Originally Posted by
Dmarie
Greetings.
"In reality...," whether this doctrine be RC or mormon or hindu or whatever, it would still be "...just as much something of debate."
Yes, I do agree with the clear teaching of Scripture when it says that only purity and perfection shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is why I also believe in the Bible's clear teaching of justification...when Christ imputes His righteousness to us when we become a child of God.
God gave us His Son to be that perfect sin offering for us..."He who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (2Cor.5:21) When a person comes to Christ through faith, the spirit of that individual which was dead in its tresp***es is immediately made alive by the Spirit of Christ, unto Christ. (Ephesians 1:13,14) "And you, being dead in your tresp***es and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all tresp***es having wiped out the requirements that was against us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." (Col.2:13,14)
So basically you are saying that entering heaven in a pure is only in an imputed way?
tb, do you believe that Christ's perfect sacrifice is perfectly sufficient to perfectly cleanse us from"all" of our sins, thus saving us...perfectly? From your previous statement, it seems that this belief is lacking. It seems that you believe that He saves us in stages, and does not save us completely.
I believe he saves us thu infused righeousness not imputed. Basically salvation is the result of him making us righteous.
This is your statement from a previous post:
"There is much debate where Jesus went for 3 days until His resurrection. So when He speaks of "today" does He really mean today as in a real calender day or was He just trying to convey the fact that the thief will be going to heaven."
How could you say this tb? Do you really think Jesus was only conveying this to a suffering and dying man desperately looking to Him for hope and redemption???
When Christ said to His diciples that He would be in the grave 3 days and 3 nights did He have to tell them and explain to them that this would be 3 literal calender days?
He told the thief that he would be in paradise WITH him today. You want to use that as a proof text. He told his apostles that he would he would be in the grave for 3 days. You seem to be picking and choosing what is literal and which is not.
***"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless until the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it."*** Please, do not missunderstand this with our sanctification. God's Spirit within us is teaching us to live a life holy to Him. Yes, while we are still in these bodies we continue to sin (and I am not minimizing this in the least), but we are covered, we are forgiven, and we are "...made the righteousness of God in Him." Again, when we come to Christ through faith, He makes us alive and seals us with His Holy Spirit...He saves us from the condemnation to come. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." (Rom.8:1) So when we die, whatever sins we may have committed, whatever requirements against us, have been "paid for" by the blood of Christ, He "...having nailed it to the cross."..."He condemned sin in the flesh, ("HIS FLESH") and "He died to sin once for all...." (Rom.6:10).
For whatever reason having your sins paid for completely BUT still having any sort of spiritual purification leads you to think that some how dimishing Christs sacrafise is beyond me. You believe that we all don't recieve the same reward right? Well how come we all don't get the same reward? Going by your idea of salvation we are all judged righeous and should have the same reward. The bible is clear that our reward can be burned up.
So when we die, we die in Christ and to Christ...we are Christ's. Never to die apart from Him...in any way.
"But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him." (1Cor.17)
Blessings...Dmarie