So, this actually seems like you're agreeing with me : there is no condemnation for those who abide in Christ (Ro 8:1), but when sin is committed, there is condemnation (Ro 14:23), because they are not abiding in Christ.
I do read it as referring to Jews "when we were in the flesh" (v5)--Christians are "not in the flesh but in the Spirit" (Ro 8:9).
It doesn't matter if God says you can eat it--if you don't have the faith to eat it, God hasn't given you the faith, and you eat it doubting, you have sinned and are condemned. It literally uses the words "destroy your brother" and "destroy the work of God" when you cause someone to be encouraged, against their conscience, to eat things they do not believe they can eat.
Ridiculous. We are forgiven NOT condemned to eternal death in the lake of fire. Forgiven of every sin, all of them, past present and future.
Your idea that Romans 14 is about Christians on the precipice of being cast into hell is absolutely patently absurd. Simply outrageous.
Your problem is with Paul, not me, who teaches you are "condemned" when you "sin".
Who said Ro 14:23 means "you are condemned to eternal death in the lake of fire if you sin one time"?
As I've said, our salvation is compared to that of the Jews from Egypt--and, yet, they fell under God's wrath and forfeited the promise, because they sinned after having been saved (1 Co 9:27, 1 Co 10).
Are you agreeing with the aforementioned or not?
Paul says Romans 7 was about him (a Jewish Christian) and his audience (Jewish Christians), before, "when we were in the flesh" (Ro 7:5)--and therefore Romans 7 cannot be about Christians, since Christians are "not in the flesh but in the Spirit" (Ro 8:9).
Right. That's what, in my opinion, Ro 14:23 and Ja 2 are about--that Christians who do not walk by faith are "condemned", and they must return to keeping God's command, which is to believe on the Name of God's Son AND to love one another ("faith which works by love").
He is warning the Jewish believers about their hypocrisy, saying that, irrespective their Jewishness, and their sneering at Gentile believers, those Gentile believers who are keeping the Law by the Spirit writing the Law on their hearts, and them obeying that working, will be justified at the judgment, and repaid with eternal life, whereas they, the Jewish believers, acting hypocritically, will be repaid not with eternal life but with damnation. This is not an issue of "rewards". It is an issue of justification and salvation--same as James 2 says ("Can such faith save him?").
Yes, but that is not what I am getting at--I am merely establishing that Christians are to walk in faith, not merely have faith, and that there is no reason to wrangle with James 2, as if he is teaching contrary to Paul, since Paul, himself, teaches the very same thing.
I'm so sorry that we seem to not even be talking about the same topics.
That's not the issue--the issue is that Romans 7 is not about believers, but describes the life of a Jew under the Law prior to Christ.
Yup I was right. There is some kind of bizarre hyper-Armenian doctrine going down behind all of the bafflegab and bluster.
