Once Saved Always Saved

[votivesoul]

Sin is the transgression of the law. Now, what did John mean by "law", or nomos? Did he mean Mosaic covenant law? General Torah instruction? The law of Christ?

To me, it doesn't matter overly much, since all the law or nomos, whether covenantal, instructional, or even Messianic law, is summed up in two commandments: Love God with all you heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If a person does those two things, the "law" has been fulfilled, and remains un-transgressed.

But what if I didn't love God with 100% or didn't love my neighbor quite the way I should?

Did I transgress the law and so, have sinned? Maybe, perhaps even probably.

But!

Love covers a multitude of sins. The Hebrew word for "cover" is a word-picture. It means to fill in the cracks, or smooth over flaws, kind of like to do a drywall patch. God sees us, flaws and all, knows we are broken, earthen vessels, and His love nonetheless smooths us out, covering whatever mistakes we make, just as much as a loving father and mother with their children.

It is the love of Christ that "constrains" us, and not our love for Christ that constrains God.

Be careful to not put too much on yourself to think your salvation is dependent upon you and your ability to always, flawlessly love God and your neighbor.

Jesus loved God and His neighbor always, flawlessly. We trust in His faithfulness to fulfill the law or nomos. We shouldn't trust in ourselves.

The yoke of Christ is easy, and His burden is light. He took away the sins of the world at Calvary. He has given us the Holy Spirit, and with It, has made us to become partakers of the divine nature. We are new creatures, recreated in the image of Christ, in righteousness and true holiness. It may take time for that image to take shape, and become more and more permanent, but THAT'S WHY we have an advocate with the Father.

When you've transgressed the law and not loved God or your neighbor, confess it, ask for forgiveness, and remind yourself it's not your works of righteousness which causes God to want to save you and keep you saved. It's His kindness and mercy. His own nature is what caused Him to send His Son. Before you were born, God sent His Son to atone for you. After you came along, and became a sinner, Christ had already died for you 1,980 years ago.

Stop looking at yourself. You are never going to be the perfect fulfillment of God's laws. Otherwise, you could reach the glory of God on your own, by your own will and ability to love. Look at Jesus and remind yourself He did for you what you could never do for yourself. Jesus IS the glory of God. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ. He never fell short. He never will. That's why He can make intercession for you, and be your advocate.

The blood of Jesus is the sinner's perfect plea! The earnest of your inheritance wasn't given just so you could blast off some day and get to heaven. It was given to you here and now, to live a transformed, renewed life of moral innocence and purity before God--to become like Jesus. Yield to the Holy Spirit's influence and convicting power, and in time, you will become more and more like the Lord. You will sin less and less and less until, one day, you find yourself living a "sin-less" life of righteousness and true holiness, just like Jesus.

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by Evang.Benincasa

From what we see from the scripture is that there are children, young men, and elders, three stages of development towards maturity. Jesus says be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. The Greek word means complete, full age, by reason of use to have had your senses exercised to know right from wrong. So those who are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God. Living in the Spirit 24/7, I don't believe that is what the writers meant, that we used time to clock in and clock out, but just like you do anything in your life consistently and do it well, even without much thought. The life of following Jesus Christ should be the same way. Knowing to do good and do it not it is sin unto the one who knows better. Jesus expected this out of the religious leadership of His time, would it be so much if He then required it from those who claim to love Him? You love Him, because He loved you first and showed you that love, and love you felt and understood. Therefore you won't turn back and abandoned Him. You won't leave because you are in as much love with Him, as He is with you.

1st John 3 explains that we are to PRACTICE righteousness as HE is righteous, and no longer practice sin. So, while you are living for God, you may make mistakes as you grow, any child does, but you persevere and move forward in the Spirit. Following the love of God that is shed abroad in your heart.

Amazing that you would try to steal my thoughts and claim them for your own! jk


But honestly, it's quite fascinating how when it comes right down to it we have basically been saying the same thing


Sure there's a few things I could nit pick about and use to magnify our disagreement and then you would do the same and so on and so forth, but honestly the heart of the matter seems agreed upon and I think that's all anyone could ever ask.

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by jfrog

Amazing that you would try to steal my thoughts and claim them for your own! jk


But honestly, it's quite fascinating how when it comes right down to it we have basically been saying the same thing


Sure there's a few things I could nit pick about and use to magnify our disagreement and then you would do the same and so on and so forth, but honestly the heart of the matter seems agreed upon and I think that's all anyone could ever ask.

Absolute poppycock! This is AFF! You are slacking off. The nits must be picked until the raw, bleeding scalp of a thread is truly dead. And then it must be resurrected and the saddle put back on so it can be ridden into the ground again, and again, and again, as we all stand round and beat it repeatedly with our sticks, hoping to kill the dead horse once and for all - which must never happen!

[votivesoul]

Some more thoughts:

Since Jesus said the Holy Spirit would reprove the world because of sin (John 16:8), and since we have an exhortation to be "filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18), it would seem to me to be impossible to be both full of the Holy Spirit and to live a life of continual, habitual, besetting sin, without the Holy Spirit continually, habitually besetting you with reproofs.

I don't mean that you received the Holy Spirit years ago. I mean to say that a person can be full of the Holy Spirit, as in made replete, until the soul is saturated. Such a saturate soul isn't going to sin anytime soon.

So, if you're sinning consistently, check yourself and the level of your fullness with the Holy Spirit. The only reason a person should be living in continual sin, having received the Holy Spirit, is if they have been taught wrong, believed a lie, or just want to live carnally. Otherwise, the testimony of Holy Scripture is clear:

2 Peter 1:1-10,

1. Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:
2. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3. According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6. And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7. And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
10. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:

We have been given everything we need through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures to live a godly life (a life that is free from the law of sin and death) that is fully pleasing to the Lord.

[shazeep]

Originally Posted by mfblume

You need to study Romans 6. A defeatist attitude that says we must have sinned even if we can't think of when is symptom of a false belief.

well i agree with that, but it assumes that one could not think of when. Imagine a world where you are raised believing that you must learn a trade in order to earn "money " to eat and clothe yourself, and that "church" is a place you go to a couple times a week, and you are taught all the various other compromises that we assume from the cradle to be true--that might keep one from VS's description of accessing the divine--which all seem completely acceptable to us.

It's perfectly acceptable to drive a car, for instance; disregarding that it is not possible for every adult on the planet to have a car, and that oil extraction is contaminating the water, and burning fuel is contaminating the air. But it is of course ridiculous to suggest that owning a car is a sin.

[shazeep]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

Some more thoughts:

Since Jesus said the Holy Spirit would reprove the world because of sin (John 16:8), and since we have an exhortation to be "filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18), it would seem to me to be impossible to be both full of the Holy Spirit and to live a life of continual, habitual, besetting sin, without the Holy Spirit continually, habitually besetting you with reproofs.

I don't mean that you received the Holy Spirit years ago. I mean to say that a person can be full of the Holy Spirit, as in made replete, until the soul is saturated. Such a saturate soul isn't going to sin anytime soon.

So, if you're sinning consistently, check yourself and the level of your fullness with the Holy Spirit. The only reason a person should be living in continual sin, having received the Holy Spirit, is if they have been taught wrong, believed a lie, or just want to live carnally. Otherwise, the testimony of Holy Scripture is clear:

2 Peter 1:1-10,



We have been given everything we need through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures to live a godly life (a life that is free from the law of sin and death) that is fully pleasing to the Lord.

"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"

my premise is that while you certainly have everything you need from Christ to live free from the law, from day one we are indoctrinated into the law, even by our well-meaning OP parents, and blinded to how we might be sinning. Christ becomes, for us at least, a very difficult choice to make, that we mostly give lip service.

[shazeep]

Originally Posted by Evang.Benincasa

Following the love of God that is shed abroad in your heart.

amen! But wadr when love one another turns into thank God i am white and they are all lost, and life, more abundantly turns into i can't wait to die and go to heaven, it might be time to examine your premises. Sin becomes evident in what a Christian can ignore. Of course you live in a world where you have to have a car now, so the point there is not so much to compel you to stop owning cars, as to examine your assumptions.

Once saved always saved becomes moot if you are never saved, and die the sin unto death.

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by shazeep

well i agree with that, but it assumes that one could not think of when.

Most who claim we sin every day and believe we are kidding ourselves if say we do not, are of the same ilk who believe we may not know what sin we committed, but surely we must have committed one, since it is impossible not to sin.

If you feel the inclination as a result of my recommendation, please read the book, TURKEYS AND EAGLES, by Peter Lord. It addresses this issue quite nicely.

Imagine a world where you are raised believing that you must learn a trade in order to earn "money " to eat and clothe yourself, and that "church" is a place you go to a couple times a week, and you are taught all the various other compromises that we assume from the cradle to be true--that might keep one from VS's description of accessing the divine--which all seem completely acceptable to us.

It's perfectly acceptable to drive a car, for instance; disregarding that it is not possible for every adult on the planet to have a car, and that oil extraction is contaminating the water, and burning fuel is contaminating the air. But it is of course ridiculous to suggest that owning a car is a sin.

I am speaking from the perspective of Romans 6's explanation or walkthrough of how we have dominion over sin through Christ. We died with Him, and He died to sin. That means we also died to sin. And when one died to sin, one is no longer under its dominion. God sees us as dead to sin and alive to Himself as much as Christ is. It;s more than proxy, but actually real in benefits. Christ's benefits of having died and resurrected is that sin has absolutely no dominion over Him. And that is shared by us. The same power of the Spirit animating Him since then is upon us. But we need to faith to experience that. Without faith it is nullified.

Once we understand that, we realize, "What on earth have I been thinking I have to sin everyday for? I died with Christ to that sin! Sin cannot dominate me any more."

And then we go to God as those who really are alive from the dead (Ro 6:13). And the faith God sees in us as we present ourselves to Him in that manner, causes Him to empower us. Faith pleases Him and moves Him to bless. And the blessing in this case is empowerment to not sin. THAT is what Gal 5 meant when it said those who walk after the Spirit will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. In other word, will not sin.

The Calvinists never understood that, and think Romans 6 is an IDEAL, and not a dominion we can actually experience.

[shazeep]

well i didn't say that we have to sin, just that we do, and overlook suggestions to explore our assumptions. We are also forgiven, but that is when we rebound. I might even go so far as to say that if debating OSAS seems meaningful to one, then they needn't worry, as they are prolly in error, and are hypocrites without realizing it. Which i know sounds harsh, but we are mostly evil without meaning to be.

If one is truly forgiven, then the same premises that others have questioned will also be questioned by them, and not ignored. I will say again that most anyone treading this needn't worry about OSAS, but rather "remember, in your life you had all the good things..."

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by shazeep

but we are mostly evil without meaning to be.

Where do you get this belief?

Under the old covenant, the time of unregenerated hearts, the word said the heart is desperately wicked. Do you think that is still true for everyone?

Not to grind old axes, but you never accepted the fact that a person could say muslims are lost without being self-exalting and unloving. So it seems there is a bias in your thoughts that refuses to think it could be wrong. I am just applying that to this issue, since it seems to be a recurring issue with you. I am not intending to judge anyone when I say people who do not stand on the plan of salvation in the bible are lost. Seriously, I cannot understand how anyone thinks that, by default, means one is judgmental, when in reality is is repeating what the word itself said.

We never could agree on that, and if that continues to be so, then this issue will not help anything, though i think it could.