I think most Baptists have Romans 7 totally wrong

I see you have refused to answer not only the 1st, but indeed all 3 of the questions I posed you. I think that is obviously because if you did answer them, then your answers would show the impossibility of maintaining the position you are attempting to defend. I say this because I have posed that question to many people who hold to your beliefs, and not a single one of them has ever answered it.

Again, you can cite 1 Peter all day and I'll just cite Mat 23 (obey "everything" they tell you to do) along with Matthew 12 (allowing his disciples to pick and eat that which it was unlawful to pick and eat at that time). Obviously "obey everything they say" or "obey all their laws" was not meant literally by Christ.

You are interpreting the command to "obey everything" authorities tell us to do in a way that is very much different from how Christ meant it and from how the disciples interpreted it. That much is obvious. If you're more comfortable following your own interpretations of Christ's commands instead of the Apostle's interpretations, that is a problem you're going to have to eventually deal with. I can't make you follow Scripture, you have to choose to do it yourself.

I never said people should break speeding laws. I said people need to avoid doing evil. The only laws Scripture commands us to obey are those tax laws and those that it would be evil to break. Driving at an excessive speed, knowingly putting lives at great risk, is evil. But I would never judge someone as a "sinner" for driving 26mph in a 25mph zone. That is completely un-biblical, and obviously completely out of line with what Christ meant when he told us to obey the authorities. Each man has his conscience, and love comes from a sincere conscience and a pure heart.

God bless you,

 

My dear brother, I have been nothing but respectful in all of my conversations here. Issues of faith are sensitive topics, especially for those like us, those who take these things seriously and who try to act with sincerity in everything we do and say. Therefore, we must be gentle with one another.

"...correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction." (2 Tim. 4:2-4) Please be patient with me and understand that my intent is not to offend you. Rather, I want to see to it that whichever one of us is in error is corrected. It is very important for us to speak in line with what is Truth.

- "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. (Romans 12:10) Please know that everything I've said here has been motivated by a love for you. Sincerely.

If you don't like the way I used the English translation of the Greek word for garbage dump on my website, I am sorry that you've been offended. Please know I mean no offense, and please know it is not a sin to use the word 'garbage dump' outside of a religious context. If you don't believe me, I suggest staying away from my website because, on my own property, I speak in line with what I believe.

May God grant you peace,

 

Paul used a slang word for "fecal excrement" in one of his letters to the church, a letter explaining theology and the Savior. It is now in our Bible. Do you know the book, chapter, and verse? I do. And I'd be happy to share it with you if you're interested in knowing more and more about Scripture. We all will always be able to know more about it, it is God's wonderful gift, given to equip us to do good works for all our days.

God's peace to you,

 

My dear brother saturnneptune,

I don't believe it is possible for someone like Tom (whom you praise so highly and who I'm sure has truly and honestly earned your high respect) to reach a point where someone like me cannot teach him anything. If you think so, we can simply respectfully disagree. I'm not intending to be disrespectful by offering tho share what knowledge I have. We are all here to learn and to share, hopefully.

Also, I have never said there is one point of salvation that occurs when you stopped sinning. In fact, salvation itself is a process, it cannot be said to be entirely contained in a certain point of time. Ephesians 2:8-9 refers to Christians having been saved in the past, initial salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:18 refers to Christians presently being saved, present salvation. Romans 5:9 tells Christians that they will be saved, future salvation.

What I did say was this: "We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin." The Apostle John said it before me. (1 John 5:18). To truly be a son in God's family forever, you must not sin. Being "born again" is not simply when you believe.

This is what John records Christ Himself teaching us as well. For instance, see what Christ told a crowd of people who had just placed faith in Him while he was teaching in John 8:30-35. He told them that they now had to hold to his teachings in the future to truly be set free from sin. He said if any of them sinned, he would not be in God's family. Then He said if any of them stayed away from sin, that one would be a son or a daughter of God and be with God forever. Read it yourself. John 8:30-35. That, of course is what the Bible is here for!

If what Christ said is actually true, then the types of things Christ told new believers is *not at all* like what people like Billy Graham tell new believers. I'm not saying Billy is evil. I'm not saying Billy himself is not born again. He may be, and he seems from the outside to live a righteous life. You may be, although I don't know you. I think only God and his child can know the depths of the heart. All I'm saying is this: Billy Graham and others are mislead about how to get to heaven, and they are teaching others a gospel that is only partially true.

One day, either before you fall asleep or after, you and Billy and all the rest are going to realize that teaching about how to gain eternal life ("believe in Jesus and you'll go to heaven"), if not explained accurately, is a total distortion of the Bible. To say something like that out of context will terribly mislead people. In the same passage Jesus says that in, He also says, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life." Jesus has said all kinds of things in the Bible that are utterly ridiculous (and perhaps even harmful) if you rip them out of their context. But many people rip one or both of those passages out of context on a regular basis, and teach them to others like that!

Those false doctrines have great potential to get Christians to believe they can have eternal life while sinning. This is the sad state of Christianity today. Scripture warned us it would happen, we should not be surprised.

May God grant us all wisdom and peace,
Jason

 

What we have here, my brother, is a rule, created by you, that we can only disobey a law when Christ, in the flesh and in front of us, has given us permission. This is a rule you have made up. It is found nowhere in Scripture. What's more, Scripture seems to speak contrary to this. The disciples picked grain unlawfully on the Sabbath before Christ gave them permission. Christ defended them after they were accused of sinning, but they had already done the act.

The Sabbath is nothing. It is as valuable to a Christian as circumcision. That is the Old Testament Law. We are no longer commanded to rest on the Sabbath any more than we are commanded to slaughter goats, cut off our foreskins, or anything else. Christ ended the Old Law. What's more, see colossions 2:16, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to... a Sabbath day."

Now you are judging laws with your own conscience to decide if they are nonsensical. There are many laws that are just as absurd that are on the books. Whether or not they get enforced, or how often they get enforced, is another question. But they are there, and we are commanded to follow them by the legal system.

The fact is, there are times when we can break laws. Even though Christ said "obey everything they tell you" (Mat. 23), his disciples understood what he meant and had no problem breaking the law when breaking it did not harm anyone. (Mat. 12). Likewise, these passages you cite that say we must "obey" the government are no different. Romans 13:4 says the government is meant to punish those who "do evil." The only laws we have to obey are laws that keep us from doing evil and laws that command payment of taxes to keep the government running.

Here we have another rule created by you. The rule "you must obey unless obeying means you would have to sin" is nowhere in Scripture. It just is not there. Period. You have made it up, or you have learned it by tradition from someone else who made it up. That rule is not in the Bible.

Scripture does not tell us when we can and can't disobey the authorities. the only guidance it gives us is Matthew 23 and 12 where the disciples picked some grain because they were hungry. That is relatively unclear, so I would agree this is a disputable matter that righteous Christians can disagree on. My point is that they would not have been sinning if they had obeyed the law. Nonetheless, they disobeyed it. These are our teachers, the disciples in Scripture.

Therefore, you can't tell me I'm sinning if I break a law that my conscience, guided by the Holy Spirit, tells me is absurd and has nothing to do with good and evil.If you think 21mph in a 20 is a sin, then by all means you need to obey your conscience. That is what Romans 14:14 means. "But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean." We all have to follow our conscience, because if we honestly think something is a sin (even if it isn't a sin) and we do it anyway, we prove that we will disobey God when we want to.

So by all means follow your conscience. But don't tell other people to follow *your* conscience. They have to follow their own conscience, since obviously Scripture nowhere tells us the *exact* situations in which laws can be broken. Therefore, this is a "disputable matter" where honest, sincere, knowledgable Christians can disagree. So go by your conscience, and let other's do the same. Romans 14:1 says we must not pass judgment on disputable matters. I don't judge you for your beliefs on this. However, you do judge me (or so it seems).

peace,

 

Again, what many English Bible's translate "filthy language" is actually probably referring to false doctrines, not "cuss" words. Even in any one culture all sorts of different people have different definitions of what is a "cuss" word or a "dirty" word or a "bad" word to say. We don't let the culture define for us what is sin, we let God do it. We don't have to follow the FCC's guidelines or anyone else's but God's.

If you think it is not possible that "filthy language" is perhaps somewhat mistranslated in many English Bible's, may I direct your attention to Isaiah 64:6. In many English Bibles the word there is intentionally mistranslated "filthy rags" because the word actually means, get this, "menstrual rags". I'm not kidding. Look it up for yourself. The Hebrew is "ed." Translators are totally unreliable. Many are governed by their own traditional rules of etiquette and beliefs instead of being governed by a desire to be as faithful to the original language as possible. We've got to read Scripture in the original language, or find someone who is able to and seek to learn from them. That is the only way to truly analyze Scripture to find the Truth.

Nowhere does Scripture command us to abstain from anything and everything that might offend someone somewhere in the culture. Romans 14 says, "It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. (Romans 14:21) This is another place where a lot of Christians are confused or deceived. Many think that means that it is best to abstain from wine or cussing because there are people out there somewhere that are somehow offended by it. That is not at all what Paul is saying. In fact, Paul doesn't limit this to alcohol (he includes meat "or anything else" that offends). That means the many Christians that avoid alcohol or cussing "because it offends people" should be avoiding desserts, T.V., expensive cars, junkie cars, plastic bottles, poodles, and everything in the world that offends anyone at all.

Paul's point has to do with when we *know*, specifically, about a specific person in our presence. If we know that specific brother of ours has told us He thinks drinking (or anything else) is a sin we should abstain in front of him. But that is not all we should do. Most importantly (and the part many Christians leave out) is that, in these types of situations, we are to correct our mistaken brother.

In Romans 14 Paul clearly says that such brother's faiths are "weak." Yes. Sorry if that offends you. However, when a you think something is a sin that is not a sin, that means you have a weak faith. Read Romans 14. That is what it says.

If we love our brother, we should strengthen him in the faith. For instance, Paul says "let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths." (Colossians 2:16) We correct our our brothers when we see a weakness in their faith because we love them, just as God loves and corrects us.

What Paul is saying is that if our brother refuses our correction (he still thinks whatever is a sin), and we still do it in front of him, then we are encouraging him to sin. This is because "if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean." (Romans 14:14) If, in his heart, our brother sincerely thought doing the thing is a sin against God, then if he did anyway he would be doing something out of hate for God, not out of love for God.

Therefore, if a brother tells us he thinks something pure is a sin, we are not to flaunt it in front of him... but, most importantly, we are instead supposed to correct Him. I am not flaunting the slang language here that people here have told me is "bad". People have told me it offends them, and I am not using it. It is on my website... because that is like my own house. I will speak freely in my own house. If non-religious uses of slang words for excrement and garbage dumps offend you, don't go to my website. Also, know that you are wrong... those words are not in any way, shape, or form inherently "sinful."

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Don't trust your english Bible just because it says "dung." Look to the original language, or ask someone who knows it to tell you what that word meant to people back then. It was a "slang" word for dung, it wasn't the technical word.

If you think it is not possible that "dung" is perhaps somewhat mistranslated in many English Bible's, may I direct your attention to Isaiah 64:6. In many English Bibles the word there is intentionally mistranslated "filthy rags" because the word actually means, get this, "menstrual rags". I'm not kidding. Look it up for yourself. The Hebrew is "ed." Translators are totally unreliable. Many are governed by their own traditional rules of etiquette and beliefs instead of being governed by a desire to be as faithful to the original language as possible. We've got to read Scripture in the original language, or find someone who is able to and seek to learn from them. That is the only way to truly analyze Scripture to find the Truth.

As far as premarital sex, you obviously didn't read the entire page on my website. I'm not here to defend my views on that topic, I'm here to talk about the sinful nature and Romans 7. That is why I started this post. I'm not discussing my views on sex with you. If you want to know about "fornication" (and how that translation of the underlying word is similar to the mistranslation I noted above from Isaiah) just read the entire page (and the discussion) on the page in my website you are referring to. Then e-mail me privately if you want to talk more.

I want to keep this thread on topic please. Thank you my dear brother.