen to Pirate Christian Radio on the web. Don't do it. I'm warning you. Mocking abounds and probably against pastors you may have heard of.
I don't listen to scoffers and mockers, no. I don't care who they are mocking, or who they are scoffing at. So no worries there.
It's so typical they one can say a person is saved by faith alone, then punk slap them afterwards with pious living or you go to hell. Why not just start out by saving, "If you don't do repent, say a prayer, live in a way I can validate your in, and reject Scripture for an invisible buddy that I call the Spirit your hell bound".
Conditions you place on salvation, no one can live by. You can't either
It is about effort. Nobody can live a sinless life. It is impossible. However, you will find Christ telling people to go "Repent" and "Go and Sin No More" (like He said to the woman caught in adultery).
Christ calls us to Repent... yes, Repentance is part of accepting His salvation. Even Paul said "Does that give me a license to sin? No, God Forbid!" in his Epistles.
Nobody enters Heaven by their own works. However, when you receive the Holy Spirit, He starts working within you to transform your life, and however small or great the results are, there
will be fruit produced. There should be a gradual turning away from sin (the willful pre-meditated kind of sin that you plan out ahead of time), cutting sinful things out of your life, things you know are sin, and you shouldn't be doing, etc.
I don't think anybody on these forums is saying "You must do works or you're going to Hell". That's Salvation by Works, and that basically makes God out to be a liar, or worse, insinuates that Jesus died in vain.
However, I must ask a question......
If you truly believe that Jesus died for your sins on the Cross... are you going to keep willfully sinning? Are you going to go out and do something you
know is sin?
I think it comes down to a lot of Christians who do the motions, but they've lost sight of what it really means. I don't know about you, but to me, being a Christian is about loving Christ. Didn't Christ say something along the lines of "if you love my Father who sent Me, then you will love Me, and if you love Me, you will do what I tell you to do" (paraphrased)? I'd have to dig scriptures up, but I don't have time to do it right now.
A lot of people seem to do what He said to do (or at least partly)... but I'm just not seeing the Love. I'm sorry, I don't. Some people profess Christ, they will show up at sit on the pews for an hour a week, and the rest of the week, they've got their noses stuck in business, sports, movies, entertainment... where's God? Where's Christ?
How many people can rattle off 50+ statistics about their favorite Football team off the top of their head, but yet can't name at least 20 books in the Bible without looking it up? Do you at least see where I'm going with this?
How can someone claim to love Christ, but spend only 1 hour a week with Him? Would you do that to your earthly wife/husband? Would you get married to someone or at least get engaged to someone, and only see them for one hour a week and then go out to bars, bachelor parties, etc afterwards? Of course you wouldn't; that's absurd. So why do people do it to Jesus?
And you know what... I was once like this. I was an avid videogamer. On days I had off work, I'd get up at 8AM, sit at my computer, and at 11PM-12AM I'd go to bed, and I'd have only moved away from the computer just long enough to go to the bathroom or eat meals.
I had entire maps, statistics, songs, etc of various video games burned into my memory, but if you asked me back then basic questions about the Bible, I woulda been clueless as to a lot of them. But yet I claimed I believed in Christ... but yet... I wasn't paying any attention to Him at all, something I sorely repent for. I thank God and Christ both for their Love and their Grace, and their Patience with me as I spent nearly 20 years of my adult life with my back turned completely to Them, as I went about doing my own thing without a care for Them at all.
Well, Praise the Lord, I turned towards Him this past March, and now... I play video games a lot less, I say several prayers a day (instead of merely when I need something), I've read the Bible cover-to-cover multiple times, and have gone over different materials by different people to help understand it more, etc.
He's helped me see the difference between "pew-warming" and actually truly having a relationship with Him in my life. I used to be lonely, and I used to be depressed that I was single, but now I look back on that and I think that I was being an idiot back then, because there was someone, and He was standing beside me, waiting.... waiting... waiting... just silently waiting for me to turn towards Him.
He never forsake me, He never turned His back on me, He never betrayed me, He never left me high and dry like many of my so-called "friends" have done in my 35 years of life... He was always there for me, it was me who wasn't there for Him.
But yet, even despite that fact, He's still there now.
How many "Christians" can say similar things? How many have actually walked with Him instead of visiting Him for 1-2 out of every 168 hours? That's 1.2% of their entire time (assuming 2hr/wk). That's all most people can give Him, yet they claim they love Him?
Not condemning anyone here... but surely we can do better than that.
