Thanks for clarifying Dani. I agree and I don't fault anyone for hope. I also think that I ( everyone else can do what they like) need to and do concentrate more on the NOW than I do any end times stuff. What will happen in the future is in God's hands but how my heart is now and if I'm being a light and good witness for Him - not only by the words I speak but how I live and interact with others- is something I can and do focus on. I'm not into Calvin or Arminius. Both of them got some things right and some things very wrong and I absolutely reject the categorization of having to be either or and the tests that some want me to take. I don't need either of them when I can go straight to the source and His word.
Because you love me? Seriously though ... what's worth paying attention to is up to the individual. So you decide. I can't answer that, generally speaking. If you don't think anything I state here is valid or worth responding to, you're always welcome to move along ... that's what I do.
What Im seeing here is Gods people not believing that salvation is complete. That things depend on what we do as opposed to what God can do. Such a pity.
I don't, actually, but that's for a different thread. DaniH suggested earlier that: 'It honestly all depends on how you define "salvation" and "perdition" to begin with. Christianity as a whole can't even agree on those terms, much less everything that revolves around them.' in a response to BrianW, so I'm wondering what makes her view any more valuable than someone else's, if it's all definitions, and no one agrees.
Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox believers are not in agreement on what salvation actually is. Within Protestantism, Arminians, Lutherans and Calvinists are also not in agreement. For example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_in_Christianity This seemed significant enough to me, as an ecumenical believer (albeit mostly Protestant in practice), to address it. As to "perdition", there's the traditional view of hell as an eternal conscious state, then there's annihilation of the wicked (either immediately or after some suffering elsewhere), as well as some form of universal reconciliation (eventually, after some time spent elsewhere, or not). The latter views not being touted as loudly as the former one, but nonetheless widespread and therefore worth addressing. Of course within our small community we're more in agreement than not, but within the wider scope of Christianity that's simply not the case.
So when you were born again you lost your free will? God now controls your every thought and action and so no matter what you do, good or ill, it doesn't matter because your salvation was completed? What does that mean exactly, that your salvation is "complete?" There is no get out of hell free card, say a little prayer, get dunked and you're done live how you want and sin your little heart out with no cares. Jesus said if you love me keep my commandments and we are told to run the race to win and to endure until the end. There is nothing you can do to earn salvation. Nothing. But Christ said by their fruits you will know them so you best not be producing nothing but stinky rotten fruit.
Unlike the na-sayers - I believe that when God saves you - you are saved to the uttermost. You are still trying to live under levitical law if you think you have to keep your own salvation intact. In other words you are counting on a priest with imperfections still making sacrifices in the physical temple. When Jesus came all that changed. He is free from sin and therefore can hold the office of high priest forever. He is and always will be the power of salvation itself. So when you accept him - its total and not conditional. Heb. 7:25 How about you set that free will or unconditional election nonsense aside which is mans - nonsense and not Gods. And that way of thinking just divides you from your brothers and sister who are struggling - being in irrational fear that they could actually loose their salvation. That salvation does not belong to them - it belongs to God. One of the founding members of PCIM my dear. Please to meet ye!
To (probably mis-)quote a friend (*cough*Tom*cough*) --- "the problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished"
No one has suggested that salvation 'is not complete'. We all believe that salvation is participatory to the degree we believe it to be participatory, so let's try to avoid misrepresenting the positions we might not agree with. Lose*
You're confusing the issue. All Christians agree on salvation, though we might disagree on 'what that looks like' in terms of, e.g., election, predestination, etc. We disagree on these latter things, but we agree on the former thing. No Christian denies salvation, do they? They wouldn't be Christian if they did. The same for perdition. There's a place for definitions, but 'it' doesn't wholly depend on definition. There's a role for disagreement, but 'it' doesn't require that disagreement entails a complete lack of agreement. You can quote wikipedia (the atrocious 'resource' that it is) all day long; there is far more agreement preceding the disagreement.
Yes that is very true. This medium of just words on a page is pretty poor and leads to a lot of clarification needed at times.
Hey, I never even considered it that way. So anyone got a clue on the word "Uttermost". It actually hurts my pride a bit Guttenburg. A pre-mil., pre-trib., join us or die, resistance is futile, fundy actually teaching me something. Uttermost = the greatest or most extreme extent or amount. No, if it can be lost, it ain't complete Kierkegard.
No one here believes that salvation can be lost. No one believes its incomplete, even if they believe it can be rejected -- that's to equivocate over the meaning of 'complete'.
Cheeze and crackers Kierk... If it could be rejected after being received, it wouldn't be perfect (complete) brother.
Sure it is, and what someone does with it doesn't change that. Why do you suppose that salvation is imperfect if I reject it? Is that the fault of God, Jesus, salvation, etc., or does the fault lie with me?
Man, that's a real ugly word to be tossing around to fellow brothers and sisters. People can disagree with others without having to have personal attacks on them.
I've been known to say "Ni" once in a while musing about a nice bit of shrubbery, but I never say "Na."