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You raise an excellent point here RC. It has always thought the primary purpose of God condescending in Christ to take on human flesh and live as a man among men bes so that the face of God -- the countenance of His character and the eyes and vision what forms the window to His heart -- could be readily apprehended by human beings.
Ohhhh this bes wonderful! Exactly so!! How can anyone believe that the "imputed" righteousness of Christ -- the very atonement for which He laid down His precious life itself and suffered pain and mistreatment and ignominy -- bes only for "sins past" when EVERY sin ANY of us ever committed whats alive today bes STILL FUTURE when He died? Or how can they believe that forgiveness bes a one-time-only deal when we need mercy and grace EVERY day to sustain us because not a single one of us fails daily to make some mistake somewhere or even willfully do our own thing at the expense of someone else. The ONLY thing human beings NEVER fail to do? SIN! We need that mercy and forgiveness EVERY day, not just once at the beginning of our faith journey but EVERY day for our shortcomings and little secret pockets of disregard and sneaky little graspings. Why do we think He taught us we must forgive and forgive and forgive again, no matter how many times someone offends us? He bes teachsy us what we bes up against for the REST of our lives!! The need for forgiveness, compassion, forbearance, choosing to treat one another not as we deserve but in mercy, sweet sweet mercy and benefit of the doubt and always offering a fresh new second chance, will NEVER EVER go away and NEVER EVER lose its power because it bes born of the BLOOD that shall never lose its power.
what makes you believe that the default position is of the devil? How do you know that God has not allowed/permitted humans to be in control?I agree Moriah! It's true that we must choose either God or the devil, but the idea that there are other paths is false. People like to think that they are in control of everything. They like to think that they can ignore God, ignore the devil, and follow their own path...but little do they know that by ignoring God, they already are following the devil's path. I'm sure the devil loves it when we claim we're ignoring him and give ourselves the credit...either way we're strolling right along to our own ruin.
Again, Moriah would have to disagree. It perceives Scripture to paint a very different picture of the human condition, one in which volition has become the most seductive delusion of all, representational of a black box whose contents bes so diverse and complicated that they cannot be adequately numbered nor described, so humans resort to naming the box itself and leaving the matter closed. All illusions of "choice" arise from a selection process containing multiple parameters of impulse, inclination, perception, sum total of experience currently available to recall and subjectively perceived as relevant to the present situation, etc. We have no way of knowing whether the ultimate outcome of any given selection process truly occurs independent of these factors or entirely as a product of them, though all available research as well as theories about emergent patterns, etc. would seem to indicate the latter. At the very least, any agency of supposed human "volition" would, itself, by definition, be fallen in nature and therefore subject to the law of sin and death at work in our members. We simply cannot rise above and out of ourselves, cannot step outside our own person or nature, cannot of ourselves transcend ourselves by ourselves; we required One to come down into the miasma where we dwell AS one of us to lift us out of it, and that lifting out only transpires IN HIM and THROUGH HIM. WITHOUT Him it does not exist at all, and so without Him any concept of human volition separate from subjugation to the Virus we call SIN would be a delusion.
You bes almost there, but instead of the only alternative being "the devil" directly as a personal being, the Scriptures (as Moriah understands them) portrays a picture of the alternative being man's own confusion and subjugation to an inborn "Virus" called sin which taints and twists and adulterates -- sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly -- everything he thinks, feels, says, does, perceives, reacts or responds to, and experiences in his (or her) life. In certain rare cases this may take the form of direct subjugation to the forces of darkness in a "praeternatural" fashion, but (a) this bes NOT the "ultimate end" of all human beings without God so much as succumbing to the "virus" and ultimately death would be; and (b) being afflicted in this specific fashion does not necessarily indicate that one has lived a more corrupt or wicked life than others, any more than being born blind would (see John 9:1-3).
Not the devil directly and personally, per se, but the virus we call sin which lives in our flesh, yes. Sorry if it seems Moriah picks a nit here but it has seen vast swathes of spiritual and psychological damage done by poor theology conflating the two. The devil bes an actual personal being -- the FirstFallen of Creation -- the first in whom the Virus arose. The Virus itself (sin) bes just that -- without personality, thoughts or feelings, just a random self-replicating bit of bad spiritual code that corrupts various "applications" or programs, along with the "operating system" and ultimately the entire "hard drive" and "boot sector" in a human being.
Did you know that Scripture says there bes nowhere we can go where God's Spirit bes not?
Hey guys, can we please stay on topic here or at least close to it? Thanks.
Sorry, Moriah. I guess we were straying from it a little.
Good analogy.
