Jac, the idea of being deceived is that we are deceived, ie, we won't ever know. And I answered in myu previous post at the end of my previous post. If I am being decieved, then all I can continue to do is pray for God to continue to reveal His truth and open my eyes.
But that will be true for whether you consider Christ to be involved or not.
1) I don't believe, personally, that people can be deceived about what they believe. They can be factually wrong, but they can't be wrong that they believe it. They can lie to me and you, but not to themselves.
Well, I completely disagree here. THe human psyche is a strange thing. It can cause people to deceive themselves. There are plenty of people who considered themselved believers and attested to the faith who then realize they didn't truly belief, people who become CHristians even after going to church for 20 years. Moreover, there are plenty who consider themselves believers who then discover later on that they were wrong, when the going gets tough, they realize that they didn't believe before. Theirs is a token belief. They didn't believe, even though they thought they did, they were deceived. So the parable of the seed, as B-W's post points out, holds true. Their belief had no roots, no substance.
2) But according to your framework, you still aren't answering my question. I know that you believe that Christ will sustain the elect. I know that you think that you are one of the elect. But the Bible doesn't say, "Christ will sustain ZoeGir."
No, I say that Christ will sustain those that are NEW CREATIONS, those that He has redeemed, those that believe. The fact that I believe that these are the elect is really a separate issue, iow, you could still believe that GOd is fathful to those who believe without believeing in election. I believe...I am a new creation in Christ.....Christ will sustain me...Christ is faithful
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And I dont' see your problem of the problem of 1 Thess.
23May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
Are we not blameless when we accept Christ's redeeming blood? When we believe Christ? I don't see at all that this requires perfectionism, rather speaking to a process.
Romans 6
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace
We will be UNITED with Him, we have been FREED. We are ALIVE in CHRIST. To borrow from God's creation....life GROWS.
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
We Belong to Him, released from sin, TO SERVE and BEAR FRUIT
9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
1 Corinthians
8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
If we are redeemed by CHrist, He changes us, we are not ours anymore. We are His temple. I happen to believe that Christ is more powerful than us. Christ will clean out our temple just as He did on earth. CAn we resist Him in this...yes, unfortunately, as your scripture concenring Paul's race shows, we can be disqualified from rewards.
1 Cor 15
9For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
2 cor
21Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect[a] the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
We become a new creation in Jesus Christ, NOT we are a new creation in CHrist but only if we abide... We are transformed into His likeness. We haev been set with His seal. We are His temple.
Your scripture passage
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Cor 9:24-27)
Does it say that he will be disqualified from salvation? No Does it say that he will not get a reward...Ok. why this is such a big deal?
But I have never said that we will be assured that we will get ALL rewards. Or that there could possibly be rewards we don't get. OR that we will be perfect and haev no problem acheiving these rewards!!
I havbe only said that in Christ we are a mew creation and that He is faithful to those He saves. To extend the race analogy, there are times in the race that we falter. DOes that mean that CHrist has let us go? Does that mean that we have ceased to have faith? No , it merely shows that we still carry the weaknesses and fall stll. Can those times be longer than they should? Sure. But CHrist can call us back and He is faithful.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. (Gal 1:6-7a)
This is tremendously vague and doesn't really show that those who were deserting were believers. I could say this to my students who are listening to stupid TV programs and using that as their worldview and this doesn't mean that a) they were believers or b) if they were believers they were completely rejecting the Gospel. Doesn't PAul say that we should take every thought captive and make it obedient to Jesus Christ. Are there not times when we fall for erroneus theology/pastors and yet still hold our faith? Was it not Christ who, through Paul, called them back to Him?! Was He not faithful to them in their growth?
I will keep posting more verses....Tired and weary from the week and blissfully looking forward to sleep. How pathetic is that!! I used to look forward to Friday nights and plan to go somehwere. Now I get excited about sleep!!
My apologies if something I said didn't make sense...I havelooked over it, but I wouldn't trust that right now!
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