Thanks for taking the time to answer my post and while much of what you said I can agree with, I cannot agree with it all! Many scriptures you use I see in a different light!
You are most welcome and at the same time you can see things from a different vantage point.
The scriptures I hold to are,
Joh 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world
through him might be saved.
Please underline
through him might be.
It is conditional, that Christ be in an individual, for that individual to be saved. On the flip side, not everyone is going to be in Him and Him in them. This is not an open ticket for the world, but it is a matter for individuals being plucked out of the world, and declared his sheep.
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you (John 15:19)
Joh 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world
Context to the above builds the narrative. So, where is the context?
There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. (John 12:48)
The judge, is the trinity of God that condemns the world. The one God came on Pentecost to judge the world, through the body of Christ.
This is what Jesus Commanded of his Church to do when dealing with sin.
Dealing With Sin in the Church
15“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
16But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
17If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and
if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
18“
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Verse 18 is the Judgement phase, where the action of the Church on earth, results in its ratification in Heaven and as a result that individual who continues to live in a lifestyle of sin, is excommunicated and is therefore condemned before God.
Jesus said......
“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
24Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. (John 14:23-24)
I do believe we must judge ourselves but I also believe that if I confess my sin, He is faithful and just to forgive me and to CLEANSE me of ALL unrighteousness!! Simple as that!
If individuals genuinely confess their sins, they will sin no more and as a result will abandon a lifestyle that causes emnity between them and God.
Jesus said to the prostitute.....
“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,”Jesus declared. “
Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8)
I prefer to tell men HOW to be FREE from sin rather than to preach sin!
You mean to tell them as would Jesus would command you to do, to tell them
to go now and leave your life of sin.
One cannot be truly free from sin, if they continue to live in sin, for an individual cannot dictate to God the terms that will enable them to recieve the salvation gifts of God, through his Son.
God makes his terms pretty clear to individuals, for they must turn from their ways before He will even look at them, to have pitty on them, so to clean them with his Son's blood.
Men know when they sin but they don't always know how to defeat it in their lives.
Knowing, without a genuine confession will not even get a lookin by God, for he will consider them enemies for his Son's sake. Otherwise they would continue to smear and to mock the Cross of His Son.
26If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
27but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
28Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
31It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10)
Christians who do not deal with Sin in their congregation body, are
trampling the Son of God underfoot, treating him as an unholy thing, the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who have insulted the Spirit of grace?
Insulting the Spirit of Grace is the final straw.
To continually preach against sin does nothing more than edify sin, but to continually preach Chist brings revelation and sets men free!
Nonsense!
Jesus preached more about Heaven and Hell than anything else. His parables condemning those who continue to life a lifestyle of sin is repeated throughout the four gospel accounts. The Apostles picked up on that theme and continued with it. It seems the antithesis to the traditional Apostolic Church would be a congregation who would ONLY.....preach Christ brings revelation and sets men free! Without a recourse to their current spiritual state.
This would be quite disconcerting to say the least, to Jesus and I.
When I say preach Chist I do not mean preach a salvation message over and over but rather to preach Christ's victory over sin and all He has done for us so that men can take hold of that and climb out of sin into victory in Christ!
That would be the reverse message, completely at odds to how Jesus instructed and how he commissioned his Apostolic Church. In fact, this is nothing more than dictating the terms to God, that you will accept us the way we are regardless of our wilful actions to continually sin. Whereas before God will look upon us, we must with all sincerity of the heart, to genuinely repent and turn from our ways on God's terms and not our own terms and this is what is meant to deny ourselves and to consider ourselves dead to the world and dead to the flesh (body of sin).
in Him we live and move and have our being!