Jerry Shugart
Well-known member
So Paul waits for YEARS to put this vitally important doctrine in one of his last epistles?
He knew something that you don't know and that is the fact that those in the Body of Christ will return to the earth with the Lord Jesus when He sets up His earthly kingdom after the rapture and only those who are born again can enter that kingdom (Jn.3:3,5):
"After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever" (1 Thess.4:17).
Besides that Paul told the believer in Corinth that they were born through the gospel which he preached to them:
"For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel" (1 Cor.4:15).
That matches what Peter said about being "born again":
"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God...And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Pet.1:23,25).
The Jews who lived under the law received the new birth and were therefore and saved by faith alone, just like the members of the Body of Christ:
"He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God" (Jn.1:11-13).
Those who lived under the law were saved by grace through faith just like those in the Body of Christ:
"Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all" (Ro.4:16).
Do you believe that "works" and "grace" are compatible?