What will stop sinning in Heaven?

dysert said:

There have been some interesting posts already -- I hope it continues.

My theory is that in fact free will will be turned off. (No I have no Scripture to support this.) I'm just thinking that when the angels were first created, they were holy. They had free will and some used it to turn against God. Once they made that decision God froze that decision so that a holy angel could not rebel, and a fallen angel could not be redeemed.

So I extend that thought to humans. We have free will and before death we can use it to accept Christ or reject Him. Once we die, though, that decision is frozen so that a person in hell can't be redeemed and a person in heaven can't be lost.

My theory, fwiw.

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The problem with the loss of free will is that it essentially cancels love. We were created to love God. Without free will, it isn't really love.

Would YOU want a relationship with someone who had no choice to love you? I sure wouldn't.

alexiscurious said:

And why is this exactly? One man sins and the rest of humanity has to pay the price for it. Angels sin and it only affects themselves not other angels. Why should I have to forfeit my initial relationship with God because of something someone else did?

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The angels don't procreate. They could not pass their nature on to their children because they have no children.

We do not pay the penalty for Adam's sin. We inherit his sinful nature and sin all on our own.

alexiscurious said:

And why do we need anyone to procreate when we have a God who can spit us into existence with his words?

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Because He chose it to be this way. It pleases Him.

StephanieSomer said:

The problem with the loss of free will is that it essentially cancels love. We were created to love God. Without free will, it isn't really love.

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Sticking with my theory, there's no problem. When we had free will (i.e., while living our lives on earth), we chose whether or not to love. Once we die that choice is locked in.

Would YOU want a relationship with someone who had no choice to love you? I sure wouldn't.

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Sure I would. Why not? If someone loves me I don't care why.

alexiscurious said:

Why couldn't we have this magical inability, immunity, whatever you want to call it in the beginning of creation? If it doesn't violate free will as you say it does then why wouldn't God want us to have it already in us? Wouldn't this have been a big advantage to have?


But evil had to have had a foothold initially right? What was the driving force for Satan and other angels to disobey a loving Creator who satisfied them completely? If angels were susceptible to evil in Heaven why won't you be just as susceptible as they were? There isn't really a clear-cut response from you on this.


And why is this exactly? One man sins and the rest of humanity has to pay the price for it. Angels sin and it only affects themselves not other angels. Why should I have to forfeit my initial relationship with God because of something someone else did?

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I don't think you're going to get a clear-cut response here, because we're not given a clear-cut response in scripture. We're told fairly early on in the bible that there are things that we just don't need to know:

Deuteronomy 29 (NIV) said:

[29]The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

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We can speculate, based on the small glimpses of information we are given about the nature if angels and heaven we do see in scripture, but there's really just not enough definitive information given to us to make any concrete conclusions. Remember, the bible was meant to be a user guide for this world, not the next.

Given this, what I was trying to provide we're scenarios that might could possibly explain the apparent contradictions which you seem to be perceiving regarding sin in heaven. I of course don't know for certain and I would be cautious about anyone who said they did for certain.

What I was trying to say about time in heaven was that if in heaven we experience time as God does, than there would be no "initially", no now, no two days from now. God is not bound to time linearly as we are. He experiences all time, past, present and future as a single instant. He doesn't remember Adam's fall in the garden, he's there right now, and at the same time, he's there the moment that you were born, and at the same time there the moment Lucifer is cast out of heaven, and at the same time there the moment that anything we perceive to be in the future will occur. If there is no time in heaven then it seems reasonable to me that there would be no ongoing battle between the urge to sin and the urge to not sin as we experience during our earthy existence. E.g. I conquer the temptation to engage in a particular sin today, but tomorrow, or the next time I turn on my computer, or the next time I see a particular person, the temptation is right there again. It may be that there is no next time in heaven. In heaven a single choice may be sufficient for all of eternity. So it's possible that the very choice that permits me into the Kingdom of heaven, is the same choice which prevents me from sinning for all of eternity.

Angels don't really have a bloodline to be corrupted by sin as man does, but their punishment was, in my opinion, far more permanent then man's. There is no hope of salvation through Christ for the fallen angels. They made their choice, their "election":

1 Timothy 5 (NIV) said:

[21]I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.

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and once they did, their eternal fates sealed. We, on the other hand, still have the choice. We live in a world corrupted by sin, and the natural effect of that sin is death, but we are offered an antidote in Christ's sacrifice. We may choose to take that antidote or suffer the consequence of not taking it.

Don't think of original sin as us being punished for the sin of Adam and Eve. Think of it like living in a closed environment like a ship or a geo-dome and someone allowing the entry of a deadly virus. Before the introduction of the virus, there was no threat of suffering, sickness and death, but now that it's become part of the environment, everyone must deal with the effects of the virus. It's like that with sin, before sin was allowed into the world, there was no consequence of sin, but once it was, we all must deal with the consequence. It's not magical, it's just that you don't get sick in an environment where there are no germs. I suppose God could have made us in a way that we were not susceptible to sin, but that would violate free will; sort of like getting the girl you like to marry you by holding a gun to her head or marrying a department store mannequin because she cannot choose to not love you. It might look like love, but it's not love. What God wants of us is obedience through love, not obedience regardless of love.

Again, I don't know that any of this is right. It's what make sense to me but to you or someone else, it may seem like nonsense. And it's ok if it does, because as Christians, we don't have to agree on every specific detail about which we are not given specific information in God's word. It's ok for us to have opinions about such things so long as those opinions are not contrary to God's word.

alexiscurious said:

What will stop sinning in heaven? Adam and Eve were with God and they still sinned in the garden. If we are with God in heaven what will stop us from doing it all over again? How exactly can he guarantee eternal life to Christians as he does in the Bible while knowing sin is just as big a possibility in heaven as it is on earth?

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Hello. Im afraid that you have the wrong premise . What will put a total end to sinning is simply ARRIVING in Heaven . The only place where there is human sinning taking place is in this current earthly life. When we enter Heaven the Bible says we get 'glorified'...that is....the carnal nature of Man ceases to exist and we are finally made completely holy, righteous, and infinitely moral exactly as our Creator is. BUT...it only occurs for those who QUALIFIED for heaven and that depends on whether a Person received Jesus into their earthly lives and made him King and is trusting fully and solely on his finished calvary atoning sacrifice for our sins as full payment of them, in conjunction with us willingly turning from any and all lifestyle sins with the genuineness of that exhibited in a changed (Born Again) Person where we faithfully serve God and Others and make eternal life our focus. Essentially, what we need to do to get saved is explicitly written in Romans 10:8-14 and this is a promise of God for us .

Please read over this portion of the BIble and let me know if you think it is something you can and want to do so you can settle this going to Heaven thing once and for all where you will spend forever with the One who loves you the most and who fashioned you after his image , Jesus our Creator.

What will stop sinning in heaven? Adam and Eve were with God and they still sinned in the garden.

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But Eden is not heaven. Heaven is where God dwells. And where God dwells sin does not. As Faulty has pointed out from Scripture, all those in heaven will be "glorified." Paul the apostle wrote, "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing." He also wrote,

Romans 7:15-18
15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.

In heaven, one will no longer possess a body in which sin dwells. The saved person will have no innate disposition toward wickedness after he/she is glorified, nor will the devil be present to tempt anyone to evil. This glorified state is different from that of Adam and Eve before the Fall. It entails a spiritual union with Christ that Adam and Eve did not have.

If we are with God in heaven what will stop us from doing it all over again? How exactly can he guarantee eternal life to Christians as he does in the Bible while knowing sin is just as big a possibility in heaven as it is on earth?

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See above.

Selah.

Abandoned Barns said:

Fair question and a good conversation.

Two quick thoughts, before my wife becomes too angry with me for being on the internet all day:

First, your scenario assumes that in heaven we will experience time in the same linear way in which we do now - we enter into heaven and then, should we still have free will, we may or may not choose sin. But, as far as I know there is no guarantee of that. I find this verse interesting:




Not every translation uses the term "order of things" in fact most translate this as "first things" or "former things", but every translation seems to say something about time occurring linearly. i.e. that something could happen before something else. I just found that to be a very interesting thought; that is that things might not occur in the same linear "order" as which we may be accustomed on earth. The truth is that none of us can really know the exact specifics of heaven until we get there, but it could be that we will not be bound linerally to time and instead experience time as God does.

The second point I wanted to make is that an inability to sin does not necessarily violate free will. Like how in the absence of a magnetic field, metal filings may orient ourselves in any direction they like, but in the presence of a powerful electromagnet their orientation becomes fixed, constant, immovable. Unless acted upon by an outside force their attraction to the magnet is inescapable. In this world that outside force is evil, another magnet attracting us in another direction. The way we choose to orient ourselves in this world determines to which magnet we become more attracted, but evil has no foothold in heaven. There is no outside force. God made certain of then by casting Lucifer and those angels who would follow him out of heaven.



It's hard to compare the choice of the fallen angels to the free will of men. Angels do not have a nature corrupted by sin as we do. They also do not live in a world where in it is necessary to rely on faith and things hoped for in order to come to God. They were with God when they made their choice, in full knowledge of his nature and the consequence if their choice. Obviously they had the choice to follow Lucifer or not to but I think many bible scholars describe this as kind of a one time or temporary free will. Once they made their choice, their eternal natures set.

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You might want to read my comments in the post 18?

alexiscurious said:

What in the world are you talking about? Disobedience has to have some purpose behind it. How did Satan disobey God in Heaven if there is no purpose for sinning? Are you saying he did it on accident?

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Disobedience on earth has purpose for the nonbeliever while here on earth.

Satan had free will to chose to be disobedient in heave (sin) and there was no good reason for him to do so. There is a selfish reason for satan to sin and some logic behind it. Satan does have free will without the benefit of spending time on earth.

Dear alexiscurious. All sinning will stop in Heaven. In Matthew 22: 35-40:
Jesus tells us: " The first and great Commandment is: Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. The second is like it:
Love our neighbour as we love ourselves." Then in Luke 10: 25-28:
Jesus is asked: " Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus answers him: " What are the two great Commandments: Love God with
all your hearts, with all your souls, and with all your minds and also, love your neighbour as yourself. DO THIS,
and you shall LIVE. ( OR HAVE ETERNAL LIFE) That tells us quite clearly what God wants from us. In Matthew 22: 40: Jesus tells us: " On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
The Expositor`s New Testament tells us after verse 37: " this is the foundation of all the Law, and it applies to the Present Day of Grace." This all tells me that God is Love and God wants Loving sons and daughters.
In Matthew 5: 48: Jesus tells us: " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." what does that all tell us?
God wants us perfect, and although we can never be perfect while living in this imperfect world, God will have us all perfect in Heaven, NO SINNING.
I say this with love, alex. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

alexiscurious said:

What will stop sinning in heaven? Adam and Eve were with God and they still sinned in the garden. If we are with God in heaven what will stop us from doing it all over again? How exactly can he guarantee eternal life to Christians as he does in the Bible while knowing sin is just as big a possibility in heaven as it is on earth?

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The arrogance so dominant in mankind today will have been thoroughly subjugated by gratitude to God for what he accomplished on our behalf:

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:19-26,NIV)

Heaven will not be occupied by the proud and self-righteous, but rather by the humble and contrite. Our only pride will be directed at God himself for giving us the righteousness as a free gift that we need for salvation, but could never earn as a salary.

A standard presumption is that Adam and Eve were created perfect. But this presumption seems to lack any real basis. It seems more reasonable to me that Adam and Eve were created with the potential to grow and become, to mature.

The New Testament tends to point toward the idea that Christ is the mature human, Christ is what humanity was meant to be, supposed to be. But Christ is much more than merely another Adam, Christ is the One for whom Adam was created, for which Adam was intended.

And if sin is the product of our being "in Adam", having the weakness, brokenness, and fallenness of Adam; then what we look forward to is to become like Christ, to grow into the full measure of Jesus. To be human the way Jesus is human, which is a new way of being human, a new kind of humanity that we simply are unable in the present to comprehend.

But the Christian hope is this: That having been forgiven of our sins, and given the promise of eternal life in the resurrection and world to come, with God, and to be transfigured and transformed into the pure and perfect image of Christ, in the restoration and renewal of all creation in and by Christ, then our hope is not merely a re-visitation back to Eden; but rather to partake in the full bloom of what Eden was but a seed of.

Salvation isn't just rescuing the world from the fall, it is also the bringing about of the whole cosmos to be what God had, from the beginning, always planned to be. We look forward to something far greater than anything Adam and Eve could have ever imagined.

Why no sin in the age to come?

1) Because we will know better.

2) Because God will be all in all.

3) Because a truly free will is the will that is free in God to love God and all creatures forever without the captivity of sin and death.

4) For reasons we cannot even conceive of due to the limits of our finite imaginations.

-CryptoLutheran

alexiscurious said:

What will stop sinning in heaven? Adam and Eve were with God and they still sinned in the garden. If we are with God in heaven what will stop us from doing it all over again? How exactly can he guarantee eternal life to Christians as he does in the Bible while knowing sin is just as big a possibility in heaven as it is on earth?

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A new holy nature you get here already when you accept Jesus, but on earth most christians still sin, because they still have flesh and that is dead when you go to heaven.

It's kinda like asking a starving man, what's gonna stop you from eating horsesh*t when I take you to a fancy restaurant?

Clearly, there will be some form of divine microchip attached to some 'spiritual' electrodes.

Fortunately, I have not yet had the chip fitted so I can still gorge myself silly on a veritable buffet of all you can eat kaka! - "mm mmm mmmm"

(note to mods...please don't edit...Jesus was a bit controversial too sometimes)

you already had the answer given when someone quoted 1 Cor 15:42-44.

You can try and nitpick that but that's enough for someone who believes scripture is the Word of God.

Very simple. Current body is flesh. Flesh is corruptible. New body is spirit. Spirit not corruptible.