Do certain lifestyles keep one from being a Christian

Read the scripture Freeatlast. It's quite clear. BTW... calling someone (anyone) a false accuser like Satan is an attack and is not allowed on the board.

This is your FIRST warning.

 

Once again here is what Paul wrote:

15For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. (Romans 7:15-19) NKJV

Paul said in black and white that he practiced evil. Are you saying that you can practice evil without sinning?

 

James 2:10
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.

 

freeatlast,
Your Bible must be different than mine.

Luke 8:5-15 refers to the parable of the four soils and the explanation of that parable. These are the words of Jesus, but the message is a different one.

 

Free,

Jesus never lies!! And I do not feel that I am either.

There is a man that gives to charities, feeds the hungry, walks little old ladies across the street, etc.

There is a man that drinks or whatever the sin.

According to you the first man is the fruit bearer. But he never asked Jesus into his heart. But the second man did. Now what????????

 

Diane, please.....

Don't make it about that. Please be patient. I'm on your side, but if we are blocked from communicating with each other then there is no point to the discussion. Let's reason here as brothers and sisters in Christ and leave personal insults out of this.

 

Free,
Chill out man. Don't make this a personal vendetta against Diane.

That first warning means business and makes me fearful that we will not be able to talk this thing out.

Both of you take deep breaths and back away from hurts. Slow to anger. Please.

 

What I am getting by reading from texts given is that on the one hand there is Paul in Romans 7:14-25 and on into Chapter 8 and on the other hand there is John in 1John 3:1-10. These two are directly opposed to each other. One is contradictory to the other.

This makes neither of us wrong and neither of us right and actually is confusing to know which way is the right way.

 

Your arrogance is only exceeded by your ignorance!

Jesus was not saying that anyone who ever produces "bad" fruit is not saved. The analogy is that we "should" not produce "bad" fruit. Compare this with:

Rom 6:12-13
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
(KJV)

If Christians were unable to sin, as you imply, there is no reason for the exhortation not to "yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness."

This is consistent throughout the Bible.

 

Exactly my story. I believe that the very prevalent theology of "Once Saved Always Saved" is the single most powerful weapon the Devil has to ensnare Christians. If you decide to turn your back on Jesus and live a sinful life instead you are going to Hell irregardless of whether you once were saved. The Bible says that strait is the way and narrow is the gate unto salvation. It's just too easy to walk down the aisle and shake the preacher's hand once 40 years ago and think that you are saved. It's not Biblical. It's Satan's lie.

 

TC,
Let me provide another tranlation so that it is easier to see what Paul really was saying:

New Living Translation:

Paul was saved yet he sinned and at times apparently sinned grievously against that which he was taught and that which he taught.

And the scripture continues on to tell about the Spirit that has freed you, which is supporting of what "freeatlast" has been saying.

 

Neither one is saved unless the one who accepted Christ repents of his sin and resumes his relationship with Christ.

 

Straight,

The Holy Spirit will convict a saved person. Are you saying that a saved person that calls a driver a bad name, including using the Lord's name in vain, under his breath and dies in the next instant in a car accident before he can ask forgiveness will go to hell?

 

No, freeastlast, you're wrong. First, you apparently didn't get what I wrote to start with. You are right, the letter is written not for lost people, but to identify who is saved and who isn't. You're wrong, however, in the way you present the teaching. (I didn't expect you to admit it, however, as I did look at your website in your profile, and it's all about what makes a "real" Christian and what doesn't. Methinks you're hung up on one issue, and can't see for your blinders... John identifies who is a Christian and who isn't by addressing the issue of apostasy in the church. You are eisegeting from 1 John 3.

This letter was written to the Ephesian church in order to repudiate the Gnostics who had gone out from them. John writes very clearly that by their going out from "us" they proved themselves not to be "of us."

You are removing the teaching in chapter 3 from the entire context of the epistle to make it say what you want it to say. The text does not support your position if you do a proper exegesis of it.

I John 1:9 is not just talking about confessing our sin to God. It is talking about confessing our sin to each other as well, not as Catholics do, but as recognition of our imperfection and the presence of sin's presence and power within us. To sin at all is to practice sin. To say, as the Gnostics were doing, that we have no sin, is to fail to confess our sin to each other. The sin that they were practicing is very clear. They repudiated the gospel of the Incarnation up to and including the substitutionary atonement and bodiliy resurrection of the Lord Jesus and personal faith in that alone for salvation (salvation by grace through faith) and they said that they had no sin, because they had retreated from society. Asceticism. This is the danger of asceticism, the saying that we have no sin in us. The sin of these men was the sin of apostasy. This isn't about sinful "lifestyles" like homosexuality. This is about the sin of apostasy.

Therefore, you can't apply it the way you do. In fact, according to the text, you are guilty of one of the two sins of these apostates. They said they have no sin. To say you do not practice sin is one of the very sins of "character" (e.g. continually practicing) about which John writes! It stems, specifically, from a repudiation of the gospel itself. If you say you have no sin and you repudiate the gospel, you are an apostate and not saved. THAT is what 1 John is teaching. To say otherwise is to flat out divorce it from its context. It can be no other way in the light of Scripture. My point: If you say you have no sin in you, then you are sadly misinformed about yourself and you are, in point of fact, guilty of one of the two sins that John identifies in this letter as being practiced.

One question we need to ask ourselvess about homosexuals is whether or not that person has made a profession of faith, whether they really do believe the gospel itself, and whether they now repudiate that confession. Are they backslidden or apostate? Do they struggle with sin? Real Christians struggle with sin. Unbelievers do not struggle with sin. Do they repudiate the gospel? Have they fallen away from evangelical doctrine? If that is the answer, they are apostate and not saved at all and never were, in which case you are correct. If the answer is not all three, then they may be backslidden. Regardless, John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit you are not so inspired. You do not know what is going on in the heart of that man or woman. If you did you could make the blanket declaration you're making.

The root of this entire blik you have is found on page one of this thread and on your website. "There is no such thing as backsliding. You declare this a false teaching." You are, of course, aware, that not even the most hardcore Calvinists (of which I myself am a five pointer), say that there is no such thing as backsliding. This is one doctrine over which Calvinists and Arminians are generally united in agreement. Backsliding can and does occur, or else there would be no warnings about the perils of falling into sin. It would negate, in large measure the rebukes of Paul in 1 Corinthians and the warnings against apostasy and backsliding both found in Hebrews, among other texts. It is soundly outside the boundaries of orthodoxy to allege what you are saying about this doctrine. Not even the most hardcore believer in perseverance of the saints would say what you say on this issue.

Scripture is clear on this issue. There is apostasy, and there is backsliding. You have confused the two by uniting them together.

Salvation is not of works, it is of God from beginning to end. Sanctification itself is, however, cooperative, and while in standing we may be saint, in daily life our state is both sinner and saint simultaneously. We can fall into grievous error doctrinally and morally. If a person comes back he was saved. If not, he may not have been. In the end, if we know that he meets the definition of apostasy, he most likely was not. To make blanket statements as you do is just plain unbiblical.

 

Exactly my story. I believe that the very prevalent theology of "Once Saved Always Saved" is the single most powerful weapon the Devil has to ensnare Christians. If you decide to turn your back on Jesus and live a sinful life instead you are going to Hell irregardless of whether you once were saved. The Bible says that strait is the way and narrow is the gate unto salvation. It's just too easy to walk down the aisle and shake the preacher's hand once 40 years ago and think that you are saved. It's not Biblical. It's Satan's lie. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Well S&N, I guess that's where you and I differ.

41 plus years ago, I sat in a pew being convicted of my sin by the Holy Spirit. I figetted and scooted my rear back and forth in that seat and when the alter call came I resisted. I resisted HARD. I gripped the back of that seat until my knuckles turned white and that was the first night.

The next night when the alter call came I had had a full 24 hours to be reconvicted everytime I thought about that moment, and then I surrendered to the urging of the Holy Spirit and turned myself in --- not with a hand shake, brother, but with a contrite spirit of remorse and regret.

My life was instantly changed and even my family at home who were not with me in that service could tell some several days later, that my whole countenance had changed and they commented on that change about me.

I knew that I knew that I knew that I had had a personal experience with the Lord Jesus Christ and in the ensuing years worked diligently to perfect my new found life of Grace.

So don't you be like Satan (the accuser) and accuse me of not being a Christian, b/c you just don't know anything about what I experienced and what it meant to me. You weren't in that service and you weren't privy to the workings of the Holy Spirit in my life and you weren't aware of the grievous sins I'd already committed at an early age of 15. Were you brother??? Who are YOU to tell me ANYTHING about MY conversion experience???

A few years later, despite my love for God and His love for me, I turned to sin as a way of sexual expression just like Paul has written in Romans 7:14-25. And felt the guilt and conviction for the years of separation away from Him. So again, you have no idea what I went through and what grief it caused me and how many times I sought to take control of my life myself and failed. Until that one day that I decided I had enough and sought out a minister of God and the Lord Jesus Christ once again.

I stand by it regardless of what YOU have to say about it. If you have problems with the Theology of my Christian witness take it to GOD, don't condemn me. Maybe He'll be gracious to you and not put you through what I had to go through to find Him again. Ask Him to reveal my saved condition to YOU.

You see brother ----- He never ever let go of me or else I could not have come back to Him. I am the one who let go of Him. But then you just don't get it do you???

 

Amen

"Practicing sin" as John writes about it actually involves the practicing of sin habitually without conviction or compunction, it is sin and denying one is sinning, not as a denial of the truth one knows to be true of oneself, but to deny one is sinning because one genuinely doesn't believe one is sinning at all. Backsliding is done willfully but still with conviction, admitting, if only to oneself that one is sinning, but apostasy is to sin the same way as an unbeliever: without hesitation, without any trace of conscience.

The assumption made by freeatlast is that all homosexuals sin without compunction, without a problem, and so habitually. They sin and say they have no sin while they sin, because they really don't think they have any sin at all in them. This is to say one has no sin in the same way as the apostates in 1 John. However, if a man sins and denies he is sinning, but he is internally convicted by the Holy Spirit (and he does not repudiate the gospel, though he may live in a manner contrary to it), that man is backslidden. I do believe that most homosexuals sin this way, but so do most unrengenerate people. However, since we're not the Lord, we can't know what's going on there. I do know this, I have met other homosexuals who are Christians, and when two Christians who are in that type of sin meet, do you know what they talk about? Jesus. They remark at how unloving other gays are and how their friends always come to them with their problems. They always say, "Yeah, I know this isn't right, " and talk about how confused they are inside. They also talk about how they just can't say, "Jesus is not Lord," they literally can't repudiate the gospel. It is as if the one restraint that is always there is this inability to deny Christ and, somehow, these people become a (dim) light for their friends in a very, very dark and empty world, the homosexual subculture, however, they themselves are very unhappy and deeply convicted. They struggle with their sexuality and don't ever completely succumb. Unlike their gay friends who are unregenerate and whose consciences God has allowed to be given over, these people's consciences haven't been given over. Why? Because the Holy Spirit won't let it happen. The unbelieving homosexual has no conscience. The believing homosexual has one, the Holy Spirit, and the new creation He has made him, and that deeply convicts him of the truth, and therein lies the difference. This is what freeatlast can't understand. (Methinks, he has doctrinal issues and some, frankly, issues with homosexuals/homosexuality that are clouding his judgment to make him take this position that backsliding is not possible, esp. with regard to homosexuals).

The one thing about 1 John that is important is that it clear does tie assurance and behavior together. The more one sins, the more of a "gray area" it becomes. The issue, however, isn't for others to assume or decide, it is between God and that believer. Regardless, it is clear, there is backsliding and there is apostasy. The practice of sin that John addresses here is the kind tied to apostasy, in which case these persons weren't saved at all. It is accompanied by a falling from evangelical doctrine and an outright repudiation of the gospel, a denial of the identity of Jesus as God the Son, who died for our sins and bodily rose from the dead and an additional claim that one is not in sin and no struggle with sin at all.

[ October 19, 2004, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: GeneMBridges ]