No, God did not lie

[Deuteronomy]

Hi Placid, I think you may be missing the point of my analogy. In saying that a woman is either pregnant or she is not, what I mean is that simply "saying and "believing" that you are pregnant doesn't make it so. So it is with coming to true faith in Christ, simply saying or even believing that you have does not necessarily make it so.

I should add that one cannot be partially or kinda saved, anymore than a woman can be partially or kinda pregnant. Either you are, or you are not.

 

[OneFaith]

Hi OneFaith, the problem is this, it isn't that obedience cannot earn salvation (it was supposed to, and in Christ it does*), the problem is the fact that NONE of us, from our first parents onward, have ever been "obedient". Rather, we are ALL ,"transgressors of the law" .. James 2:10-11 (well, save the One, of course).

To stand in the presence of God requires that we be...

........1. Perfectly Innocent
........2. Perfectly Righteous

...but no human being, since the time of our progenitors' first sin in the Garden of God, has ever been able to lay claim to either one of those (again, except for Jesus).

THAT is, in fact, the "bad news".

The "Good News" on the other hand is the fact that Jesus came here to save us from our sins, as well from the wrath of His Father, by doing for us what we could not do for ourselves ... cf Romans 5:8-10.

He lived a perfectly obedient (and therefore perfectly righteous) life before His Father as a man (IOW, He, on our behalf, lived the perfectly obedient life that we were 'supposed' to live), and He died on the Cross to make atonement for our sins (and in so doing rendered us innocent again in the eyes of His Father) .. e.g. Isaiah 53:5-6; 2 Corinthians 5:21. Therefore Jesus is our only innocence, our only righteousness, and the only atonement for our sins (meaning that our salvation, from start to finish, was earned for us by Someone else* .. and by God's gracious promise to save us on that basis alone .. e.g. Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 3:5).

So the first and biggest problem with your theory is that NO ONE is obedient. Granted, those of us who have come to saving faith in Christ become far more obedient than we used to be as non-Christians from that moment on, but that means that your theory amounts to nothing more than this, that God chooses to save the ones who He has ALREADY saved, which makes no sense at all (none that I can figure out anyway).

The second problem involves your conflating of ideas in your examples that cannot be harmonized, to arrive at the theory you have, but this post is too long already, so I'll hold off talking about that until next time.

~Deut

You are just not understanding me. Yes, Christ did it, we have done nothing to earn salvation. Still God only gives it to those who obey Him. No one obeys Him perfectly, except Christ, but we must obey Him mostly. We must not live in sin using Christ's blood as a license to sin. You agree, don't you, that not everyone goes to heaven? So why do you say some receive salvation while most do not?

 

[Deuteronomy]

We know that in [Matthew 13:19], those who hear the word but don’t receive it are not saved. Those in 20 and 21 believe quickly, but then fall away. And we have already discussed them.
22 But he who receives the word among the thorns, he receives the word, but the cares of the world, and deceitfulness of riches cause them to be unfruitful. --- So they are still believers? They have not denounced their faith or stopped worshiping God, --- and there may be lots of them in our Churches on Sunday. so are they Christians, and are they saved? --or is it just the 30, 60, and 100 fold that are saved?

Hi again Placid, Jesus said that we would know them by their "fruits" .. Matthew 7:16-20, meaning (in the case of Christians) that the lives of those who have been caused to be "born again" by God will demonstrate that fact. This is hardly a small thing, so much so that if there is no apparent/lasting change, and they simply continue on/quickly return to the kind of sinful lifestyle they were leading prior to their "claim" of becoming a Christian, then they NEVER became His workmanship/new creatures in Christ. IOW, their "claim" of becoming a Christian was nothing more than that, sadly.

So in answer to your question above, I believe that it's only those planted in the "good soil", those who yield a crop/bear the kind of fruit that accompanies salvation, who were saved.

~Deut

 

[Deuteronomy]

You are just not understanding me. Yes, Christ did it, we have done nothing to earn salvation. Still God only gives it to those who obey Him. No one obeys Him perfectly, except Christ, but we must obey Him mostly. We must not live in sin using Christ's blood as a license to sin. You agree, don't you, that not everyone goes to heaven? So why do you say some receive salvation while most do not?

Hi OneFaith, I believe that I'm following what you are saying, the point that I'm trying to make to you however is that NO ONE can obey God (not even imperfectly) unless they are ALREADY born again/justified by Him. As I said above, what you end up with in your scenario is God choosing to save the "saved".

Put another, similar way, non-Christians ("natural" men/women) do not know and cannot obey God .. cf 1 Corinthians 2:14, only those who are ALREADY Christians know Him and therefore choose to obey Him .. Matthew 7:21-23; cf 1 Corinthians 1:18.

For that matter, the Lord made it clear that He saves the wicked/ungodly, not the righteous/obedient (those who know they need the Great Physician to remedy their greatest, mortal disease .. sin).

As Jesus and St. Paul told us:

.......Mark 2
.........17 Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick;
.........I did not come to call the righteous [IOW, the "obedient"], but sinners.”

.......Romans 4
.........5 To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

~Deut

 

[Placid]

Hi Deuteronomy,

Thank you for the discussion, it is good to find out how others understand the Scriptures and in so doing, we learn more ourselves.
I like to think that those planted among thorns were planted in good soil, and they haven't turned back unto the world, but that they are having a hard time living among the ungodly. --- I believe they can practice their Faith in God, but they ar unfruitful, not living a victorious Christ filled life. --- That's why I think we have lots of them in our Churches.

They will suit another parable in Matthew 13 that says, 'Let them grow together, and we will sort them out in the harvest.'

 

[Deuteronomy]

Hi Deuteronomy,

Thank you for the discussion, it is good to find out how others understand the Scriptures and in so doing, we learn more ourselves.
I like to think that those planted among thorns were planted in good soil, and they haven't turned back unto the world, but that the y are having a hard time living among the ungodly. --- I believe they can practice their Faith in God, but they ar unfruitful, not living a victorious Christ filled life. --- That's why I think we have lots of them in our Churches.

They will suit another parable in Matthew 13 that says, 'Let them grow together, and we will sort them out in the harvest.'

Hi Placid, anything's possible, especially when we are trying to understand soteriological principles on the basis of narrative passages, like the parables that we have before us.

That said, if the thorn bush/short-term "Christians" are actually born again, then they are wheat (who the Lord will see restored to full fellowship at some point in the future on this side of Glory), not tares, as tares were specifically planted in the church by the devil and they are, in fact, his children (no matter how much they may resemble true Christians much of the time). For them there is no hope of eternal life.

~Deut