Re: Your Greatest Need
 

Michael, I will have to disagree with you. I absolutely agree that Salvation has conditions... One must come into covenant with the finished work of Calvary, take up their cross and follow. I absolutely believe that.

However, even if someone doesn't do that... they're still loved. Not with our simple human love, but the JUST and FAIR love of God. He would that none perish, but that all have everlasting and abundant life. But God is a gentleman with His Grace.

There are people in hell that God still loves them unconditionally. I don't see in Scripture where the love has conditions, just the salvation. Love alone won't save us... and that's the issue here. People don't understand that true, agape, God like love also contains wrath and justice within it. They want to gather in their cum ba ya circles, hold hands, and just speak acceptance over one another.... but thats only one aspect of Love.

Love also means, you won't let someone go without the consequences to their choices, that you love them enough to let them have free will, and make their decisions.... and you love them enough that even as they destroy themselves and turn the other direction from you... you still love them.

Oh, God's love is unconditional, but it alone wont' redeem a lost soul. That's where the love must be returned, from man to God.. in a life laid down for Him.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

No its just that you have bit into strage fire doctrine.

Heres something ELSE Jesus said about entering eternal life:

Luke 13:22-27

13:22 He went on his way through cities and villages, teaching, and traveling on to Jerusalem. 13:23 One said to him, “Lord, are they few who are saved?”

He said to them, 13:24 “Strive to enter in by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter in, and will not be able. 13:25 When once the master of the house has risen up, and has shut the door, and you begin to stand outside, and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ then he will answer and tell you, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ 13:26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 13:27 He will say, ‘I tell you, I don’t know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.’

Note who said this? Me or JESUS?

If JESUS said these words would you agree there are conditions to salvation?

What about the verses I have already given? Comment on THEM please.

Jesus never promised unconditional love to his hearers. Rather he instructed them concerning the way they must walk if they want to be saved.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

John 15:10

If you keep his commands you will remain in his love. Now THATS simple.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

You are misinterpreting what In His Love means. Brother... I don't disagree that Salvation has conditions... absolutely. But this scripture isn't saying He won't love you anymore... not at all. It's saying, when you keep His commandments, then you remain within that covenant relationship to benefit and receive from that love..... i.e., salvation, redemption, righteousness. If this verse were saying that the love has conditions, under the rules of the Greek language here, there would have had to have been different words used. The key to this part of this verse is... "abide in" It doesn't say that the love stops... it is saying the abiding is what stops.

There are no Scriptures that say if someone rejects following Christ that they are no longer loved by Him. Again, your confusing the relationship which does have conditions with the love that does not.

Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

You sound like the ascetics, that renounce everything in this world as evil. God gave us the world and all that is in it to enjoy, he simply calls us to do so righteously. Yes, he condemned the evil of the world, but not the creation itself.

Some little girls love physical activities such as sports, others don't, God created variety in His world. Men want to create boxes and limit that variety, such is tunnel vision and produces child abuse, spiritual abuse and spiritual terrorism. "Do that or don't do this and you will burn in literal fire in hell forever." Jesus had serious rebuke for the Jewish religious leaders that, "...laid heavy burderns on folks..." His rebukes were almost exclusively for religious leaders, should be very instructive to all that preach and teach.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

The world God created absolutely was wonderful and here to enjoy... the world we have now is not that same world... it is a cursed, sin filled, depraved, evil place... and we are not citizens of this world... we are ambassadors... not residents.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

Where are like buttons when you need them? I agree with all that you have said and more.

The only exception that I have is that God very plainly stated that there were people that He abhorred, hated, despised, and rejected because of their unrepentant sin. I believe that man can so strive against God that it causes Him to despise and hate that individual. This was true of Esau, various generations of Israelites, various Gentile nations around them, various peoples who dwelt in the land before them, as well as others.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

Some people just will not obey God. They are determined to put self first. It's so easy I guess to misuse God's grace as an excuse to sin.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

People dont like to hear this. The "unconditional" love doctrine is tightly binding most people today. They cant grasp what you are saying here. God destroyed people and nations because he abhorred them.

Re: Your Greatest Need
 

Jay, I suggest you do an exegesis on those texts that say God hated or abhored someone... and you'll see that the King James interpretation doesn't do the words used in those texts justice. You'll see in some that it literally is saying they grieved God and broke his heart, and in others, that the text is actually saying He hated their life, the actions they carried out, what they did, who they had become.

God's unconditional love for their soul was there.

Let me just say, because frankly, I think Michael is confusing terms, and using words very lossely to mean different things... that unconditional love doesn't mean unconditional salvation, security, or grace. God's love is on such a different realm than hours, we could never even imagine it, and within that love is justice... and even wrath. Yes, God can even pour out his wrath on a society while yet loving them.