ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Guest]

To clear up what is normally a confusion regarding regeneration:

Because credo-baptist hold that a person must first believe and then be baptised , they hold that regeneration (born again) and salvation are the same thing. Under this system that is quite logical and correct.

Paedo-baptist hold that a person is regenerated (born again) by baptism and freed from enslavement to sin , but is not saved until they believe. Whether that belief comes at the age of 2 or 72 is between the person and God.Salvation and born again are two seperate things.

That is , baptism is a check for salvation , from God , but it cannot be cashed in for salvation until belief occurs.

Is it possible, then, that the paedobaptist's check may never be cashed?

I haven't read this whole thread, but I see Christ's atonement as the check (not my baptism) and my cashing of the check comes when I repent and believe. Salvation comes in part through freedom from sin (in part) upon immediate regeneration (made more perfect and drawn upon through a life of sanctification), finally to withdraw the whole amount in the account upon justification at the time of resurrection.

I was christened/dedicated in the methodist church as a child, and I became ceremonially a member of the church so that they would help my parents raise me to know the Lord, but it had no salvific or even prefatory salvific effect nor do I understand the church to have thought so.

My in-laws are Lutherans, and though I've read a lot about it and listened to numerous debates, I just don't get it -- it seems so artificial and constructed from whole cloth to support a tradition born in a time of ignorance so that people could be controlled and made to believe they depended on the church to baptize them and keep them saved by avoiding excommunication, etc.

[Guest]

Is it possible, then, that the paedobaptist's check may never be cashed?

Yes , belief is the ultimate requirement no matter what system you believe.

I haven't read this whole thread, but I see Christ's atonement as the check

The illistration may break down after a while , but Christ´s atonement is the payment you recieve when you cash the check of belief.

[my cashing of the check comes when I repent and believe/quote]

True

[quoteSalvation comes in part through freedom from sin ]

No , through belief and baptism , no one is ever free from sin.

upon immediate regeneration (made more perfect and drawn upon through a life of sanctification), finally to withdraw the whole amount in the account upon justification at the time of resurrection.

OYE! upon regeneration (baptism) and belief , promised in this life and finalized at the ressurrection.

My in-laws are Lutherans, and though I've read a lot about it and listened to numerous debates, I just don't get it -- it seems so artificial and constructed from whole cloth to support a tradition born in a time of ignorance so that people could be controlled and made to believe they depended on the church to baptize them and keep them saved by avoiding excommunication, etc.

Many Lutherans do not understand the doctrine , I don't think we are the only church with this problem.

In Lutheran doctrine any Christian may validly baptise anouther , using the Trinitarian formula. I challenged a vicar and deacon over this about two weeks ago , and they had to admit I was right , but they didn't like it.

Like my father used to say , the only use for the pastor is to marry and bury , he being a life long devout Lutheran.

[Guest]

Yes , belief is the ultimate requirement no matter what system you believe.

The ultimate requirement for what? Getting to heaven?

I don't think so. What does God care about our faith? What God wanted from man right from the beginning was his obedience. He told Cain that he must master sin. So the ultimate requirement is practical righteousness, and this has been made possible by Jesus' sacrificial death:

[Jesus] has appeared once for all at the end of the age to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews 9:26

For he will render to everyone according to his works: to those who by perseverance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give aeonion life; but for those who are self-seeking and are not persuaded by the truth, but are persuaded by wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

Affliction and anguish for every person who does evil ... but glory and honour and well-being for every one who does good ... For God shows no partiality. (Romans 2:6-11)

The purpose of faith is to trust God to impart His enabling grace so that we can fulfill righteousness practically. The first step in doing so is not faiith. It is discipleship ---- and discipleship requires repentance, baptism, and complete submission, committment, and dedication:

Jesus said:

So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33

Jesus didn't say that he would be a poor disciple or an inadequate disciple. His words indicate that such a one cannot be his disciple at all!
Also, there is no difference between Christians and disciples. The first disciples of Christ were called "Christians" at Antioch.

[Guest]

Yes , belief is the ultimate requirement no matter what system you believe.

The ultimate requirement for what? Getting to heaven?

I don't think so. What does God care about our faith? What God wanted from man right from the beginning was his obedience. .

Belief is the requirement , obedience the response. You will never work your way to heaven by perfect obedience , if you are without faith.

Obedience to the Law cannot save you , it can only condemn you when you fail to fullfill it 100%. It is the Gospel that saves , and that Gospel is , He that believes and is baptised will be saved.

But if there is no obedience there is no faith to begin with. I'm not OSAS so I believe one can lose salvation by refusing to obey and becoming reinslaved to sin. There is a difference in how people respond to God's Grace and does indicate whether or not they truly believe.

Put best by Dietrich Bonhoefer in "Cost of Decipleship"


"Cheap grace,means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before....Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

"Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has....Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because if calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: 'ye were bought with a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us, Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

[Guest]

Paidion:

In Watchman Nee's book "the spiritual man" he spends many chapters going in depth into what you are discussing in your last couple of posts. He talks about "reckoning" ourselves dead to sin and the like. I must confess, however, that I struggle with this concept. I understand what it means, but I dont see how it works. How does simply "counting" or "reckoning" ourselves dead to sin result in "practical righteousness," as you put it?

I know that is what Paul says, but I have always struggled with this idea. Once again, it is not that I dont believe what the Word says; I have a hard time "getting it."

Let me put it this way: if a person truly, really, absolutely, and successfully reckons himself dead to sin, and has absolute faith that God's grace enables him to do so, does that mean the person will never sin again? if not, what does it mean? that he is less likely to sin? that he is less likely to sin a lot? that he is less likely to backslide? If a person really and truly counts himself dead to sin, but later sins, does that mean he really and truly DIDNT count himself dead to sin the last time and now he must try try again?

Any clarity you might provide on these points would be appreciated. By the way, I think teaching from the pulpit on this very subject is sadly lacking because I dont think hardly anybody, including pastors, understands it from a practical standpoint.

thanks,

TK

[Guest]

You will never work your way to heaven by perfect obedience , if you are without faith.

Have I written a single word about "working your way to heaven"? However, that is the usual misunderstanding of the Biblical position which I expressed. Would you raise the same point with the apostle Paul, the writer of my quote from Romans 2?

Belief is the requirement , obedience the response.

Exactly backwards. Repentance and obedience is the requirement; faith is the response --- and that response leads to further obedience. That is why Paul wrote also in Romans:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith." Rom 1:16,17 NRSV

To understand Paul's word correctly, we first must recognize that Paul is not talking about "salvation from hell" (He nowhere talks about that), but he is talking about salvation (deliverance) from sin. That is what God has required from the beginning until the present. That requirement is repeated throughout the Scriptures. He is not speaking of a "covering" so that we can escape God's judgment. He is speaking about practical deliverance from wrongdoing. When we understand this, we can make sense of the next clause --- that the gospel is God's power to deliver everyone who has faith. Once we have repented (had a change of mind about the way we were living) and submitted to Christ, being willing to follow Him completely, we then trust in Him so we can appropriate the salvation He provided through His sacrificial death. This appropriation is deliverance from actual sin. When we find ourselves being delivered, our faith increases, and so we are delivered all the more.

Thus, as Paul says, through the gospel the righteousness of God (a
real righteousness which becomes ours as an actual righteousness,not merely an imputed righteous as in, "God looks on us and does not see our sin but Christ's righteousness") is revealed through faith for faith. In other words, the faith we have as we begin to trust Christ for His grace to enable us to overcome sin and work righteousness has the effect of revealing actual righteousness in us, righteousness which has its source in God. This, in turn, has the effect of increasing our faith ---- succinctly stated by Paul as "through faith for faith". Thus he clinches it all with the words:, "The one who is righteous will live by faith." Attaining righteousness through faith leads one to living a life of faith in order that one's righteousness be more complete.

But if

Belief is the requirement , obedience the response.

then Paul should have said, "The one who has faith will live by obedience".

[Guest]

The severely mentally retarded also seem incapable of making rational decisions. Would you say that they have therefore never sinned? If one of them kills someone, would that, in his or her case, be a non-sin?

Hi Paidion,

If the mentally retarded person has an equivalent mind of a 2 month old baby then this person is not capable of committing the action ( sin).

Sin in this thread is used as an action word. In order for a person to sin he must decide to perform the action sin.

I can't imagine how can a mentally retarded person with a mind of a 2 month old baby or 2 year old child can kill someone.

If the mentally retarded person is capable of making the decision to kill someone then I would say yes he is a sinful person but if he is not capable of killing people because his mind is a mind of a 2 month old baby then how can he kill someone.

But a 45 year old mentally retarded person who has a mind of a 10 year old is capable of performing the action sin because a 10 year old person is capable of performing the action sin.

[Guest]

Paidion,

While I agree with much of what you have said on this thread, I disagree witrh this statement:

What does God care about our faith? What God wanted from man right from the beginning was his obedience.

Perhaps you did not mean it as it reads; I believe God requires both faith and faithfulness. Faith is rooted in belief. Belief, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, is "when you stop calling God a liar". I think he was right, and unbelief is highly offensive to God.

[Guest]

Paidion:

Repentance and obedience is the requirement; faith is the response

Are you saying that one is saved through obedience and not faith?

"The one who is righteous will live by faith."

No doubt obedience will grow faith , but were does righteousness come from obedience or faith? Romans 3 : 20-24


This is getting way off topic.

[Guest]

Are you saying that one is saved through obedience and not faith?

Saved from what? I am not being facetious. I must know how you are using the word "saved" before I can answer this question.

No doubt obedience will grow faith , but were does righteousness come from obedience or faith? Romans 3 : 20-24

Righteousness comes from faith. I stated this in the second last paragraph in my previous post, the paragraph beginning with "Thus, as Paul says..."

As for faith, there is the intitial faith:

And without faith it is impossible to please him. The man who approaches God must have faith in two things, first that God exists and secondly that God rewards those who search for him. Hebrews 11:6 Philips

This is a kind of experimental faith, such as the faith that a pilot might place in an untested plane.

But after one repents and submits to Christ, he shares in an experiential faith which results from our experience in Christ in becoming overcomers.

This could be compared to the deeper faith a pilot would place in the plane after he tested it and found it to be reliable.

I believe God requires both faith and faithfulness. Faith is rooted in belief. Belief, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, is "when you stop calling God a liar". I think he was right, and unbelief is highly offensive to God.

When I asked, "What does God care about our faith? He requires our obedience," I was not suggesting that faith was unimportant or unnecessary. Faith is necessary in order ot appropriate the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf so that we can be delivered from sin. I guess what I was implying is that the quintessential thing which God wants is obedience. Why would he care anything about our faith if we did not, through his grace, obey, our faith in isolation from anything else? In other words, I don't think our faith is intrinsically important to him except where it relates to our personal relationship with him and our obedience to him. Rather it is necessary to us, in order to have such a relationship and to obey.

Here is an analogy, albeit a weak one. I want my dogs to obey me. This is the primary thing. I accomplished this through showing them kindness and through reward. My dogs' reaction to my kindness is affection, and to my rewards, acceptance of these rewards. Though my dogs' response in these two ways are a delight to me, they are not my primary concern. My primary concern is their obedience.