Comments on Assignments in Works of Christ: Summer 2008
This thread is reserved for your comments and ongoing discussion regarding the assignments posted in the previous thread.
29 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Injong, I appreciated the fact that you took the time to share with us what life is like for Korean Adventist and especially a pastor. Sometimes we receive information that is sent to us through Mission Spotlight and other reports and we hear about the growth of the church in other places and we forget that life for them is also difficult. We forget that they face persecution and other problems that we might not face here. As a result we conclude how wonderful it must be for them to be a SDA over there. Sometimes it takes people like yourself to paint a personal picture for us to realize how difficult things are for those outside North America. I also appreciate your candor with regards to why you think that some of the problems exist in Korea Society. It is insightful to link it to a misunderstanding of Righteousness by Faith.
As you shared, I thought of my own experiences about SDA’s and why we sometimes have such a difficult time witnessing to others. I remember my own nephew telling me about his encounter with an SDA. This person promptly told him that unless he becomes a Seventh - day Adventist he cannot make it to heaven. I also know of people who have been told that Seventh-day Adventists are the only ones who will be going to heaven. Or they will approach Catholics and tell them that they are worshipping the beast and are going to hell. I agree with you that many times the difficulties we face is because of remarks like these and also because we lack compassion and love for those who are lost. We do not truly understand the Word of God and the issues of righteousness by faith and as a result alienate, hurt and cause people to turn a deaf ear to what we have to say. I heard someone say that if you have a sword and you don’t know how to use it, you can hurt yourself and someone else. Well the Bible is a sword, not just a sword but it is described as sharper than a two edged sword. If we don’t know how to use it, we can hurt ourselves and others. Too often we have hurt others and we need to learn how to use the sword that we have been entrusted with and wielded it with compassion, love, understanding and most of all guided by the Spirit of God. In so doing we will accomplish the work that is set before us. We will be able to rightly divide the word of truth. I believe that it will be well for us to have classes such as we are having right now with Dr. Hanna in our churches to facilitate the process of learning before people go out and “swing their sword”.
I enjoyed reading William's (Simpson)comments and would especially want to respond to this comment ...
I don’t however believe that the law, on its own, drives us to Christ. We can see that the lawyers in Jesus’ day weren’t driven to Christ and we see several Biblical examples of people coming to Christ without a written law convincing them that they needed redemption. I fully agree with White that “We shall not renounce sin unless we see its sinfulness; until we turn away from it in heart, there will be no real change in the life.” I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that the law is the power of the gospel to transform lives.
As William indicated in his post, we have to become aware of our sinful state before we acknowledge that we need a Savior. This is where the law functions as a mirror according to James. But the same way in which the mirror cannot clean our dirty faces it's the same way in which the law couldn't clean us.
But how is it possible for me to know the law and yet not be driven to Christ? I think that the Holy Spirit needs to bring conviction and I also need to know to whom I should turn.
Paul seems to have some negative things to say about the law such as 'there is law therefore, sin' (Romans 7:7-18; 5:20,21; 1 Corin 15:56). But he quickly answers the unspoken question by stating that the law is not the problem (Romans 3:21; 7:12,14).
My point here is that just as Joseph told his brothers after he revealed himself to them, they meant him evil but God meant good in sending him to Egypt. So the law which was meant for our good became what testifies against us because we are all sinners. And we can only have a positive relationship to the law again when we are in harmony with its author.
But again I am wondering if we need the law to see the depth of our sinfulness or we can only experience this by knowing Jesus, hence we can see the great contrast, and really see how far we are away from the divine standard?
In other words, can the heathen without the written law and hearing the name of 'Jesus' actually feel a deep sense of their need of a Savior?
Can I see the sinfulness of sin from judging its consequences or from knowing the law that is broken in process of committing those sins? Or do I need a personal encounter with Jesus in order for this deep repentance to take place?
And if so, is there a deeper level of repentance experienced as I come to know Jesus in a more intimate way?
This line of reasoning would lead me to believe that the 'heathen' can only experience God in a very limited way without special revelation. And since more light brings more responsibility why should I want more light?
So the law leads me to Jesus who makes the law clearer so indicating my greater need of Jesus who makes the law clearer still and the cycle continues.
Perhaps we'll have some time to wrestle with these issues in class.
Injong and Jinsan, after having read both of your reflection papers I have to admit I myself am a recovering legalist. At times if not careful I am tempted to slip back into this state of legalism. I would say that having an incorrect view of righteousness by faith and what true perfection means, at one point led to an overwhelming struggle with guilt for my past faults and weaknesses. It is very interesting to note that the more I struggled the harder I was on others. I am not saying this is what is happening in your country but it is something to take note of.
Over the past few years were I am from there seems to be a distorted view of perfection and righteousness by faith that in my personal opinion (I say personal opinion because we never know what God uses to draw His people closer to him) has had a very unhealthy affect on some people. This struggle for perfection left me in a constant state of discouragement when I saw my well ingrained imperfections. I do realize that the closer we come to Christ the more we notice our shortcomings, Paul described himself as the chief of sinners. (1Timothy 1:15). But I really don’t think this was what I was experiencing in my life. I did not have a real understanding of my relationship with Christ, what was accomplished for mankind, and what it means to be saved.
It was a few quotes by Ellen White in Steps to Christ that helped me to understand my relationship with Christ and what to do with focusing on my shortcomings. Sr. White states, “Many who are really conscientious, and who desire to live for God, he (Satan) to often leads to dwell upon their own faults and weakness, and thus by separating them from Christ he hopes to gain the victory. We should not make self the center and indulge anxiety and fear as to whether we shall be saved.” (p52).
Another quote that was very helpful for me was also found in Steps to Christ was, “it is not wise to gather together all the unpleasant recollections of a past life, its iniquities and disappointments, to talk over them and mourn over them until we are overwhelmed with discouragement. A discouraged soul is filled with darkness, shutting out the light of God from his own soul and casting a showdown upon the pathway of others.” (p.87).
Once I read these statements they brought a profound sense of relief for my soul. The ultimate goal for all us is to look to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. I hope that we as pastors will gain an understanding of righteousness by faith and be able to explain it in a way that brings comfort to those who are wrestling with their salvation. At no point in time can we say that we are fully saved until we receive the final glorification at Jesus Christ second coming, but we can have confidence that God has provided every means in order to save every man.
I hope that the Seventh-day Adventist church at large will give a full and complete message to the world that encompasses a holistic view of perfection or maturity that we can obtain in Christ. Even though we don’t know the inner workings of the Holy Spirit within the soul we can rest assured that God is trying to save every man from the degradation of sin.
Reaction to Class Discussion (5/19/2008) I appreciated the fact that Ray Edwards took the time to share with us what he learned and thought about this class. I believe that salvation is one of the keen topics for all religious people. Surely it is a mystery for me and for some other people yet we keep trying what is faith, what is salvation, what is righteousness by faith and what is Gospel. In Romans, Paul continually makes a statement about balance and the reason he did is we can easily get lost the balance of our faith. Ray Edwards “As to say don’t forget there is another side to the coin. For example, he talks about the “law” in both positive and negative lights, since it produces sin in us and yet the law is good and holy and just. Righteousness comes through faith but also through works.” As an Adventist, I try not to loose my balance of faith. However I realized that even though I have blamed a lot of people as they are legalists, I found I am the one who got the wrong idea. I found myself that I rely on faith by works a lot more than righteousness by faith. As I read Romans 10:9-10 says “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.” Even if I face a lot of situation that I do not know how to make decisions, I will not give up and try to find answers from the revelations of the Bible. As Ray Edwards said I will try not to loose my balance as salvation is simple but need to keep up with “work out”. “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on that I maylay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” As I close my reaction, I would like to finish with this words “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37)
I appreciated very much the points that Mary reiterated. The idea that salvation is an ongoing and continual process is very important for us to remember so that we will not be too hard or soft on ourselves or on others. We are secure in salvation as we are justified, yes, but we also need growth in salvation. So thank you for that. I also uphold her concern that unfortunately even as Adventists we miss so much by thinking that salvation is a static state once we are justified. This mentality can breed one of two extremes. Either people get "holier than thou" or “freed from the law” and become terrible examples of what it means to be a Christian. I also appreciated very much Mary’s reminder that we do have an active role in salvation. We must avail ourselves to the transforming power of the Spirit by practicing spiritual disciplines. Things like prayer, listening, beholding nature, reading the Bible and worshiping in music are a few examples of how we can cooperate with the Spirit. Not that we are doing anything meritorious of salvation, but we are doing our part in cooperating with God. A statement that “expression deepens the impression” seems to fit with the idea of striving for our salvation and also finding joy in doing what does not at first seem natural or even pleasant for us. But like Mary said, eventually we will enjoy doing righteousness because Christ is continually giving us His heart and mind.
I agree with JD’s illustration of championship football team. Thank you for the illustration. Sometimes we feel that we don’t have enough worth for being saved. So we used to give up receiving the free gift, the salvation. But we have to know about who I am. Although we have the free-willing, we are the creature who has a sinful nature. We don’t have any solution. We need someone who take out from eternal death. So we need the belief of Jesus Christ who crucified on the Cross since my sin and someone who carry us to the heaven. Not my righteousness but His love toward us, we would gladly join to the team. And praise Him because He has done for us. It’s a significant free ride. We don’t need to hesitate to do that. Because It is the GRACE.
Nathan, I like the fact that you ask the question of why God created us even though he knew we would sin. It is not often we sit down to analyze God’s reason for creating a group that would eventually turn out to be the only ones to sin. I always thought that God could have easily made some adjustments to the plan on paper, so to speak, before He forming humanity on the sixth day. The information used to point out the fact that God did not want robots, rather, free agents who could choose God’s way or their own way made clearer for me. It is good that you developed your argument this way.
While we often times ask ourselves questions about God and the reason why we as a species of people are the ones plagued with this dangerous virus called sin, we often shy away from asking the tough question, why? While we know we will not receive all the answers on this side of glory, we must pursue the whys of our lives; we must ask the right question in the right way. This is the reason why I believe that Nathan’s essay is so important. It is important because it helps those who read this will realize that the reason why we have so many articles written, is because people ask questions. The reason why we Nathan can quote authors about being a free agent is because someone asks the right question.
Injong, Wow! I am sympathetic to all of the added challenges that Koren Seventh-day Adventists face. I regards to the issue of Seventh-day Adventists not even being seen as Christians because of their emphasis on works, I think in America we may see that to a lesser degree. Probably few Christian denominations would say that Adventists are not Christians, but many think it, mostly because we keep the Sabbath I think. I believe that most Sunday keepers ("free from the law") could learn how faith works as well as Seventh-day Adventists could learn to put more emphasis on righteiousness as a free gift apart from works. Some interculturation between to two parties would be helpful. I guess we need to make certain in our preaching and interactions with people that we make sure we stress that salvation is by Christ's righteousness alone.
I would like to comment this week on Ray’s posting. I liked the way he stated that we came into the world as sinners without doing anything to “deserve” being born and we can be “born again” without doing anything to deserve sonship in God’s family. Sometimes we want to argue that God is unfair because we had no choice in being born a sinner, but then I think God balances it out in our favor and silences the argument by sending his son to die for us without us doing anything to deserve His favor. Sometimes, we see the unfair side of an issue but do not want to explore it far enough to see the fair side of the same issue.
Referencing Romans 4:I0, I agree that yes Jesus is the Savior of all men, but there is a qualifier, especially of those who believe. The question that begs to be asked then, is why especially those who believe? Are there individuals who will not believe? If there are individuals who will not believe, what then? Is he not their savior? Or is there another meaning to this text? Could it be that he is providing salvation for all men, but that only those who believe will receive that Salvation? So many questions, so many nuances to what seems to be straight forward at first! As Ray states, there may be some things that are difficult to understand but with the preponderance of evidence, the scripture silences the view of universalism.
I must say that I enjoyed reading Mary's post especially with the illustrtion of having a negative item on her credit report even before she qualified to have such a report. But I wonder if we are born with a negative 'mark' against us (sin) or just with the nature to have bad report.
This goes back to the question of if our sinful nature can be called "sin".
Mary wrote, "Of course my reasoning applies to the “in Christ” as well. As much as I sometimes say I wish God would just make me do right. I am thankful for the freedom of choice. It is something that Adam and Eve exercised when they were in the Garden of Eden and I did not see God intervening to stop Eve from reaching out and picking that fruit.
Adam was made perfect and he chose to sin, we are born imperfect and can choose to be righteous. Is sometimes wonder if Adam had an advantage over us. Maybe he did before you add the JESUS factor and this is what Paul seems to be saying in Romans 5. Jesus more than made up for the disadvantage that Adam placed us at. ("much more")
If everyone will finally declare that God was fair, what can really be unfair about our present situation? And I think this was Paul's burden in exonerating God in the light of humans, without a choice, being born into a world of sin.
One question that we haven't addressed in class is if death was a part of God's original creation. In other words, could Adam and Eve died even BEFORE they sinned. Note that the first couple were driven from the garden so that they would not get access to the tree of life and therefore be perpetual sinners. Why would they need the tree of life if they could not die?
So when Paul said that Adam introduced death into the creation was this the first death or the second death?
The question also comes to mind as to the angels and their relationship to each other. They didn't inherit a sinful nature from Lucifer but made an individual choice. Is this the reason why Jesus didn't set in a similar plan of salvation for them.
So why would Jesus die for humans but not for angels?
I must agree with JD when it comes to my knowledge of the origin of sin. As a child I was also taught that Adam sinned and now we have what is called the sinful nature or a natural tendency to gravitate towards sin. After having read your reflection, the scriptures, the article on original sin I to find myself a little confused on the issue of what truly happened to mankind when Adam sinned. I must admit the third suggestion that you made (because of Adams sin we were infected with sin except Christ) seems to be more logical and doesn’t ruffle any of my feathers. The life and death of Christ empowers us to be able to exercise our wills in accordance to the will of God. (Philippians 2:13).
As for now I choose to stay with the Seventh-day Adventist position on the state of man and sin. Our stance or explanation of original sin is from an Augustinian point of view of “imputed guilt and corruption.” The term original corruption is used to explain the “state of sin in which each member of the human race is born.”
After reading Injong Moon’s paper, I can see exactly the point that he is making about faith and works, the two are married, and must walk together in order for the salvation process to be a complete one. It is quit evident that many within the Christian religion struggle to uphold which they view as the most important, grace, or works. For some within the Adventist denomination, while they do not mean to, often times lean toward works more than they do grace. This is not because they actually believe that works would save them, but, they find comfort in having some part to do in their salvation. But then there are those, most times, usually are in other denominations, lean more towards grace. When the word works is heard, they shrink back because works is usually tied in with law. But grace is solely tied to the Christ on the cross. As stated, salvation is not only tied to the cross, but cross is just apart of the salvation process.
When we learn the secret of salvation, we will also learn that works and faith cannot be separated, and to try to separate works and grace will only leave people frustrated. I believe that this is the message of Paul, James and defiantly the message of Jesus. This is what I believe Injong Moon’s point is, and this is what makes sense.ko
Mary, thank you for sharing your personal story with us. Yes, sin is one of the most mysterious things in the world. Surely we need Jesus for the answer. As I read your article, I thought by myself again and again about sin. In Adam/In Christ motifs is surely not easy for me to understand. You struggled to understand about it and I am still struggling too.
One thing that I really enjoy about my marriage life is that I do not need to make a decision. I do not need to make a choice for my necktie; I do not need to worry about what to wear on this Sabbath because my wife makes decisions for me. Why did God give us free will to choose? And why is God left possibilities for committee sins in us.
One of my friends told me we, Adam`s descendents are automatic sinners. Whether we act it with our intention or not, we sin everyday and every moment. This fact bothered me for a long time and I sometimes thought I would rather have no choice to make a decision for my life. However I realized making choices with our own free will is one of God`s way to teach us to be more like Him. I shouldn’t avoid them.
My another friend explained to me about sin like this; the example of how viruses and bacteria spreads is how sin spreads. Our planet got the sin virus when Adam sinned and it has spread to all mankind. We are not responsible for Adam's sin but we have been affected by the sin virus that started with Adam and was passed down to us. We have all caught the sickness of sin because of the virus that started with Adam! The virus has affected all of Creation! But praise the Lord Jesus Christ who is our vaccine which can cure our eternal death!
I’d like to comment on Ray’s I have same experience that he had. When I was young there were so many questions on the bible. Especially, whenever I thought about “sunset time on Saturday” I noticed that something is not clear. Because I wanted something to do before sunset (like watching TV) I didn’t anything around sunset time, just look at the clock and wait the time that was printed in lesson study book. Though I was young, I thought that it is not a real faith. There was only written law to obey not a joy of Sabbath. We have sinful nature so we think selfish things. When I think myself, I can’t find good things in my mind. I agree with “original sinful being even we didn’t doing anything” because we were influenced by sin’s inclination. Who can guarantee that I’ll do not same Adam. All things that I’m doing for my salvation are sin too because I’m inevitable sinner. We have to admit that we are only sinner not we acting something wrong but we are(state).
I would like to comment on Nathan William’s blog about his courtroom experience, grace and about the Holy Spirit’s role in our salvation as found in Steps to Christ. I really appreciated that he noticed how much emphasis Ellen White puts on the Holy Spirit. I noticed it too because it is almost impossible to miss. I am glad that he emphasized that because I feel that often, as Adventists who uphold the law, we place the law as our sole guide to Jesus when we need to give the greatest attention to the Spirit’s work in our life. Certainly the Holy Spirit may use the law as one of His many tools to speak to our hearts, but it is the Spirit indeed who draws us to accept salvation. If we place sole attention on the law, nature, life’s providence or any other means we fail to see that it is God Himself who is intentionally drawing us to Him through His own Spirit. So Nathan, thank you for expounding on that a little bit more. I also appreciate Nathan’s reminder that we need to come to Christ just as we are as He is drawing us. It is dangerous to delay for at least two reasons. One, if we delay our probation may close before we get around to really accepting Christ as our Savior. Two, the only way we can fully come to Christ in genuine repentance is by at least taking the baby step toward Him as He is inviting through His Spirit. I believe that the more we respond to His Spirit’s call upon our minds, the more power and freedom the Spirit is given to really take control of our lives and complete His work. Our work is to continue to be repentant and obedient as the Spirit works in us. But we must come to our Saviour in our degraded state with baby steps no matter how sinful we are. We can not wait for things to improve, because as we wait, things will only worsen.
The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a struggle; but the soul must submit to God before it can be renewed in holiness. In giving ourselves to God, we must necessarily give up all that would separate us from Him. Hence the Saviour says, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." Luke 14:33. Whatever shall draw away the heart from God must be given up. Mammon is the idol of many. The love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds them to Satan. Reputation and worldly honor are worshiped by another class. The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others. But these slavish bands must be broken. We cannot be half the Lord's and half the world's. We are not God's children unless we are such entirely. There are those who profess to serve God, while they rely upon their own efforts to obey His law, to form a right character, and secure salvation. Their hearts are not moved by any deep sense of the love of Christ, but they seek to perform the duties of the Christian life as that which God requires of them in order to gain heaven. Such religion is worth nothing. Steps to Christ …..Consecration
Reading the way Ellen White talks about the task that we have to perform in the plan of salvation, supports what I have been hearing in our class discussion and also what I have been reading in the book of Romans. She states that “the warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought”. During my growing up years, before I was “converted” I must confess that I have been in a fight or two. Of course I did not start them, “not according to my version anyway” but I was part of them. What I remember is that fighting is serious work, especially if you intend the win that fight. I don’t ever remember being in a fight or watching a fight where one person is passively “engaged”. When a fight is started and one individual is clearly dominant and the other is passive, we do not call that a fight, we call that something else. In fact we look very unfavorable on the person who fights with another person without any resistance. We say that they are taking advantage of them because they are stronger. So the picture I get when Ellen White mentions the warfare against self, is one of active engagement. One in which the participants are fully involved. They are involved mentally, physically, spiritually. They are involved with every fibre of their being. They are involved in this way because their very lives depend on their participation. Whether they live or die depends on their participation. They are not in this fight to save their souls, but because they are so grateful that God has saved them. Ellen White says that Satan is playing the game of life for the soul. She says in another place “that idleness is one of the greatest curse to fall upon man; for vice and crime follow in its train. Satan lies in ambush, ready to surprise and destroy those who are unguarded, whose leisure gives him opportunity to insinuate himself into their favor, under some attractive disguise. He is never more successful than when he comes to men in their idle hours”. If I understand what she’s saying here, it would seem that if we are not engaged in works, especially the work of storing up treasurers in heaven, the work of taking care of the sick, visiting prisoners, clothing the naked, studying the word of God, preaching the gospel praying and whatever other good work God has preordained for us to do, that we will easily fall prey to Satan and make ourselves vulnerable to what she calls the greatest curse, idleness. Another quote that seems to calls us away from this passive faith that some believe is enough is “The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others”. With this I can hear the proponents of passive faith saying, oh no, we are not promoting selfishness or ease. My question to them will be if we follow the passive faith route to salvation, and believe we do not need to do anything, what then do we do with the Bible when it says that we should watch and pray that we not enter into temptation. What are we to watch for and how are we to watch? I think that even just watching is doing something. What do we do with James 2:18 that says .. someone will say, "You have faith. I do good works." Show me your faith that doesn't do good works. And I will show you my faith by what I do and how do we deal with text such as “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Then of course there is the flip side of passive faith. There are those who believe that they should do good works and that those works will bring them salvation. Here is how Elllen White puts it, “There are those who profess to serve God, while they rely upon their own efforts to obey His law, to form a right character, and secure salvation. Their hearts are not moved by any deep sense of the love of Christ, but they seek to perform the duties of the Christian life as that which God requires of them in order to gain heaven. Such religion is worth nothing.” With this I believe that we can clearly see how Christ must be the dominant force in our lives in order for us to keep a balance between doing good works as an outworking of Christ in our hearts, doing good works because we think it will save us and not doing anything because we think that works are not important. That’s why I believe that Paul’s words in Romans …yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. In this way, our job is simply to yield, God’s job is to make us righteous. Even with the yielding however, we must recognize that it is something that is the work of Christ in us. The Bible says that it is God that works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So it is all the work of Christ in us, whether we are yielding, praying, visiting the sick, feeding the poor or teaching all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And as Solomon would say the conclusion of the whole matter is this – without Christ we can do nothing but with God all things are possible especially understanding the seemingly difficult things in book of Romans.
I would like to comment briefly on Jinsan's last post on concentrating on the "simple gospel." I agree with him very much that just because we are studying the works of Christ in depth for this class does not mean that every gospel presentation needs to include every element down to the fine detail of how Christ saves us and our part in recieving salvation. I believe we need to keep preaching the simple gospel to call people to Christ but then encourage people to grow in their understanding of the gospel as they study the mysteries of salvation found in the Bible. I am thankful salvation is not based on my full and perfect understanding of the way that Christ saves me, but on my acceptance of the simple gospel that He is my substitute and Lord. I have enjoyed Dr. Hanna's class very much and it has added greatly to my understanding of the works of Christ for my salvation but I know he is not expecting to incorporate everything we have learned from this class into each gospel presentation. Thanks Jinsan for reminding us to stay focused on the simple gospel in our dealing with people who need to take that first step to commit to Christ.
Nathan Williams Works of Christ Martin Hanna Ph.D.
After having read Romans chapter 9 and participating in the class discussions my mind has been wrestling with the term foreknowledge and predestination. In Romans chapter 9 there are some challenging statements especially in verses 11-13. It states in summary that God knew Esau would reject Him and eventually serve Jacob before they were even born. Then God makes a statement that is seemingly out of His character. God states Jacob I loved Esau I hated. As I was reading this passage it seems as if God had doomed Esau to failure.
Again as we look down further in the text we read about the story of Moses and the hard heartedness of Pharaoh. In verse 18 it says of Pharaoh “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” As I was reading this text at first glance it seems to me as if it was God Himself who destined these men for failure. If God knew that these men would reject Him why did He create them at all just to fail? Did God really do everything in His power to save these men?
I have to admit that as a Seventh-day Adventist I have taken for granted what God has to say on the life of these two individuals considering we have insight through the Spirit of Prophecy. As Seventh-day Adventist we take the position that each created being has the ability to choose whether or not he/she will serve God.
There are many interesting and profound questions that are being raised to today about predestination and the true foreknowledge of God. I believe taking a view that taking a deterministic view when it comes to predestination is dangerous because in essence it limits Gods ability to save man. Deterministic predestination takes the position as understand it that God has made the choice of who will be saved and who will be lost.
It is true God knows who will be saved and who will be lost from eternal ages past but He also knows exactly how to orchestrate circumstances, and events to help us make the proper choices to follow Him. I believe that many have been turned off by the bible all together because they feel that since God already knows if I will be saved or lost then I really don’t stand a chance of being saved. I believe that Calvin in an effort to wrestle with hard text like this meant well but their limited understanding of predestination has caused confusion for many.
When it comes to the foreknowledge of God and predestination we cannot ignore texts that refute the concept that we don’t have a choice in the matter of our salvation. Some of the text that refute this idea are John 3:16 “For God son loved the world that eh gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Another text would be, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). We also must remember Ezekiel 33:11 which states, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked: but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” After God makes this statement then He gives the wicked a choice when He says, “turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel.
It is clear that when dealing with the foreknowledge of God and predestination we must take the whole bible into consideration and we must be careful to leave in tact the freedom of choice that God gives to us all.
Thank you, Nathan for your post. You gave me some new thoughts and understandings of the concept of foreknowledge and predestination. Doctor Hanna taught us that our human language and understanding is so limited that sometimes it makes confliction in itself and the concept that we have can be totally different with God’s. We named them as ‘foreknowledge’ and ‘predestination’ yet the words themselves can not imply all the meaning that they supposed to have. It taught me again that I am limited using and expressing God’s truth with earthly languages. There surely will be different dimension of languages and concepts of salvation between God and us.
Nathan showed us that there are interesting and profound questions about foreknowledge and predestination that are being raised and when it comes, predestination might dangerous for it might limit God’s ability to save man. I don’t know what perfect means and I don’t know the difference between Gods’s freewill and human’s freedom. However as I read Ezekiel 33:11 in Nathan’s post, God’s ultimate purpose is saving all of us not predestinate us and perish us. I thank God because He let us to choose to live forever. Thank God for letting us taste a little bit of Your perfect and freedom.
After having read Romans chapter 9 and participating in the class discussions my mind has been wrestling with the term foreknowledge and predestination. In Romans chapter 9 there are some challenging statements especially in verses 11-13. It states in summary that God knew Esau would reject Him and eventually serve Jacob before they were even born. Then God makes a statement that is seemingly out of His character. God states Jacob I loved Esau I hated. As I was reading this passage it seems as if God had doomed Esau to failure.
I think that Nathan has captured the difficulty of this passage from Paul. Paul's argument is really complicated and he seems to be always saying the opposite of what we'll expect.
How could God select "love" one brother over the other even before they are born? How could God "hate" in the first place?
After some careful reflection and looking at the context of the entire passage of Romans 9-11 we see that Paul is actually going out of his way to show that God's election is not based on "works of the law" or birth line. And when God elects one it's obvious that He rejects the other.
Paul anticipates well that his readers will think that he is painting God as being arbitrary and that's why he quickly adds, "There is no injustice with God, is there? (Romans 9:14) And he answers his own question by saying, "Certainly not!"
Paul makes the point that God is sovereign and can do anything but He does everything with MERCY.
We can see also that "calling" and "election" is NOT the same as judgment. Simply because one is called doesn't mean that one will be saved in the final analysis. Israel made that point very clear, so that not all from Israel are Israel.(9:6)
I don't think that Paul's main point in this section of Romans had to do with predestination but trying to define who Israel in--defined by divine call and they are NOT the sole beneficiary of God's electing purpose.
I think that the cross is the most powerful evidence we have of the fairness and ultimate justice of God who took upon himself all the "mistakes" we may assign to his creation. God finally takes the blame. He is not in the process of playing games with human destiny because our salvation cost Him too much!
I’d like to add to JD’s opinions. As we talked about today, Predestination and foreknowledge are different terms. Hence, we have to understand them separately. Yes, God knows all things that He has made. And He gave us a free willing to choose one’s way.
As I understand that he already knows that which way we are going to go, and there are many “x” (number of cases) in our life to choose. So if we choose one way(x) and there are fundamental rules so, I can make a formula “x(free willing) x R(God’s fundamental Rules) 〓 destinations. Therefore, He gave us a free willing (Yes!) and there are so many number of cases in our life, and God already knows the “number of cases” (foreknowledge) but it is alterative which I choose (even if I change the free willing), God knows the result already (predestination). God didn’t confirm our destination yet. Because God intend and design the way where we go to “good”
So far, there are many problems between predestination and foreknowledge. But it is confirmed that He gave his only son to poor people and everyone who believe in him, they will be saved.
“Paulson also mentioned Mary Magdalene response to Jesus as being the “works response” of the true Christian. He doesn’t work harder to be saved but because he realizes how much Jesus has done for him. The great paradox of the real champions of righteousness by faith is that they seem to work harder than anyone else! Paul and the great reformer Martin Luther comes to mind. Paul could list all the things that he suffered for the gospel and declare that no other apostle worked as hard as eh did. Just think about the champion of righteousness by faith WORKING harder than anyone else.”
Ray I really enjoyed reading your comments on the article “Salvation by Faith” by Jan Paulsen Romans 11. You made a very interesting statement about Paul in that he realized he was saved only through faith and not by works. Because Paul realized the great sacrifice that was offered in behalf of mankind, Paul worked with vigilance for his own soul and in behalf of others in order for them to grasp the depths of the plan of salvation. No where in the scriptures does Paul infer that resting in Christ allows us to ignore duty to our fellow man and to become comfortable in our sins.
Paul is very adamant through out the scriptures when it comes to remaining faithful to Christ, fighting the good fight and living in continuous victory.
Oh that Gods people could understand the balance between faith and works. The Jewish nation failed to understand this concept during Christ day and we are still having trouble balancing faith and works. This subject seems to be one that will constantly call for restudy, new terms for clarification, and most of all deeper levels of faith. Overall, we must go back to the cross and as we witness what Christ has done for us and I believe we will begin to have a healthy zeal to serve God with all our heart, mind, and soul.
I posted the assignment comment on the response comment and then completely forgot to post on the response......(:)
I would like to respond to Nathan’s posting this week. I like the fact that you reference these texts because I too wrestled with them from the first time I heard them years and years ago. In fact we were reading it not too long ago for family worship and my daughter was wrestling with it also. She asked point blank, if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart how could he then turn around and be upset with Pharaoh for not responding to the point of punishing Pharaoh with plagues. My way of responding to that was to tell her that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in that he did not prevent him from making the choice that Pharaoh wanted to make. I could not explain it further to her, because I myself did not understand it fully. I am looking forward to being able to answer it more intelligently in this class.
I believe that even though as Adventist we believe theoretically that each person was created free to choose, I think when we come to difficult text like these, and we don’t expand our mind to try to even wrestle with them. We think that because the Pastor does not preach (and some pastors do not even touch those texts) about them and he studied to become a pastor, what are the chances that we will be able to even understand these texts. We conclude that maybe God did not intend for us to understand.
The interesting thing about predestination that I have heard argued is this: when things are working out well, we want to take the credit to ourselves and the choice is ours. Inside and especially outside, we will hear boastings of how we pulled ourselves up by our own booth straps and I am a self made man and other such claims. However, on the flip side, when things do not work out the way we want it to, when we do not want to take responsibility for our actions that may have some serious consequences, then we say I can’t help it because God made me this way. It is God’s predestination when things go wrong, but our choice when things go right.
I fully believe that we read into text things that are not there and as was pointed out in class, this is due to the mind set that we already have. As human beings, we know that if someone knows what is going to happen to us in the future, it is probably because they planned it. When it comes to God and He says He knows who will be saved and who will be lost, we also automatically things that he only reason he knows is because he planned it. We forget that he is God. He knows the beginning from the end. As such he knows without fixing it. He does not allow his foreknowledge of an event to determine how that event is going to turn out, but because he knows the end from the beginning, he knows how it is going to turn out. His knowledge does not take away our freedom.
It is clear to me that even before we can accept the Bible in his holistic nature we must rid ourselves of our preconceived opinions. When we bring these opinions to the reading of the Bible, we superimpose them on what the Bible says and so from the beginning, our premises are false. Maybe our prayer should be, Lord clear my mind of its mindset and the clutter of my preconceived opinions, so that I can understand the logic of the Bible and be better able to understand its holistic nature.
It is clear that when dealing with the foreknowledge of God and predestination we must take the whole bible into consideration and we must be careful to leave in tact the freedom of choice that God gives to us all.
I am with you Will. I believe that you brought up an issue that I have struggled with many who falls into the trap of believing that perfection suggest that we must be void of sin. I went to school in the south which is known as the Bible belt. Within this loop, Seventh Day Adventist are well known people, but at times known to be legalist. There are some who make it their duty to go around and tell other how to eat how to eat, what to wear and even how to wear what they have to be perfect. These people are the ones who believe that we can have the perfection of God, and as Will stated, they can make life miserable for everyone else that does not see eye to eye with them. It is necessary for us to be knowledgeable about these arguments that are circulating within our church. It is also necessary for us to enlighten those who are frustrating themselves and others with the idea that perfection is to be without sin. Again, as William points out this is why sanctification is worth taken note of, because we are always being perfected moment by moment. It is a daily task that we cannot ignore. It also keeps us and others around us sane and hopeful.
Ray you bring out a good point with your analysis on the love of God, The two point that really grips me from your paper are two points that must be seared on a regular bases, not only to make some other point, rather, they must be two main points
God loves us enough that He will not force us to do what we do not want to do or be where we do not want to be. God will be a foolish God if He forces us to be in His kingdom when we do not want to be there. Not only will we be frustrated and uncomfortable, but God Himself will also feel uncomfortable in His own home. This is the reason why God will not force anybody into the kingdom. While many evangelists preach prophecy in a manner which scare people into the church, when find the pews empty soon after the fear is gone. This is not the method of Christ; Christ method alone is the only one that works, love.
The second part of your paper that I love is not really sported from the first, is the idea of freedom of choice. God will never ever force Himself upon anybody; He will not enter a broken heart unless He is invited. As much as God wants every person to enlist in His love, He will never twist anybodies arms, because He created us with free will.
This is why I believe that these two points should be main points when we present the reason why some people will be lost.
Re: Jinsan "Most of people regard that they don’t need commandments anymore, because they have accept Jesus Christ as a private savior. Adventists did not agree with this concept. But these days Adventist might be little bit changed."
Jinsan has shown in his post the results of not having a holistic model of salvation so that one aspect is emphasized over the other. These churches he mentioned in Korea preaches cheap grace by over emphasizing grace over obedience, salvation by faith over sanctification. This can only results in the selling of an easy, cross-less religion where people seek to feel good and not be good.
Paul for sure didn't teach this kind of religions as we saw that in Romans he spends the final three chapters showing how his theology translates into everyday living. This is where the tire meets to road and the liberation we find in Jesus makes us slaves to our brothers and sisters. Paul himself worked harder than any other man (according to his testimony) even though he was such a strong proponent of righteousness by faith.
Like Jinsan, I think that Advetists are in danger of slipping into the same cheap grace ditch as a strong reaction to our emphasis on commandment keeping. We need to seek balance and there are many people who look at our history and think that we have emphasized behavior and right teaching over RBF, but this is no argument for going to the other extreme where behavior doesn't matter anymore.
There is always the temptation to tame our message in order to attract more people into the church but this is not the method Jesus used and neither should we. Jesus taught plainly that following him requires our everything--a sacrifice that the Rich Young Ruler wasn't willing to make. Nothing has changed from the time of Jesus to now.
Ray Edwards said; Many people tend to think that “salvation by faith” is a message of “resting in Jesus” but look at how hard Paul WORKED—the father of the message of “not saved by works”. The great paradox of the Christian life is that the more see how much we DON’T have to work the more we will want to do the good works and glorify our father in heaven. We are really free slaves. Jesus has freed us from sin and so we want to work for him for the rest of our lives. As Ray said, Salvation is a mystery. It doesn’t force people to obey God but make themselves as God’s free slaves. Christian belief is an indescribable message of truth. I totally agree to the expression of “free slaves.” Paul himself showed us what the life of free slave and he lived joyful and happiness life. I can say I am a slave of Jesus and I realized the more I know about Him the more I want to surrender to Him. What a mystery it is.
Again Ray said; Repentance comes only as a gift from God. This is the point at which “many err” because they think that they have to “first repent” and then come to Jesus, but Jesus is the one who gives repentance. It means I can’t repent by myself. Repentance is one of the biggest gifts of God. I thought I can do many things and sometimes I thought I can do almost everything that I want to do. I am the owner of my life and I can handle of my life. Any how as I getting mature in faith, I realized it is not true. Everything in my life is gift from God.
I would like to repsond to Mary’s reflection. Mary I agree with you about sanctification and our need to grow in our walk with Christ. There has never been a point in earth’s history that the Christian could afford to go backwards in his spiritual journey with Christ but as we come to the final moments of earth’s history it is time for us to grow in grace and not become complacent in the spritiual strugggle for eternal our destiny. I was reading 1 Thessalonians 4:9,10 and Paul admonishes the believers to “love one another.” Then he goes on to say in verse 10, “…but we beseech you, bretheren, that ye increase more and more.” What this told me was that at not point can we stop and say that we have it all together. Even in our love there is growth that needs to take place, and there are deeper commitments that we must make to God. We have a challenge a head of us and that includes presenting justification, sanctification, and glorification in its true light before the world. I believe God will give us the power to do so if we will surrender our lives to Him dialy, moment by moment. May God help us to continually grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s interesting that Ellen White distinguishes between true and false repentance by the attitude of the guilty sinner towards God rather than towards the sin itself. Men can sorrow over the consequences and guilt resulting from their sins without truly repenting. In order to truly repent we must have a sense, not of what our sins have cost us, but of what they have cost the Son of God.
Whenever I thought about “grace”, actually I got a burden from the term. I know the reasons. I know that what is the gift from God but I also know about myself. When I look at me, when I couldn’t stop doing same sin, I give up hope of sanctification. I’m losing Him over again But like Ellen White’s comments, when we look at what Jesus did, we can find a peace in my heart. As Ray said, it is important which side I look up. Constantly, Satan lead away look at oneself and make them to be disappointed. I agree with that point because as know as Him, we can get energy from Him and how wonderful His works are for us. That meant we can live with joy and peace. 1 Peter 1:12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. Without the Bible and Jesus Christ, who can get into Heaven? Considering Jesus’ works, It is the process of salvation.
29 comments:
Injong, I appreciated the fact that you took the time to share with us what life is like for Korean Adventist and especially a pastor. Sometimes we receive information that is sent to us through Mission Spotlight and other reports and we hear about the growth of the church in other places and we forget that life for them is also difficult. We forget that they face persecution and other problems that we might not face here. As a result we conclude how wonderful it must be for them to be a SDA over there. Sometimes it takes people like yourself to paint a personal picture for us to realize how difficult things are for those outside North America. I also appreciate your candor with regards to why you think that some of the problems exist in Korea Society. It is insightful to link it to a misunderstanding of Righteousness by Faith.
As you shared, I thought of my own experiences about SDA’s and why we sometimes have such a difficult time witnessing to others. I remember my own nephew telling me about his encounter with an SDA. This person promptly told him that unless he becomes a Seventh - day Adventist he cannot make it to heaven. I also know of people who have been told that Seventh-day Adventists are the only ones who will be going to heaven. Or they will approach Catholics and tell them that they are worshipping the beast and are going to hell. I agree with you that many times the difficulties we face is because of remarks like these and also because we lack compassion and love for those who are lost. We do not truly understand the Word of God and the issues of righteousness by faith and as a result alienate, hurt and cause people to turn a deaf ear to what we have to say. I heard someone say that if you have a sword and you don’t know how to use it, you can hurt yourself and someone else. Well the Bible is a sword, not just a sword but it is described as sharper than a two edged sword. If we don’t know how to use it, we can hurt ourselves and others. Too often we have hurt others and we need to learn how to use the sword that we have been entrusted with and wielded it with compassion, love, understanding and most of all guided by the Spirit of God. In so doing we will accomplish the work that is set before us. We will be able to rightly divide the word of truth. I believe that it will be well for us to have classes such as we are having right now with Dr. Hanna in our churches to facilitate the process of learning before people go out and “swing their sword”.
I enjoyed reading William's (Simpson)comments and would especially want to respond to this comment ...
I don’t however believe that the law, on its own, drives us to Christ. We can see that the lawyers in Jesus’ day weren’t driven to Christ and we see several Biblical examples of people coming to Christ without a written law convincing them that they needed redemption. I fully agree with White that “We shall not renounce sin unless we see its sinfulness; until we turn away from it in heart, there will be no real change in the life.” I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that the law is the power of the gospel to transform lives.
As William indicated in his post, we have to become aware of our sinful state before we acknowledge that we need a Savior. This is where the law functions as a mirror according to James. But the same way in which the mirror cannot clean our dirty faces it's the same way in which the law couldn't clean us.
But how is it possible for me to know the law and yet not be driven to Christ? I think that the Holy Spirit needs to bring conviction and I also need to know to whom I should turn.
Paul seems to have some negative things to say about the law such as 'there is law therefore, sin' (Romans 7:7-18; 5:20,21; 1 Corin 15:56). But he quickly answers the unspoken question by stating that the law is not the problem (Romans 3:21; 7:12,14).
My point here is that just as Joseph told his brothers after he revealed himself to them, they meant him evil but God meant good in sending him to Egypt. So the law which was meant for our good became what testifies against us because we are all sinners. And we can only have a positive relationship to the law again when we are in harmony with its author.
But again I am wondering if we need the law to see the depth of our sinfulness or we can only experience this by knowing Jesus, hence we can see the great contrast, and really see how far we are away from the divine standard?
In other words, can the heathen without the written law and hearing the name of 'Jesus' actually feel a deep sense of their need of a Savior?
Can I see the sinfulness of sin from judging its consequences or from knowing the law that is broken in process of committing those sins? Or do I need a personal encounter with Jesus in order for this deep repentance to take place?
And if so, is there a deeper level of repentance experienced as I come to know Jesus in a more intimate way?
This line of reasoning would lead me to believe that the 'heathen' can only experience God in a very limited way without special revelation. And since more light brings more responsibility why should I want more light?
So the law leads me to Jesus who makes the law clearer so indicating my greater need of Jesus who makes the law clearer still and the cycle continues.
Perhaps we'll have some time to wrestle with these issues in class.
Injong and Jinsan, after having read both of your reflection papers I have to admit I myself am a recovering legalist. At times if not careful I am tempted to slip back into this state of legalism. I would say that having an incorrect view of righteousness by faith and what true perfection means, at one point led to an overwhelming struggle with guilt for my past faults and weaknesses. It is very interesting to note that the more I struggled the harder I was on others. I am not saying this is what is happening in your country but it is something to take note of.
Over the past few years were I am from there seems to be a distorted view of perfection and righteousness by faith that in my personal opinion (I say personal opinion because we never know what God uses to draw His people closer to him) has had a very unhealthy affect on some people. This struggle for perfection left me in a constant state of discouragement when I saw my well ingrained imperfections. I do realize that the closer we come to Christ the more we notice our shortcomings, Paul described himself as the chief of sinners. (1Timothy 1:15). But I really don’t think this was what I was experiencing in my life. I did not have a real understanding of my relationship with Christ, what was accomplished for mankind, and what it means to be saved.
It was a few quotes by Ellen White in Steps to Christ that helped me to understand my relationship with Christ and what to do with focusing on my shortcomings. Sr. White states, “Many who are really conscientious, and who desire to live for God, he (Satan) to often leads to dwell upon their own faults and weakness, and thus by separating them from Christ he hopes to gain the victory. We should not make self the center and indulge anxiety and fear as to whether we shall be saved.” (p52).
Another quote that was very helpful for me was also found in Steps to Christ was, “it is not wise to gather together all the unpleasant recollections of a past life, its iniquities and disappointments, to talk over them and mourn over them until we are overwhelmed with discouragement. A discouraged soul is filled with darkness, shutting out the light of God from his own soul and casting a showdown upon the pathway of others.” (p.87).
Once I read these statements they brought a profound sense of relief for my soul. The ultimate goal for all us is to look to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. I hope that we as pastors will gain an understanding of righteousness by faith and be able to explain it in a way that brings comfort to those who are wrestling with their salvation. At no point in time can we say that we are fully saved until we receive the final glorification at Jesus Christ second coming, but we can have confidence that God has provided every means in order to save every man.
I hope that the Seventh-day Adventist church at large will give a full and complete message to the world that encompasses a holistic view of perfection or maturity that we can obtain in Christ. Even though we don’t know the inner workings of the Holy Spirit within the soul we can rest assured that God is trying to save every man from the degradation of sin.
Reaction to Class Discussion (5/19/2008)
I appreciated the fact that Ray Edwards took the time to share with us what he learned and thought about this class. I believe that salvation is one of the keen topics for all religious people. Surely it is a mystery for me and for some other people yet we keep trying what is faith, what is salvation, what is righteousness by faith and what is Gospel.
In Romans, Paul continually makes a statement about balance and the reason he did is we can easily get lost the balance of our faith. Ray Edwards “As to say don’t forget there is another side to the coin. For example, he talks about the “law” in both positive and negative lights, since it produces sin in us and yet the law is good and holy and just. Righteousness comes through faith but also through works.”
As an Adventist, I try not to loose my balance of faith. However I realized that even though I have blamed a lot of people as they are legalists, I found I am the one who got the wrong idea. I found myself that I rely on faith by works a lot more than righteousness by faith.
As I read Romans 10:9-10 says “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.” Even if I face a lot of situation that I do not know how to make decisions, I will not give up and try to find answers from the revelations of the Bible. As Ray Edwards said I will try not to loose my balance as salvation is simple but need to keep up with “work out”. “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on that I maylay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.”
As I close my reaction, I would like to finish with this words “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37)
I appreciated very much the points that Mary reiterated. The idea that salvation is an ongoing and continual process is very important for us to remember so that we will not be too hard or soft on ourselves or on others. We are secure in salvation as we are justified, yes, but we also need growth in salvation. So thank you for that. I also uphold her concern that unfortunately even as Adventists we miss so much by thinking that salvation is a static state once we are justified. This mentality can breed one of two extremes. Either people get "holier than thou" or “freed from the law” and become terrible examples of what it means to be a Christian.
I also appreciated very much Mary’s reminder that we do have an active role in salvation. We must avail ourselves to the transforming power of the Spirit by practicing spiritual disciplines. Things like prayer, listening, beholding nature, reading the Bible and worshiping in music are a few examples of how we can cooperate with the Spirit. Not that we are doing anything meritorious of salvation, but we are doing our part in cooperating with God. A statement that “expression deepens the impression” seems to fit with the idea of striving for our salvation and also finding joy in doing what does not at first seem natural or even pleasant for us. But like Mary said, eventually we will enjoy doing righteousness because Christ is continually giving us His heart and mind.
Brief response to …JD
I agree with JD’s illustration of championship football team. Thank you for the illustration. Sometimes we feel that we don’t have enough worth for being saved. So we used to give up receiving the free gift, the salvation. But we have to know about who I am. Although we have the free-willing, we are the creature who has a sinful nature. We don’t have any solution. We need someone who take out from eternal death. So we need the belief of Jesus Christ who crucified on the Cross since my sin and someone who carry us to the heaven. Not my righteousness but His love toward us, we would gladly join to the team. And praise Him because He has done for us. It’s a significant free ride. We don’t need to hesitate to do that. Because It is the GRACE.
JD Miller
Comments on Nathans article
Nathan, I like the fact that you ask the question of why God created us even though he knew we would sin. It is not often we sit down to analyze God’s reason for creating a group that would eventually turn out to be the only ones to sin. I always thought that God could have easily made some adjustments to the plan on paper, so to speak, before He forming humanity on the sixth day. The information used to point out the fact that God did not want robots, rather, free agents who could choose God’s way or their own way made clearer for me. It is good that you developed your argument this way.
While we often times ask ourselves questions about God and the reason why we as a species of people are the ones plagued with this dangerous virus called sin, we often shy away from asking the tough question, why? While we know we will not receive all the answers on this side of glory, we must pursue the whys of our lives; we must ask the right question in the right way. This is the reason why I believe that Nathan’s essay is so important. It is important because it helps those who read this will realize that the reason why we have so many articles written, is because people ask questions. The reason why we Nathan can quote authors about being a free agent is because someone asks the right question.
Injong, Wow! I am sympathetic to all of the added challenges that Koren Seventh-day Adventists face. I regards to the issue of Seventh-day Adventists not even being seen as Christians because of their emphasis on works, I think in America we may see that to a lesser degree. Probably few Christian denominations would say that Adventists are not Christians, but many think it, mostly because we keep the Sabbath I think. I believe that most Sunday keepers ("free from the law") could learn how faith works as well as Seventh-day Adventists could learn to put more emphasis on righteiousness as a free gift apart from works. Some interculturation between to two parties would be helpful. I guess we need to make certain in our preaching and interactions with people that we make sure we stress that salvation is by Christ's righteousness alone.
I would like to comment this week on Ray’s posting. I liked the way he stated that we came into the world as sinners without doing anything to “deserve” being born and we can be “born again” without doing anything to deserve sonship in God’s family. Sometimes we want to argue that God is unfair because we had no choice in being born a sinner, but then I think God balances it out in our favor and silences the argument by sending his son to die for us without us doing anything to deserve His favor. Sometimes, we see the unfair side of an issue but do not want to explore it far enough to see the fair side of the same issue.
Referencing Romans 4:I0, I agree that yes Jesus is the Savior of all men, but there is a qualifier, especially of those who believe. The question that begs to be asked then, is why especially those who believe? Are there individuals who will not believe? If there are individuals who will not believe, what then? Is he not their savior? Or is there another meaning to this text? Could it be that he is providing salvation for all men, but that only those who believe will receive that Salvation? So many questions, so many nuances to what seems to be straight forward at first! As Ray states, there may be some things that are difficult to understand but with the preponderance of evidence, the scripture silences the view of universalism.
I must say that I enjoyed reading Mary's post especially with the illustrtion of having a negative item on her credit report even before she qualified to have such a report. But I wonder if we are born with a negative 'mark' against us (sin) or just with the nature to have bad report.
This goes back to the question of if our sinful nature can be called "sin".
Mary wrote, "Of course my reasoning applies to the “in Christ” as well. As much as I sometimes say I wish God would just make me do right. I am thankful for the freedom of choice. It is something that Adam and Eve exercised when they were in the Garden of Eden and I did not see God intervening to stop Eve from reaching out and picking that fruit.
Adam was made perfect and he chose to sin, we are born imperfect and can choose to be righteous. Is sometimes wonder if Adam had an advantage over us. Maybe he did before you add the JESUS factor and this is what Paul seems to be saying in Romans 5. Jesus more than made up for the disadvantage that Adam placed us at. ("much more")
If everyone will finally declare that God was fair, what can really be unfair about our present situation? And I think this was Paul's burden in exonerating God in the light of humans, without a choice, being born into a world of sin.
One question that we haven't addressed in class is if death was a part of God's original creation. In other words, could Adam and Eve died even BEFORE they sinned. Note that the first couple were driven from the garden so that they would not get access to the tree of life and therefore be perpetual sinners. Why would they need the tree of life if they could not die?
So when Paul said that Adam introduced death into the creation was this the first death or the second death?
The question also comes to mind as to the angels and their relationship to each other. They didn't inherit a sinful nature from Lucifer but made an individual choice. Is this the reason why Jesus didn't set in a similar plan of salvation for them.
So why would Jesus die for humans but not for angels?
Great is the mystery of salvation!
I must agree with JD when it comes to my knowledge of the origin of sin. As a child I was also taught that Adam sinned and now we have what is called the sinful nature or a natural tendency to gravitate towards sin. After having read your reflection, the scriptures, the article on original sin I to find myself a little confused on the issue of what truly happened to mankind when Adam sinned. I must admit the third suggestion that you made (because of Adams sin we were infected with sin except Christ) seems to be more logical and doesn’t ruffle any of my feathers. The life and death of Christ empowers us to be able to exercise our wills in accordance to the will of God. (Philippians 2:13).
As for now I choose to stay with the Seventh-day Adventist position on the state of man and sin. Our stance or explanation of original sin is from an Augustinian point of view of “imputed guilt and corruption.” The term original corruption is used to explain the “state of sin in which each member of the human race is born.”
JD Miller
Comment on Injong Moon
After reading Injong Moon’s paper, I can see exactly the point that he is making about faith and works, the two are married, and must walk together in order for the salvation process to be a complete one. It is quit evident that many within the Christian religion struggle to uphold which they view as the most important, grace, or works. For some within the Adventist denomination, while they do not mean to, often times lean toward works more than they do grace. This is not because they actually believe that works would save them, but, they find comfort in having some part to do in their salvation. But then there are those, most times, usually are in other denominations, lean more towards grace. When the word works is heard, they shrink back because works is usually tied in with law. But grace is solely tied to the Christ on the cross. As stated, salvation is not only tied to the cross, but cross is just apart of the salvation process.
When we learn the secret of salvation, we will also learn that works and faith cannot be separated, and to try to separate works and grace will only leave people frustrated. I believe that this is the message of Paul, James and defiantly the message of Jesus. This is what I believe Injong Moon’s point is, and this is what makes sense.ko
Mary, thank you for sharing your personal story with us.
Yes, sin is one of the most mysterious things in the world. Surely we need Jesus for the answer. As I read your article, I thought by myself again and again about sin. In Adam/In Christ motifs is surely not easy for me to understand. You struggled to understand about it and I am still struggling too.
One thing that I really enjoy about my marriage life is that I do not need to make a decision. I do not need to make a choice for my necktie; I do not need to worry about what to wear on this Sabbath because my wife makes decisions for me. Why did God give us free will to choose? And why is God left possibilities for committee sins in us.
One of my friends told me we, Adam`s descendents are automatic sinners. Whether we act it with our intention or not, we sin everyday and every moment. This fact bothered me for a long time and I sometimes thought I would rather have no choice to make a decision for my life. However I realized making choices with our own free will is one of God`s way to teach us to be more like Him. I shouldn’t avoid them.
My another friend explained to me about sin like this; the example of how viruses and bacteria spreads is how sin spreads. Our planet got the sin virus when Adam sinned and it has spread to all mankind. We are not responsible for Adam's sin but we have been affected by the sin virus that started with Adam and was passed down to us. We have all caught the sickness of sin because of the virus that started with Adam! The virus has affected all of Creation! But praise the Lord Jesus Christ who is our vaccine which can cure our eternal death!
Jinsan Moon
I’d like to comment on Ray’s
I have same experience that he had. When I was young there were so many questions on the bible. Especially, whenever I thought about “sunset time on Saturday” I noticed that something is not clear. Because I wanted something to do before sunset (like watching TV) I didn’t anything around sunset time, just look at the clock and wait the time that was printed in lesson study book.
Though I was young, I thought that it is not a real faith. There was only written law to obey not a joy of Sabbath. We have sinful nature so we think selfish things. When I think myself, I can’t find good things in my mind. I agree with “original sinful being even we didn’t doing anything” because we were influenced by sin’s inclination. Who can guarantee that I’ll do not same Adam. All things that I’m doing for my salvation are sin too because I’m inevitable sinner. We have to admit that we are only sinner not we acting something wrong but we are(state).
I would like to comment on Nathan William’s blog about his courtroom experience, grace and about the Holy Spirit’s role in our salvation as found in Steps to Christ. I really appreciated that he noticed how much emphasis Ellen White puts on the Holy Spirit. I noticed it too because it is almost impossible to miss. I am glad that he emphasized that because I feel that often, as Adventists who uphold the law, we place the law as our sole guide to Jesus when we need to give the greatest attention to the Spirit’s work in our life. Certainly the Holy Spirit may use the law as one of His many tools to speak to our hearts, but it is the Spirit indeed who draws us to accept salvation. If we place sole attention on the law, nature, life’s providence or any other means we fail to see that it is God Himself who is intentionally drawing us to Him through His own Spirit. So Nathan, thank you for expounding on that a little bit more.
I also appreciate Nathan’s reminder that we need to come to Christ just as we are as He is drawing us. It is dangerous to delay for at least two reasons. One, if we delay our probation may close before we get around to really accepting Christ as our Savior. Two, the only way we can fully come to Christ in genuine repentance is by at least taking the baby step toward Him as He is inviting through His Spirit. I believe that the more we respond to His Spirit’s call upon our minds, the more power and freedom the Spirit is given to really take control of our lives and complete His work. Our work is to continue to be repentant and obedient as the Spirit works in us. But we must come to our Saviour in our degraded state with baby steps no matter how sinful we are. We can not wait for things to improve, because as we wait, things will only worsen.
The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a struggle; but the soul must submit to God before it can be renewed in holiness. In giving ourselves to God, we must necessarily give up all that would separate us from Him. Hence the Saviour says, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." Luke 14:33. Whatever shall draw away the heart from God must be given up. Mammon is the idol of many. The love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds them to Satan. Reputation and worldly honor are worshiped by another class. The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others. But these slavish bands must be broken. We cannot be half the Lord's and half the world's. We are not God's children unless we are such entirely. There are those who profess to serve God, while they rely upon their own efforts to obey His law, to form a right character, and secure salvation. Their hearts are not moved by any deep sense of the love of Christ, but they seek to perform the duties of the Christian life as that which God requires of them in order to gain heaven. Such religion is worth nothing. Steps to Christ …..Consecration
Reading the way Ellen White talks about the task that we have to perform in the plan of salvation, supports what I have been hearing in our class discussion and also what I have been reading in the book of Romans. She states that “the warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought”. During my growing up years, before I was “converted” I must confess that I have been in a fight or two. Of course I did not start them, “not according to my version anyway” but I was part of them. What I remember is that fighting is serious work, especially if you intend the win that fight. I don’t ever remember being in a fight or watching a fight where one person is passively “engaged”. When a fight is started and one individual is clearly dominant and the other is passive, we do not call that a fight, we call that something else. In fact we look very unfavorable on the person who fights with another person without any resistance. We say that they are taking advantage of them because they are stronger. So the picture I get when Ellen White mentions the warfare against self, is one of active engagement. One in which the participants are fully involved. They are involved mentally, physically, spiritually. They are involved with every fibre of their being. They are involved in this way because their very lives depend on their participation. Whether they live or die depends on their participation. They are not in this fight to save their souls, but because they are so grateful that God has saved them.
Ellen White says that Satan is playing the game of life for the soul. She says in another place “that idleness is one of the greatest curse to fall upon man; for vice and crime follow in its train. Satan lies in ambush, ready to surprise and destroy those who are unguarded, whose leisure gives him opportunity to insinuate himself into their favor, under some attractive disguise. He is never more successful than when he comes to men in their idle hours”. If I understand what she’s saying here, it would seem that if we are not engaged in works, especially the work of storing up treasurers in heaven, the work of taking care of the sick, visiting prisoners, clothing the naked, studying the word of God, preaching the gospel praying and whatever other good work God has preordained for us to do, that we will easily fall prey to Satan and make ourselves vulnerable to what she calls the greatest curse, idleness.
Another quote that seems to calls us away from this passive faith that some believe is enough is “The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others”. With this I can hear the proponents of passive faith saying, oh no, we are not promoting selfishness or ease. My question to them will be if we follow the passive faith route to salvation, and believe we do not need to do anything, what then do we do with the Bible when it says that we should watch and pray that we not enter into temptation. What are we to watch for and how are we to watch? I think that even just watching is doing something. What do we do with James 2:18 that says .. someone will say, "You have faith. I do good works." Show me your faith that doesn't do good works. And I will show you my faith by what I do and how do we deal with text such as “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
Then of course there is the flip side of passive faith. There are those who believe that they should do good works and that those works will bring them salvation. Here is how Elllen White puts it, “There are those who profess to serve God, while they rely upon their own efforts to obey His law, to form a right character, and secure salvation. Their hearts are not moved by any deep sense of the love of Christ, but they seek to perform the duties of the Christian life as that which God requires of them in order to gain heaven. Such religion is worth nothing.” With this I believe that we can clearly see how Christ must be the dominant force in our lives in order for us to keep a balance between doing good works as an outworking of Christ in our hearts, doing good works because we think it will save us and not doing anything because we think that works are not important. That’s why I believe that Paul’s words in Romans …yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. In this way, our job is simply to yield, God’s job is to make us righteous. Even with the yielding however, we must recognize that it is something that is the work of Christ in us. The Bible says that it is God that works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So it is all the work of Christ in us, whether we are yielding, praying, visiting the sick, feeding the poor or teaching all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And as Solomon would say the conclusion of the whole matter is this – without Christ we can do nothing but with God all things are possible especially understanding the seemingly difficult things in book of Romans.
I would like to comment briefly on Jinsan's last post on concentrating on the "simple gospel." I agree with him very much that just because we are studying the works of Christ in depth for this class does not mean that every gospel presentation needs to include every element down to the fine detail of how Christ saves us and our part in recieving salvation. I believe we need to keep preaching the simple gospel to call people to Christ but then encourage people to grow in their understanding of the gospel as they study the mysteries of salvation found in the Bible. I am thankful salvation is not based on my full and perfect understanding of the way that Christ saves me, but on my acceptance of the simple gospel that He is my substitute and Lord. I have enjoyed Dr. Hanna's class very much and it has added greatly to my understanding of the works of Christ for my salvation but I know he is not expecting to incorporate everything we have learned from this class into each gospel presentation. Thanks Jinsan for reminding us to stay focused on the simple gospel in our dealing with people who need to take that first step to commit to Christ.
Nathan Williams
Works of Christ
Martin Hanna Ph.D.
After having read Romans chapter 9 and participating in the class discussions my mind has been wrestling with the term foreknowledge and predestination. In Romans chapter 9 there are some challenging statements especially in verses 11-13. It states in summary that God knew Esau would reject Him and eventually serve Jacob before they were even born. Then God makes a statement that is seemingly out of His character. God states Jacob I loved Esau I hated. As I was reading this passage it seems as if God had doomed Esau to failure.
Again as we look down further in the text we read about the story of Moses and the hard heartedness of Pharaoh. In verse 18 it says of Pharaoh “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” As I was reading this text at first glance it seems to me as if it was God Himself who destined these men for failure. If God knew that these men would reject Him why did He create them at all just to fail? Did God really do everything in His power to save these men?
I have to admit that as a Seventh-day Adventist I have taken for granted what God has to say on the life of these two individuals considering we have insight through the Spirit of Prophecy. As Seventh-day Adventist we take the position that each created being has the ability to choose whether or not he/she will serve God.
There are many interesting and profound questions that are being raised to today about predestination and the true foreknowledge of God. I believe taking a view that taking a deterministic view when it comes to predestination is dangerous because in essence it limits Gods ability to save man. Deterministic predestination takes the position as understand it that God has made the choice of who will be saved and who will be lost.
It is true God knows who will be saved and who will be lost from eternal ages past but He also knows exactly how to orchestrate circumstances, and events to help us make the proper choices to follow Him. I believe that many have been turned off by the bible all together because they feel that since God already knows if I will be saved or lost then I really don’t stand a chance of being saved. I believe that Calvin in an effort to wrestle with hard text like this meant well but their limited understanding of predestination has caused confusion for many.
When it comes to the foreknowledge of God and predestination we cannot ignore texts that refute the concept that we don’t have a choice in the matter of our salvation. Some of the text that refute this idea are John 3:16 “For God son loved the world that eh gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Another text would be, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). We also must remember Ezekiel 33:11 which states, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked: but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” After God makes this statement then He gives the wicked a choice when He says, “turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel.
It is clear that when dealing with the foreknowledge of God and predestination we must take the whole bible into consideration and we must be careful to leave in tact the freedom of choice that God gives to us all.
Thank you, Nathan for your post. You gave me some new thoughts and understandings of the concept of foreknowledge and predestination. Doctor Hanna taught us that our human language and understanding is so limited that sometimes it makes confliction in itself and the concept that we have can be totally different with God’s. We named them as ‘foreknowledge’ and ‘predestination’ yet the words themselves can not imply all the meaning that they supposed to have. It taught me again that I am limited using and expressing God’s truth with earthly languages. There surely will be different dimension of languages and concepts of salvation between God and us.
Nathan showed us that there are interesting and profound questions about foreknowledge and predestination that are being raised and when it comes, predestination might dangerous for it might limit God’s ability to save man.
I don’t know what perfect means and I don’t know the difference between Gods’s freewill and human’s freedom. However as I read Ezekiel 33:11 in Nathan’s post, God’s ultimate purpose is saving all of us not predestinate us and perish us. I thank God because He let us to choose to live forever. Thank God for letting us taste a little bit of Your perfect and freedom.
Re: Nathan ...
After having read Romans chapter 9 and participating in the class discussions my mind has been wrestling with the term foreknowledge and predestination. In Romans chapter 9 there are some challenging statements especially in verses 11-13. It states in summary that God knew Esau would reject Him and eventually serve Jacob before they were even born. Then God makes a statement that is seemingly out of His character. God states Jacob I loved Esau I hated. As I was reading this passage it seems as if God had doomed Esau to failure.
I think that Nathan has captured the difficulty of this passage from Paul. Paul's argument is really complicated and he seems to be always saying the opposite of what we'll expect.
How could God select "love" one brother over the other even before they are born? How could God "hate" in the first place?
After some careful reflection and looking at the context of the entire passage of Romans 9-11 we see that Paul is actually going out of his way to show that God's election is not based on "works of the law" or birth line. And when God elects one it's obvious that He rejects the other.
Paul anticipates well that his readers will think that he is painting God as being arbitrary and that's why he quickly adds, "There is no injustice with God, is there? (Romans 9:14) And he answers his own question by saying, "Certainly not!"
Paul makes the point that God is sovereign and can do anything but He does everything with MERCY.
We can see also that "calling" and "election" is NOT the same as judgment. Simply because one is called doesn't mean that one will be saved in the final analysis. Israel made that point very clear, so that not all from Israel are Israel.(9:6)
I don't think that Paul's main point in this section of Romans had to do with predestination but trying to define who Israel in--defined by divine call and they are NOT the sole beneficiary of God's electing purpose.
I think that the cross is the most powerful evidence we have of the fairness and ultimate justice of God who took upon himself all the "mistakes" we may assign to his creation. God finally takes the blame. He is not in the process of playing games with human destiny because our salvation cost Him too much!
I’d like to add to JD’s opinions. As we talked about today, Predestination and foreknowledge are different terms. Hence, we have to understand them separately. Yes, God knows all things that He has made. And He gave us a free willing to choose one’s way.
As I understand that he already knows that which way we are going to go, and there are many “x” (number of cases) in our life to choose. So if we choose one way(x) and there are fundamental rules so, I can make a formula “x(free willing) x R(God’s fundamental Rules) 〓 destinations. Therefore, He gave us a free willing (Yes!) and there are so many number of cases in our life, and God already knows the “number of cases” (foreknowledge) but it is alterative which I choose (even if I change the free willing), God knows the result already (predestination). God didn’t confirm our destination yet. Because God intend and design the way where we go to “good”
So far, there are many problems between predestination and foreknowledge. But it is confirmed that He gave his only son to poor people and everyone who believe in him, they will be saved.
“Paulson also mentioned Mary Magdalene response to Jesus as being the “works response” of the true Christian. He doesn’t work harder to be saved but because he realizes how much Jesus has done for him. The great paradox of the real champions of righteousness by faith is that they seem to work harder than anyone else! Paul and the great reformer Martin Luther comes to mind. Paul could list all the things that he suffered for the gospel and declare that no other apostle worked as hard as eh did. Just think about the champion of righteousness by faith WORKING harder than anyone else.”
Ray I really enjoyed reading your comments on the article “Salvation by Faith” by Jan Paulsen
Romans 11. You made a very interesting statement about Paul in that he realized he was saved only through faith and not by works. Because Paul realized the great sacrifice that was offered in behalf of mankind, Paul worked with vigilance for his own soul and in behalf of others in order for them to grasp the depths of the plan of salvation. No where in the scriptures does Paul infer that resting in Christ allows us to ignore duty to our fellow man and to become comfortable in our sins.
Paul is very adamant through out the scriptures when it comes to remaining faithful to Christ, fighting the good fight and living in continuous victory.
Oh that Gods people could understand the balance between faith and works. The Jewish nation failed to understand this concept during Christ day and we are still having trouble balancing faith and works. This subject seems to be one that will constantly call for restudy, new terms for clarification, and most of all deeper levels of faith. Overall, we must go back to the cross and as we witness what Christ has done for us and I believe we will begin to have a healthy zeal to serve God with all our heart, mind, and soul.
I posted the assignment comment on the response comment and then completely forgot to post on the response......(:)
I would like to respond to Nathan’s posting this week. I like the fact that you reference these texts because I too wrestled with them from the first time I heard them years and years ago. In fact we were reading it not too long ago for family worship and my daughter was wrestling with it also. She asked point blank, if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart how could he then turn around and be upset with Pharaoh for not responding to the point of punishing Pharaoh with plagues. My way of responding to that was to tell her that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in that he did not prevent him from making the choice that Pharaoh wanted to make. I could not explain it further to her, because I myself did not understand it fully. I am looking forward to being able to answer it more intelligently in this class.
I believe that even though as Adventist we believe theoretically that each person was created free to choose, I think when we come to difficult text like these, and we don’t expand our mind to try to even wrestle with them. We think that because the Pastor does not preach (and some pastors do not even touch those texts) about them and he studied to become a pastor, what are the chances that we will be able to even understand these texts. We conclude that maybe God did not intend for us to understand.
The interesting thing about predestination that I have heard argued is this: when things are working out well, we want to take the credit to ourselves and the choice is ours. Inside and especially outside, we will hear boastings of how we pulled ourselves up by our own booth straps and I am a self made man and other such claims. However, on the flip side, when things do not work out the way we want it to, when we do not want to take responsibility for our actions that may have some serious consequences, then we say I can’t help it because God made me this way. It is God’s predestination when things go wrong, but our choice when things go right.
I fully believe that we read into text things that are not there and as was pointed out in class, this is due to the mind set that we already have. As human beings, we know that if someone knows what is going to happen to us in the future, it is probably because they planned it. When it comes to God and He says He knows who will be saved and who will be lost, we also automatically things that he only reason he knows is because he planned it. We forget that he is God. He knows the beginning from the end. As such he knows without fixing it. He does not allow his foreknowledge of an event to determine how that event is going to turn out, but because he knows the end from the beginning, he knows how it is going to turn out. His knowledge does not take away our freedom.
It is clear to me that even before we can accept the Bible in his holistic nature we must rid ourselves of our preconceived opinions. When we bring these opinions to the reading of the Bible, we superimpose them on what the Bible says and so from the beginning, our premises are false. Maybe our prayer should be, Lord clear my mind of its mindset and the clutter of my preconceived opinions, so that I can understand the logic of the Bible and be better able to understand its holistic nature.
It is clear that when dealing with the foreknowledge of God and predestination we must take the whole bible into consideration and we must be careful to leave in tact the freedom of choice that God gives to us all.
I am with you Will. I believe that you brought up an issue that I have struggled with many who falls into the trap of believing that perfection suggest that we must be void of sin. I went to school in the south which is known as the Bible belt. Within this loop, Seventh Day Adventist are well known people, but at times known to be legalist. There are some who make it their duty to go around and tell other how to eat how to eat, what to wear and even how to wear what they have to be perfect. These people are the ones who believe that we can have the perfection of God, and as Will stated, they can make life miserable for everyone else that does not see eye to eye with them.
It is necessary for us to be knowledgeable about these arguments that are circulating within our church. It is also necessary for us to enlighten those who are frustrating themselves and others with the idea that perfection is to be without sin. Again, as William points out this is why sanctification is worth taken note of, because we are always being perfected moment by moment. It is a daily task that we cannot ignore. It also keeps us and others around us sane and hopeful.
Ray you bring out a good point with your analysis on the love of God, The two point that really grips me from your paper are two points that must be seared on a regular bases, not only to make some other point, rather, they must be two main points
God loves us enough that He will not force us to do what we do not want to do or be where we do not want to be. God will be a foolish God if He forces us to be in His kingdom when we do not want to be there. Not only will we be frustrated and uncomfortable, but God Himself will also feel uncomfortable in His own home. This is the reason why God will not force anybody into the kingdom. While many evangelists preach prophecy in a manner which scare people into the church, when find the pews empty soon after the fear is gone. This is not the method of Christ; Christ method alone is the only one that works, love.
The second part of your paper that I love is not really sported from the first, is the idea of freedom of choice. God will never ever force Himself upon anybody; He will not enter a broken heart unless He is invited. As much as God wants every person to enlist in His love, He will never twist anybodies arms, because He created us with free will.
This is why I believe that these two points should be main points when we present the reason why some people will be lost.
Re: Jinsan "Most of people regard that they don’t need commandments anymore, because they have accept Jesus Christ as a private savior. Adventists did not agree with this concept. But these days Adventist might be little bit changed."
Jinsan has shown in his post the results of not having a holistic model of salvation so that one aspect is emphasized over the other. These churches he mentioned in Korea preaches cheap grace by over emphasizing grace over obedience, salvation by faith over sanctification. This can only results in the selling of an easy, cross-less religion where people seek to feel good and not be good.
Paul for sure didn't teach this kind of religions as we saw that in Romans he spends the final three chapters showing how his theology translates into everyday living. This is where the tire meets to road and the liberation we find in Jesus makes us slaves to our brothers and sisters. Paul himself worked harder than any other man (according to his testimony) even though he was such a strong proponent of righteousness by faith.
Like Jinsan, I think that Advetists are in danger of slipping into the same cheap grace ditch as a strong reaction to our emphasis on commandment keeping. We need to seek balance and there are many people who look at our history and think that we have emphasized behavior and right teaching over RBF, but this is no argument for going to the other extreme where behavior doesn't matter anymore.
There is always the temptation to tame our message in order to attract more people into the church but this is not the method Jesus used and neither should we. Jesus taught plainly that following him requires our everything--a sacrifice that the Rich Young Ruler wasn't willing to make. Nothing has changed from the time of Jesus to now.
Thanks Ray, I really enjoyed your post.
Ray Edwards said; Many people tend to think that “salvation by faith” is a message of “resting in Jesus” but look at how hard Paul WORKED—the father of the message of “not saved by works”. The great paradox of the Christian life is that the more see how much we DON’T have to work the more we will want to do the good works and glorify our father in heaven. We are really free slaves. Jesus has freed us from sin and so we want to work for him for the rest of our lives.
As Ray said, Salvation is a mystery. It doesn’t force people to obey God but make themselves as God’s free slaves. Christian belief is an indescribable message of truth. I totally agree to the expression of “free slaves.” Paul himself showed us what the life of free slave and he lived joyful and happiness life. I can say I am a slave of Jesus and I realized the more I know about Him the more I want to surrender to Him. What a mystery it is.
Again Ray said; Repentance comes only as a gift from God. This is the point at which “many err” because they think that they have to “first repent” and then come to Jesus, but Jesus is the one who gives repentance.
It means I can’t repent by myself. Repentance is one of the biggest gifts of God. I thought I can do many things and sometimes I thought I can do almost everything that I want to do. I am the owner of my life and I can handle of my life. Any how as I getting mature in faith, I realized it is not true. Everything in my life is gift from God.
I would like to repsond to Mary’s reflection. Mary I agree with you about sanctification and our need to grow in our walk with Christ. There has never been a point in earth’s history that the Christian could afford to go backwards in his spiritual journey with Christ but as we come to the final moments of earth’s history it is time for us to grow in grace and not become complacent in the spritiual strugggle for eternal our destiny.
I was reading 1 Thessalonians 4:9,10 and Paul admonishes the believers to “love one another.” Then he goes on to say in verse 10, “…but we beseech you, bretheren, that ye increase more and more.” What this told me was that at not point can we stop and say that we have it all together. Even in our love there is growth that needs to take place, and there are deeper commitments that we must make to God.
We have a challenge a head of us and that includes presenting justification, sanctification, and glorification in its true light before the world. I believe God will give us the power to do so if we will surrender our lives to Him dialy, moment by moment. May God help us to continually grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today, I’m going to respond to Ray’s article.
It’s interesting that Ellen White distinguishes between true and false repentance by the attitude of the guilty sinner towards God rather than towards the sin itself. Men can sorrow over the consequences and guilt resulting from their sins without truly repenting. In order to truly repent we must have a sense, not of what our sins have cost us, but of what they have cost the Son of God.
Whenever I thought about “grace”, actually I got a burden from the term. I know the reasons. I know that what is the gift from God but I also know about myself. When I look at me, when I couldn’t stop doing same sin, I give up hope of sanctification. I’m losing Him over again
But like Ellen White’s comments, when we look at what Jesus did, we can find a peace in my heart. As Ray said, it is important which side I look up. Constantly, Satan lead away look at oneself and make them to be disappointed.
I agree with that point because as know as Him, we can get energy from Him and how wonderful His works are for us. That meant we can live with joy and peace.
1 Peter 1:12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Without the Bible and Jesus Christ, who can get into Heaven?
Considering Jesus’ works, It is the process of salvation.
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