Is Faith Without Works Dead?
- Thread starter Right Divider
- Start date
You snipped the important part out. It's no wonder you can't understand what I said.
Try again.
Right Divider
Body part
No matter how much some of you try to turn every suggestion into a commandment... the body of Christ is not under the law.
Contrast two people...
1. The man who avoids the cliff's edge because he loves his life, wishes to preserve it and therefore avoids unnecessary danger.
2. The man who avoids the cliff's edge because there is a sign and is merely following the rules.
Who is the better man, the one who is faithful to his wife because he loves his wife and can't imagine being with anyone else or the man who is faithful to his wife because there is a rule hanging on the wall that says adultery is wrong?
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I always liked Bob's analogy:
A woman needs to use her husband's car, so she gets in the driver's seat and pulls down the visor where he keeps the key, and sees a note taped to the visible side of the visor. Which message, if written on the note, would make her love him even more? And which would trouble her?
Message 1: "Remember, do not commit adultery."
Message 2: "Don't forget to buy your wife flowers."
The first message would obviously make his wife FURIOUS! "He needs a reminder to not cheat on me? He must not be as faithful as I thought he was!"
Versus:
The second message is just a reminder in case he forgets to buy flowers for his wife, something he was fully intending to do even without the note: "Oh how sweet! He's planning on buying me flowers"
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” 4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
You decide your own future. Paul begs you to trust in the Lord instead of yourself. Works being doing good because the law says to do good. And this does not let those of the circumcision off the hook as they say. The covenant is "everlasting". But if they reject the Lord Jesus Christ, they are condemned already.
It's a false dichotomy.
Although you'll refuse to acknowledge it as such, in which case I would be forced to say that it is, in fact, "OK" if we sin intentionally or otherwise.
It isn't actually OK but that's what you'd twist the truth into saying, which means that I and those here who agree with my doctrine are in good company!
Romans 3:8 And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?, as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not!
The fact is that we are all perfect, in Him. Nothing we do changes that. The evil that we do in the flesh harms ourselves and those around us but it does no harm to our position in Christ because that position is not based on what we do or don't do.
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Yeah, he's not a standard Roman Catholic. But other than that, he believes in Christ, he believes in the Gospel, we share many moral beliefs, etc. We're very similar, except he's not a standard Roman Catholic because he's a sedevacantist, and he doesn't believe in JP2's (and Pope Francis's) Catechism, but like a lot of "trads" prefers the Roman Catechism which was published in the 1500s.
This is why I have to say "standard" Roman Catholicism, because of people like Gibson who identify as Catholic or Roman Catholic, but have fringe ideas.
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Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
We largely agree, with the difference being I acknowledge a difference in gravity between grave sins and light sins. It's a categorical difference.
I know you and Acts 9erism deny this categorical distinction (as do many Evangelicals—you're in good company), but it is the most important difference between what you say here and standard Roman Catholicism.
Scripture is clear that the notion of a difference in gravity exists
$$ Mt 23:23
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier [matters] of the law ...
$$ Ro 1:32
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death ...
Not every sin is as weighty as every other, not every sin is worthy of death
$$ 1Jo 5:16
If any man see his brother sin a sin [which is] not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
$$ 1Jo 5:17
All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.
You combine this Scriptural concept with what you wrote here, and you're really close to standard Roman Catholicism, like JR is really close too.
You mean he believes 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, and you don't? You sit in a confessional because you are not under grace and still in sin and need to absolved by a "Priest"? Pretty close?
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
I believe the whole Bible, I'm sure he does too.
Haven't been to confession for well over a year. Even the Church precept is once a year minimum during Easter time, but confession isn't for if you don't commit grave sins. If you don't commit grave sins you don't need to go to confession. The precept presumes you commit at least one grave sin per year. But if you don't, then you don't have to go.
And even if you do commit grave sin, like consume xorno, or commit some form of Onanism (these are popular grave sins among men), even then it doesn't rise to the level of mortal sin unless you do it with full knowledge and deliberate consent—it's a pretty high bar.
But more than anything you should go to confession if you habitually commit grave sin, because it means you're under diabolic assault, and you're taking heavy losses. Confession is exorcistic. Once you're absolved (by Christ, the authority of the confessor belongs to Christ) you're delivered from the diabolic—then you need to avoid the near or proximate occasion of sin. Because the diabolic wait for you, they wait for you to come to them. If you don't come to them, their ability to lead you into temptation and into grave sin is much more successful.
Right Divider
Body part
He was replying to Nick.
He was quoting Clete, no? I was responding to post #470
Nonsense!
I couldn't care less about what Catholicism teaches. You might as well be telling me what Scientology teaches.
NONE of that has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the Catholic doctrine you are referring too!
No, Idolater. I can't tell if this is coming from an ignorance of your doctrine or mine. I suspect its a lot of both! Catholic doctrines concerning various sins is simply appalling to the point of being blasphemous. At the very least, it undermines the validity or even the basic need for Christ's work at Calvary. It is the furthest thing from biblical.
If sin isn't what separates us from God (i.e. any sin, not just the "big ones"), then the need for the cross becomes murky at best. The entire message of Scripture is that sin brings death, and death is the separation from the life of God. There’s no neat category in the Bible for “minor” sins that only wound your relationship but don’t kill it.
Romans 6:23 doesn’t say, “The wages of grave sin is death.” It says...
Romans 6:23 The wages of sin IS death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And James just spells it out explicitly!...
James 2:10 “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
The idea that some sins don’t separate you from God isn't just a theological oddity, it’s a serious detour from the very heart of Christianity! Calvary makes no sense if only certain sins require it. Every single one of us needs the cross! Not because we’re all murderers, but because we’ve all sinned.