I fully agree with what you said above, Homer.
I have absolutely no argument with what Steve Gregg wrote on this thread. I think on this issue, He and I are on the same wave length.
dizerner wrote:If you take this tack, logically, you're going to have to come up with a percentage. There has to be a point, if you allow some sinfulness, where you meet the standard of holiness. You could say 99.9% but you still have to say there is a line, where this certain amount of obedience is enough, and this amount is not enough.
No, coming up with a percentage is NOT logical. I don't "allow" some sinfulness. You do not seem to understand my position at all. It's not a matter of "how much righteousness is necessary" to get right with God. That is the Fundamentalist and Evangelical misunderstanding of the position I espouse. It's a matter of our loyalty to the One who is our master. Forsaking the self-life and living for Christ is NOT a work or self-effort.
Christ said "be ye perfect." He didn't think to qualify that, with a laugh and a wink and a "but we know no one is quite perfect, don't be silly."
If you're addressing me with this remark, you are applying it to the wrong person. Also, it might be wise to look into the word "perfection". It DOESN'T mean sinlessness. Jesus was sinless throughout His time on earth. (Heb 4:15). But He was not always perfect. He had to be made perfect (Heb 5:9) and He had to LEARN obedience (Heb 5:8). The meaning of "perfection" is "completion" not "flawlessness". A house may be in a state of being built. It may be flawless, but incomplete.
The reason he said things like, "if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out," is to get us to take sin seriously. Why should we water that down to a metaphor? He never said "but that's just a metaphor, don't worry, we all slip now and then."
Again, who's doing this? You seem to be attacking a straw man with such a comment.
We are rotten through and through, and how can we think that we can love the Lord of our God with all our heart, or our neighbor as our self?
Oh yes. "Rotten through and through" so there's nothing we can do. No use coöperating with the enabling grace of God and becoming overcomers. Impossible. All we can do is cast ourselves on His mercy so that we can be saved from the flames of hell, and go on living our filthy, rotten lives! Is that your position?
Only be raising the standard can self-righteous legalists who think they are doing pretty good, ever end up falling as dirty sinners helplessly at the mercy of Christ.
So raise the standard to sinlessness, so that we will realize how rotten we are and that we can do nothing pleasing to God. "There is none righteous, no not one" and there's no use trying to be righteous, even by God's enabling grace. Just continue in our rotteness, and trust that Christ will save us from hell and take us to heaven in our filthy, rotten state. If we don't become righteous in this life, what makes you think we'll be righteous in the next? Will some angel wave a magic wand over us and transform us immediately into righteous people?
"since sinlessness seems impossible"
I was saying that this is the attitude of those who think we're just dirty, rotten sinners, and so we may as well give up and live our dirty, rotten lives, hoping to be saved by the "unmerited favour" of God because we have accepted Christ (although why they don't count THAT as a work, I guess I'll never know). But I understand the thinking. It was precisely my position in my late teens and as a young man, until I began to understand the true gospel as a deliverance FROM sin, rather than a deliverence from hell IN sin.
The apostle Peter said that Christ shed His blood on the tree in order that we might DIE TO SIN and LIVE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS. (1 Pet 2:24). He didn't say that Christ died in order to escape hell while still continuing to live in UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
But how can you insist sinlessness is impossible? Why would you limit what the grace of God is able to do?
ONCE AGAIN, I HAVE DONE NEITHER OF THESE.
