Circumcision and OSAS

DHK, I believe I have somewhat of an understanding of Scripture. I cannot debate with myself. I was asking you to ascertain not what Scripture says but what YOU believe Scripture represents as the truth. I am trying my best to understand your beliefs so that I do not misrepresent you in any way. Is not that what we all should be trying to do our best at, understand the positions of the others as accurately as possible? You are making meaningful debate very hard with your answers on this issue.

 

Alive in Christ, was circumcision, as well as other stated conditions, necessary for the Jewish male in the OT to experience a hope of eternal life? Did the lack of circumcision affect ones standing before God in the OT once God commanded it to be done?

 

No machine guns here. :smilewinkgrin:


All three questions are related. I was trying to basically ask the same thing in three different ways for clarity, not that I needed an answer to ech one. :wavey:
Could a Jewish male once God commanded them to be circumcised, entertain a hope of eternal life and not be circumcised? Could you entertain a hope of eternal life and be saved if you violated the Sabbath in a manner consistent with God’s command to keep it? I am not asking if they could have been saved and violated the laws of the Jews concerning the Sabbath, but rather could you have been saved and been found to be in clear violation of breaking the Sabbath in the manner in which the Lord instilled the commandment?

 

HP: Your problem is that regardless how careful I try and ask the questions, you are a master at avoiding them.

I did NOT ask you if obedience to the law saved, now did I? I asked you if you could have been saved if you refused to be obedient to the conditions God set forth for salvation, in this case circumcision or Sabbath observance. Try again DHK.

 

HP: If faith could save, why did Jesus have to die? We could have all just had faith like Abraham. Faith is NOT the grounds of salvation, and it is NOT what saves us. It is a stated condition of salvation without which we cannot be saved, but so are repentance and obedience until the end conditions of salvation.

What you are espousing DHK is pure antinomianism of the Calvinistic flair. By the way, what ever happened to it being “ALL OF GOD???’”

Does the reader see the contradiction at every turn DHK makes? He tells us on one hand it is ‘all of God’ and then he tells us we need to exercise faith. If it is all of God it is all of God. If we need to exercise faith then there is something man must do without which we shall not be saved. It does not stop there according to Scripture either. Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish, and that is a command to us to fulfill, and not just some necessitated coercion upon the elect at God’s pleasure to either give or withhold.

There has never been salvation of anyone, from Adam to our day and age, in which there were not clear stated conditions for all to fulfill, without which no salvation is or ever has been possible.

 

HP: If the literal payment theory is carried out to its logical ends, the price paid would certainly have been ineffective in securing its end.

Bill, by far the most confusion is advanced in relationship to salvation when one fails to distinguish between the grounds of salvation and the conditions of salvation. The grounds of salvation is always though of in the sense of ‘that for the sake of,’ while conditions are always thought of as ‘not without which.’ To understand why repentance, faith and obedience are not the grounds of salvation, one only needs to ask, are we saved ‘for the sake of’ repentance, faith, or obedience? The answer is obviously no. We are saved ‘for the sake of’ God’s mercy.

Repentance, faith and obedience are always thought of in the sense of ‘not without which’ not ‘that for the sake of’ and as such are considered conditions of salvation, NOT the grounds of salvation. The grounds of salvation are all of God, while God requires man to fulfill the conditions, without which no one shall see God.

 

HP: It is hard to understand what one means by ‘all of God.’ If it is all of God that would mean it is none of me or you. That means we contribute nothing, nothing at all, not even by way of voluntarily fulfilling any condition such as faith, repentance or obedience. If it is ‘all of God’ all is necessitated from the beginning, those necessitated to be saved and those necessitated to be damned. God picks and chooses ‘all’ on His own who to damn and who to save and that arbitrarily. Surely you will not contradict yourself and tell me that ‘all’ does not mean ‘all’ and that we need to do something, like exercise faith, to becomes saved. If we needed to do anything, anything at all, it would not be ‘all of God.’

Just in case your wondering, I asked nine (9) less questions than you asked me DHK in your last post. Go ahead. Chastice me again for asking so many questions. :wavey::laugh: