Fear
I submit to you that where as fear is good office work in preparing us for grace, it’s no place to stop. And the Holy Ghost doesn’t stop there. That’s the reason why no one can savingly receive Christ until they’ve repented. And no one can repent until they’ve been convicted. And conviction is the work of the Holy Ghost that helps a sinner to see that he is a criminal before God and deserves all of God’s wrath. And if God were to send him to the lowest corner of a devil’s Hell forever and ten eternities, that he deserved it all! And a hundred fold more. Because he’s seen his crimes.
posted by Marcian @ 11:49 AM
5 Comments:
Which is precisely the reason that we sin. Would we need God if nobody sinned?
M
No, we sin because Adam fell. We are born into it. We're no tabula rasa. But we cannot expect a "salvation" to occur if we've never seen the gravity of our crimes against a holy God.
Would we need God if nobody sinned? Absolutely. Adam needed God before he sinned, when he was perfect, as God had made him. And it was the act of saying "I don't need God to tell me what to do" that got us into this mess to begin with.
OK Marcia, I do agree that people who don't see themselves as sinners will not see their need for eternal life. However, that doesn't mean people have to ball their eyes out over their sin before they can be saved. Jesus has removed the sin barrier through His Death and Resurrection. Anyone who believes that Jesus freely provides them with eternal life through His Death and Resurrection, completely apart from any work, has eternal life.
The only people who understand the gravity of sin are those people who have been growing in Grace after being saved. That's right, only growing Christians see the gravity of sin. A Christian is who at one time has believed in Jesus for the absolutely free gift of eternal life. Making a commitment to Jesus is NOT saving faith. Knowing you have eternal life is the key to growing in Grace.
i just figured you typed in all caps because you were at work.
c
Marcia, have you listened to Matt's teaching, Are There Two Wills in God? If not, may I direct you to it? It's really, really good.
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