Thanks for your post brother. May I ask some more questions for clarification before answering this post?
1, What makes a Christian a Christian?
I love posts like yours because I enjoy answering well set out questions instead of trying to make sense of a whole mish-mash of ideas.
A genuine Christian convert is one who knows how sinful he (both genders included) is and how totally deserving of hell. Then he abandons all confidence and hope that he can make himself acceptable to God and falls totally on the grace and mercy of God through faith in Christ as his total Saviour. Jesus can only be a Saviour if the sinner knows what horrible future he has been saved from. Then he lives his life for the glory of Christ and the common good of all.
God's people are in EVERY Church living up to all the light that God has revealed to them. JESUS says many sheep I have from other folds and he must bring them and that the hour is coming and now is that all those who wish to worship God must worship him in Spirit and in truth *JOHN 10:16; JOHN 4:23. JESUS also says that all those why follow the teachings and traditions of men are not following God *MATTHEW 15:3-9. Where is God calling His people back to?
Jesus spoke those words to the Samaritan woman in around 30-odd AD. This was fulfilled after His death, resurrection, ascension, and the Day of Pentecost. As Christian believers, we are now worshiping God in Spirit and in truth. A person can belong to a church and still worship God in Spirit and in truth regardless of the traditions that church may have. But a person who puts his church tradition as a prominent part of the foundation of his religious observance may not be worshiping Christ in Spirit and in truth. He may be worshiping his church instead.
Jesus was alluding to the Gentiles who were to come to Christ, as the sheep from other folds. Remember that He was talking to a Samaritan woman who did not include Gentiles in the family of faith as she saw them. The Jews believed that in order to be right with God Gentiles had to adopt Judaism. But after Pentecost, it was demonstrated that the Holy Spirit fell on Gentile believers the same as Jewish ones. That was Peter's account to the Apostles in Jerusalem. Also, Paul testified the same to the Apostles when he went to confer with them over the conflict in the Gentile churches with Jewish believers trying to teach a mixture of Judaism and Christianity.
The difference between a believer worshiping a church or worshiping Christ is that if something goes wrong with their church, the church worshipers tend to lose their faith and many times leave the church and Christ as well. The Christ worshipers maintain their faith in Christ regardless of what happens in their church.
I guess a lot of Catholics might lose confidence in the Church and depart from the faith because of the conviction of Cardinal Pell. But the Christ worshipers in the Catholic church will maintain their faith in Christ and see that the fault is in the man and not the Church.
Who are the lost and why are they lost?
Because Adam disobeyed God, sin came into the world and the spirits of his descendants died, and their hearts were changed to choose sinful practices instead of godly ones. This is because when the spirit of the person died, their fellowship with God died with it. Therefore, every single human being after Adam was subject to condemnation, the wrath of God against sin, and totally deserving of hell.
But, as we see in the Biblical account, there was a thread of people who looked to God in faith, and received grace. Abraham believed God and he was declared righteous. All those who had faith in God were looking forward to the Redeemer who was going to appear in the future.
Therefore, a lost person is one who chooses sin rather than having faith in Christ. It is natural for a person to choose sin, therefore it needs for the Holy Spirit to intervene and show them their total sinfulness and that they are on the road to hell. When they are convicted of their sin and choose to start praying and crying out to God, the Holy Spirit shows them the gospel and opens their hearts to it and leads them to Christ. Once they exercise faith in Christ, they are no longer lost.
Who is God's ISRAEL in the NEW COVENANT?
Simple. Every person who is genuinely converted to Christ, both Jew and Gentile. Believing Jew and Gentile are merged to make up the one spiritual Israel.
Who are the lost sheep of the house of ISRAEL and does God want us to save them through his Word *MATTHEW 10:6?
They are the Jews who do not yet believe in Christ as their Saviour and Lord.
What part of God's WORD is not important and what is it that we need to be converted to *MATTHEW 13:13-16?
All of God's Word has importance. But we need to determine which parts of it are written FOR us and which are written TO us. Those parts that are written FOR us are there for our learning and education to see how God works with people and how people are blessed when they have faith in God and how they get into problems when they walk away from God.
But many of the promises of God to His people may be FOR us, but we can take them as if they are TO us because they are effective for anyone who has faith in God.
Much of the life and teaching of Christ is written FOR us and not necessarily directly TO us, although we can take the teaching on board as the standards of holiness that God expects of His children.
Most of what Paul has written is TO us, because they provide direct instructions to the churches that he visited and wrote to. Anything that Paul has written to the churches must apply to us because we are members of the same body of Christ as they were. We see the standards of holiness in the teaching of Jesus, and we then see how we apply those standards to our lives through the teaching of Paul.
If we knowingly follow the teachings and traditions of men that lead others to break the commandments of God are we in a saved state before God or an unsaved state before God?
Jesus said in Mark 7:13 that the traditions the Jews followed made the Word of God of no effect to them. He implied that those who put the traditions of men first cannot be saved. I agree. We cannot have Christ as Lord and have the traditions of men as our foundation at the same time.
There is nothing wrong with tradition, but it must be kept to its right place. If it is used to strengthen our faith in Christ then it does no harm; but if if takes the place of faith in Christ where a person is taught that he cannot have faith in Christ unless he adheres strictly to the traditions, then the teaching is false and harmful.
I believe that if someone is knowingly teaching and encouraging others to follow the traditions of men as a requirement for Christian faith, then they are working against the gospel instead of for it. They are, in fact, pointing others along the road to hell, and I would not be surprised if those teachers ended up in hell themselves, unless the Holy Spirit intervened and showed them the foolishness and unrighteousness of their actions.
Thanks for the clarification. You do not have to answer these questions brother if you do not wish to. If you can however you already have a response to your post.
God bless.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to answer your questions. I enjoyed posting them. I trust that they are useful to you.