Difference Between Salvation and Eternal Life.

I would just like to add that I asked about this in another forum and would truly like an answer to what happens to someone who loses eternal life but still has salvation.

Thanks for starting a thread on this, it should be interesting!

Neal

 

Eternal life is the reward of salvation, like he said. Maybe I misread him, but I never saw him say that would could have one without the other. If you have salvation, you will inherit eternal life. And you cannot have eternal life if you are not saved. However, as he stated, they are not the same thing. When we "are saved," we then can have "eternal life." The terms are not interchangable.

God bless,

Grant

 

Rom.6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Eph.2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Eternal life is a free gift given to us by God. If God were to take it away at any time, then it would no longer by eternal, it would only be temporary, and God would be a liar. Eternal means eternal.
DHK

 

Eph 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

We have obtained an "inheritance".

God has established patterns on this earth to help us understand spiritual realities and mysteries which we normally would not understand if we saw them.

One of the ways that God has done this is the use of analogies and types which speak to higher truths. Thus, when God identifies Himself as "Father", we are right to apply what we know of a GOOD father to Him. He established fatherhood to speak to us about His Fatherhood over us as His adopted children.

In the same way, He established the covenant to speak of the eternal covenant between the Blessed Trinity. Adam and Eve were the picture of the unseen. Their union was a picture of the life giving union between God and the Word. The union between God and the Word brings forth life, which is represented by the "life giving Spirit". In the eternal covenant, we have the mystery of complete union and at the same time, separate identities.

We have the family as a picture of God's eternal family, consisting of all those who have been redeemed for all ages. We use the language of the family on earth to understand how the family in Heaven operates.

We are told that there is an inheritance which is laid up for us in Heaven awaiting us. Therefore, we must apply the language of the family to understand how this awaiting inheritance works. The type, which is the earthly, does not work differently from that which it signifies.

How does one get an inheritance? One is born into a family. Or, as in our case, one is adopted. Christ Jesus is the "only begotten son". We are the adopted sons and daughters.

What is an inheritance? It is a blessing which is given to us at a certain point. In the case of the earthly family, it is upon the death of the covenantal head -- the father. It is upon the cessation of the current covenant and the establishing of the new with the eldest son as the new head. The eldest son then becomes the head of the covenantal family and distributes the inheritance as instructed by the deceased father.

Upon the death of the Old Covenant ("It is finished") the New Covenant is established and there is a new covenantal head. Our first father, Adam, in whom we have nothing but condemnation, is covenantally put to death by the obedience of the Last Adam, who then becomes the Head of the New Covenant.

Our inheritance in Adam is eternal wrath (Rom. 5:12). ALL men are partakers of this inheritance, for all are "in Adam" and have him as their father. In the New Covenant, we have a new Father in Heaven, a new covenantal Head -- the Last Adam -- and a new inheritance, which is eternal life.

We see further information on this in the following verse:

1:14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Notice something very important. The Holy Spirit is only the "earnest" of our inheritance. He is NOT the full inheritance, but only a small portion of it which promises the full amount IF THE TERMS OF THE COVENANT ARE KEPT FAITHFULLY. The term "earnest money" comes from this term. Earnest money is "good faith" money which reserves that which is promised, if the terms are met.

This is an important consideration, because it ties in with the fact that covenants are breakable. There is no such thing as an "unbreakable covenant". That is a Calvinist fantasy which was made up to support the idea of "the perseverence of the saints" -- another unbilbical idea. An unbreakable covenant is like an elephant with wings -- it does not exist.

Our Lord Jesus also supports this idea of eternal life being the inheritance:

Mt 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Jesus says that we "inherit" eternal life. We do not "earn it", for we cannot do that.

Mr 10:17 ¶ And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

Lu 10:25 ¶ And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

Notice the overall context of the question and the answer. Jesus does NOT take the rich young ruler or the lawyer and say"

"WAAAAAAIT a minute!!! You are one confused puppy. Don't you know that eternal life is the gift of God which you get by having "faith alone" in the Son of God??"

No, he answers in kind, doesn't He? He does not correct, but gives the answer to the man's question. We keep the Law of God from a heart of faith (which again I say is a gift -- THE gift given in salvation) and by doing so, keep the covenant.

Go to Deut. 28 and study the covenant. You will see that a covenant is made with an oath by both sides. It is to be kept by both sides. And it can be broken.

An inheritance can be lost. For instance, if my son decides that he is going to become a Jehovah's Witless, he will git cut out of my will at the speed of light. I have the right to set the terms by which my inheritance is recieved by my children.

So does God. And the terms are found in John 5: 28-29 and Rom. 2: 5-10. The terms are that we do the Father's will, which is works of charity and love and the eschewing of evil (which is keeping His Law).

As for the John 3: 16, this verse reads properly in the Greek:

Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him and keeps on believing, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Yes, that is the tense of the word "believe". It is NOT a one time and done forever event. It is the act of continual believing in Christ. That continual believing, shown by our keeping the Law of God and doing good works, is what covenant keeping is all about.

Okay. I anticipate questions and disagreement.

Brother Ed

 

Peterotto --

You wrote:

John 10:28 "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."

Here we have Jesus giving us eternal life.

Wrong. He is talking about the FLOCK, not about individuals. This is the problem with Protestant soteriology -- it places complete emphasis upon the individual to the exclusion of the Church. This makes Protestants take verses which have promises made to the Body of Christ as a whole and apply them to the individual.

Is there anyone more powerful than Jesus? The verse says that "neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand". Sounds to me OSAS.

Sounds like the same promise which He made in Matthew 16: 18 which you don't believe where He promised that the Church would not be overrun by the gates of hell. Funny how selective you can be, isn't it?

Who has the power to pluck us out of His hand?

He is holding hands with the Bride and no one will be able to sever Her from Him. As long as we stay "in the Bride", we are safe, for She is eternally secure in Him.

 

CatholicConvert are you saying that eternal life is only given to the people in the Catholic Church?

Eternal life is indeed only for those in the Church. All baptized people are members of the Church, for one's baptism baptizes one into Christ (Rom. 6:3 and Gal. 3: 27). I would hope you would agree that there is no life outside the Body of Christ. Our life comes from our union with Him, therefore, to be out of union with Him is death, plain and simple.

I find it interesting that eternal life is conditional.

I didn't make the rules. God did. He calls it an inheritance. He give us earthly families to teach us what an inheritance is. Inheritances can be lost. Very simple.

I agree that the OT covenants(land,people) were conditional, but keeping these covenants did not make one obtain eternal life.

You are mistaken in what you are positing. The Old Covenant was still a covenant in which life was bound to life in unity. The land was just the item of blessing for this particular union. God calls the Jews "my people, Israel". The were also referred to in the same personal manner which the New Covenant Church is referred to. Look at Eze. 16. The Old Covenant Church, the Jewish nation, is referred to in marital language. There is much more to this than you realize.

My next question: What did the Jews do to inherit eternal life?

The very same thing we do, as outlined in Romans 4 -- faith in the Messias. Faith is righteousness and righteous people inherit the inheritance.

Were they able to keep it?

Yes, and they were also able to lose it because it was a covenant. Remember -- Old Covenant and New Covenant -- the are still covenants. One is lived out in anticipation of the coming Messias, one is lived out in fulfillment of His coming. The difference is that now we have the fullness of Christ's presence with us and when we die, we can go directly to Heaven. In the Old Covenant, the righteous still could not go to Heaven until the Blood of Yom Kippur was shed. Therefore, the righteous of the Old Covenant went to Paradise to await the fulfilment of what had been promised.

Ed Stevens has a pretty good writing online about this in his Preterist web site. He discusses the Parousia of AD 70 and Jesus' performing of YOM KIPPUR in Heaven (Heb. 9 & 10) and what that means for us today.

Brother Ed

[ January 08, 2003, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: CatholicConvert ]

 

CC, I don't think that you ever sufficiently explained the difference between personal and coporate sins concerning your Yom Kippur ideas. You said that the blood of bulls and goats offered on Yom Kippur were unable to take away corporate sins, but the blood of bulls and goats offered on other days could take away personal sins. How is that? And, if that were the case, why did Christ have to die? Also, why would the sacrifices of animals by the regular priests be more powerful than those of the high priests? Doesn't this idealogy of yours also make the sacrifices of the animals more powerful than Christ's sacrifice since you say his only removes corporate sins and we still need priests to remove private sins (even though there are no priests today who offer animal sacrifices)? I'm confused as to what you were trying to say with all this. Please explain it again, this time more completely.

 

Really??? Let's see:

24 Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, "How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25 Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me.
26 "But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep, as I said to you.
27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
28 "And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand.
30 "I and My Father are one."
John 10:24-30, NKJV

Okay, I just want to make sure what you are getting at. So you are saying that we can lose our eternal life, right? So then, we are able to get out of Jesus' hand by our own power, right? So then, we can lose our salvation because of ourselves, thus salvation is dependent upon us. And we are able to wander away from the flock of which Jesus is the Door and the Good Shepherd? Would a good shepherd really allow that to happen? So then Jesus is really not that strong, since we have power over Him, right? Another thing, isn't the flock made up of individual sheep? And when Jesus said in v. 26 "because you are not of My sheep", wasn't He talking to a select few individuals, i.e. the Jews confronting Him? Just wondering where this would carry us if He was not talking about individuals......

Another thing, isn't this passage equating eternal life and salvation? To be a part of His flock is eternal life, but isn't that salvation as well? You can't say that we can lose the life but continue to live in misery, because Christ makes it clear that the opposite of life is to perish, i.e. death (v. 28).

Who doesn't believe this? Am I missing something?

Where do you get the holding hands part from? In John 10:24-30 He is talking about holding something in His hand, not holding hands. And again, for the stay in the bride part, where do you get the idea that we are able to pull a fast one on the Good Shepherd and the Door and get away from His flock by our own doing?

Not every covenant in the OT were ones in which the human side could break and annul it.

Neal

[ January 09, 2003, 04:50 AM: Message edited by: neal4christ ]

 

CC you err in not knowing the scriptures. you say that covenants can be broken. God made one with Abraham which cannot be.
"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham."
We as children of God are partakers of this same covenant.
Genesis 15:6-18 (The Abrahamic Covenant)
6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.
8 And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?
9 And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.
10 And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.
11 And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.
12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.
13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.
15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
God did a very interesting thing here. He participated in a custom of that day for making contracts (covenants). He had Abraham to divide certain animals (notice God used clean animals). The custom was that the two parties were to pass between the divided pieces.Then if either party broke this covenant, it was disolved. But, notice very carefully vv.12,17. God put Abraham to sleep, then God passed through the pieces Himself. This signified that only God could break the covenant. So now as then keeping the covenant is not not conditional on our part but God's. And this was ultimately fulfilled by Jesus Christ going to the cross alone. Did you hang there with Him. No you did not. Jesus sealed the covenant, only He can break it. This He will not do, "for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance", Romans 11:29.

 

Concerning the covenant of circumcision that God made with Abraham, God says in Genesis 17:14 "And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant."

Under this covenant, if one did not cut off their foreskin then they were cut off because they had broken the covenant.

[ January 09, 2003, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: SolaScriptura in 2003 ]

 

You said that the blood of bulls and goats offered on Yom Kippur were unable to take away corporate sins, but the blood of bulls and goats offered on other days could take away personal sins.

I should probably just shut up while I am ahead of the game. I am not a professional theologian, a seminary professor, or even much of an apologist. What I am trying to say are things I saw in the Scriptures which peaked my interest and that made sense to me. (Which really, when you think of it, is not much different than what most non-Catholics do).

All I can say is that from what I have studied, only high priests offered YOM KIPPUR. The other sacrifices were offered by the mediatorial (Levitical) priesthood.

I dunno. Seems that somehow YOM KIPPUR must have done something to take away the sins of the people, right?

Le 16:34 And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year. And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.

I guess it really comes down to the interpretation of the word "atonement". I thought it meant that sins were forgiven or in someway taken care of. I'm no Hebrew or Greek expert, so quite frankly, I don't have an answer. And I don't have the time to study anymore like I used to. I have a wife dying of emphysema and I don't get time to just sit around and do word studies for hours with a concordance like I used to.

I'm debating with myself on whether to even continue on the couple of Internet boards I drop by. Wastes entirely too much time and is entirely unproductive.

Not to mention it puts me in a bad attitude which is not compatible with being like Jesus our Master.

How is that? And, if that were the case, why did Christ have to die? Also, why would the sacrifices of animals by the regular priests be more powerful than those of the high priests? Doesn't this idealogy of yours also make the sacrifices of the animals more powerful than Christ's sacrifice since you say his only removes corporate sins and we still need priests to remove private sins (even though there are no priests today who offer animal sacrifices)? I'm confused as to what you were trying to say with all this. Please explain it again, this time more completely.

You know what? You win.

I don't know and quite frankly, I don't really give a rat's ______.

And if my salvation depends upon my having all my theology 100% correct, then screw it....I'll go to hell!!!

 

I didn't mean to upset you CC. I agree that much time is wasted in a discussion like this. My sympathies for your wife's situation. I don't know why I even get on these boards anymore myself. It seems as if most people are just hopelessly blind through selfinflicted blindness, but who knows. Jesus can still open the eyes of the blind today! I don't know what to say anymore....I'm just so sick of denominational divisions and heresies...after all they send people to hell. Do you think that Mary has the power to eradicate these? Will prayers to her destroy that evil Calvinism that plagues the world? They haven't yet, have they? God is the answer to all, not man.

I'm just saying that perhaps in this area of Yom Kippur some more study would be good. As I already said before (or at least think I did) the word atonement should not be used with reference to the OT sacrifices. They did not atone in the sence of removal anyway - they atoned with a temporary atonement of covering. So, although, they do atone in a sence, the Hebrew word kaphar ought to be translated (i.e. cover) rather than interpreted (i.e atonement). Atonement is not a word in Hebrew or Greek, but a made up English word At-one-ment. It is purely theological and seems to only be used correctly as a translation in Rom 5:11 where it means reconciliation. The word commonly and wrongly translated atonement in the OT means covering. NONE of the OT animal sacrifices removed sins - they covered them. (Heb 10:4) Only Christ's blood could remove sins. Why is it that the OT sacrifices of Yom Kippur only lasted a year and after that there was a "remembrance of sins every year"? (Heb 10:3) The OT Yom Kippur covered sin for 1 year, but after the year was up, the covering vanished, and the sins was visible, therefore God saw them and remembered them again. Those animals could not remove the sins. Christ's blood, on the other hand, can make a complete removal of sin.

100% correct theology may not be necessary to salvation, but your statment that the blood of animals can remove sins not only contradicts what Hebrews says, but blasphemes Christ and make His death worthless! If we could have our sins removed by sacrificing animals, then Christ died in vain! Do you not see that??? I know you only said these things to support your idea that we need more mediators and priest other than Jesus. Well, that's not true, and lies can't prove it true.

for others Concerning covenant breaking:

Gen 17:14, Jer 11:10, Jer 31:32, Ezek 44:7

(Rom 1:31 KJV) "Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:"

(bump)

[ January 09, 2003, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: SolaScriptura in 2003 ]

 

I believe it was just, what, Dec. or Nov. someone in here(catholic) was saying RCC does not believe in works salvation, even though it was posted where they said they did.
Now the question is
do they know what they believe?
I would like to ask,, so which is it guys, lets settle this once and for all.
But I'm sure it would be a different answer next week.

 

Sola --

First off, as you can see, I was having a particularly BAD night last night. I apolgize for the overall tone of the post.

Secondly, I am thinking of curtailing most of my participation on this and another forum. All we do is fight and bicker and no one is listening to anyone else. No one is even trying to learn and in some cases, there is a high level of disrespect shown to others.

You have made a good point regarding the blood of animals and I accept it. I will ask you now to help me. What of the verses in the OT which speak to "atonement". There is something being done with sin in this word. I think we are unclear about this.

And yes, I MUST accept that which the NT says in regards to the blood of animals not taking away sin. I certainly would not wish to make the precious Blood of our Lord Jesus to be less effective than common animal blood.

Give me your reply so I can get another angle on this. There was an "atonement" made by animal blood, so in some way, that word has to fit into the overall picture.

And right now, I'm too tired to either think or study.

Brother Ed -- with apoligies for all the times I was a smart ______ with you. I'm sorry!!