Why does Jesus say the following, If ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS ACCEPT HIM AS SAVIOUR AND WE ARE THEN SAVED?.... Matt.7:21-23, Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
22 Many will say to Me in that day, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?"
23 And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; Depart from Me,You who practice lawlessness"{This is addressed to people who think they are Christians but sadly only {deceiving themselves}! And what or how does the bible define lawlessness? {1}. WHAT IS SIN? {Or Lawlessness?}
By way of definition we may say that sin is a godless attitude of mind which manifests itself in disobedience of the commandments of Yahveh the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. The Bible says simply:
1 John 3:4, Everyone who sins breaks the law: In fact sin is lawlessness, NIV
In other words when a person violates one or more of the Almighty's commandments, then that person is sinning, whether he/she knows or believes it or not,.In other words one or more of the commandments are not important in their mind, {Sabbath?.}
PURPOSE OF THE LAW
Why was the law given in the first place? Why do we need moral laws?
Rom 3:20, For by the law is the knowledge of sin
Rom 7:7,What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
You will see from these texts that Yahveh's law defines sin. It brings it to one's attention. It details the behaviour God the Most High considers right and wrong.Gods standard! Humanity is incapable of defining sin. Only the Creator can do that. Were a society to totally set aside Yahveh's law, the law which defines sin, then within a single generation people would become incapable of even recognising error. Such a society would inevitably descend into a vortex of vice, violence and vandalism beyond our ability to imagine, let alone control. {Example before the flood! Gen.6:11,Now the earth was corrupt in Gods sight and full of violence!}
TYPES OF LAWLESSNESS
Sin is lawlessness. Sin is breaking divine law. From the Biblical viewpoint lawlessness, disobedience and sin are three words meaning the same thing. The two words 'sin' and 'disobedience' are interchangeable. Broadly speaking, sin may be divided into two categories:
{Obvious Sins}
These are the all too evident sins of Idoltry,blasphemy, deceit, theft, violence, rape, sodomy, adultery, murder, dishonor parents etc.
{Not so Obvious Sins}
Then we have the socially acceptable sins such as unbelief, covetousness, ingratitude, envy, pride and Sabbath-breaking.including Holy Days, Sins which are not easy for society to reconize but according to Gods word are just as serious as the other sins, James 2:10, For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God's laws.NLT
All these sins are really expressions of rebellion or hostility and hate against the Almighty's law which is rebellion against Gods rule over our lives. The spirit of rebellion was first manifest in the mind of Satan, the first sinner ever to break Gods laws.
Sin (lawlessness) is an inherent anti-God attitude which manifests itself in disobedience of one or more of the commandments of God.
Sin results in guilt, disease, disorder and disasters of all kinds.
There is no man-made remedy for sin. It is fatal. It ends in eternal death!
Yahveh's law, perfect and holy though it is, is unable to save the sinner. Its primary purpose is simply to define sin and to point the sinner to Jesus Christ Yeshua the Messiah .
Sin can only be overcome by the power of Yahveh the Almighty God of Israel as administered through His Son: by His Holy Spirit whose ultimate objective is to write his Father's law on the mind of all true believers. That is why he came to earth in the first place: to save his people from their sins.
In short: salvation comes through Jesus Christ. In other words if We have truly repented and accepted Jesus as Saviour,King and Ruler over our lives we will want to obey Him with every fiber of our being from deep within our hearts as love for Him because as the bible says..John 14:15,If you love me keep My commandments,"Jesus said,I have kept my Father's commandments" (John 15:10). 1 John 2:6,Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did. That is the defination of a true Christian,Not a false Jesus who modern religion claims came to do away His Fathers laws and nail His laws to the cross and free us from that terrible Law!.....Who in the end, The real Christ will have to say to them..
Matthew 25:41 "Then He [Jesus] will say to those on his left, `Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." So what is more important, The real Christ who demands an attitude of submission and obedience in the mind to His Laws as as King of Kings and Lord Of Lords or the way of sin and rebellion which Satan choose and because of that the lake of fire or hell was prepared for?
John 2:4, He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Rev.21:8,But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liers, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
I think sin goes beyond transgression of the law, it is about our heart. You can do all the good deeds you want, attend every service, say all the right things, etc. If you are not doing them out of love, you are wasting your time.
That is why God had to give the law to the children of Israel, to teach them to love. They had been slaves for 400 years and had no idea what it was to love. Notice every law has to do with our treatment of God or each other.
It really is that easy, if we do everything out of love, we will never fall into transgression.
If you notice in the verses you gave about the people who Jesus will say to: "depart from me I never knew you", that those people came to Jesus BRAGGING AABOUT THEIR WORKS!!
The entire world wants to pretend they can work their way to heaven or are already good enough to go to heaven because they are a "good person". We have Roman Catholicism, the JW's and the Mormons, ALL teaching and believing in faith PLUS works. Those people who believe they are their own saviour WILL talk to Jesus about all the supposed good things they have done. And that means that they did NOT trust in the PERFECT work of Jesus, they instead TRUST IN THEMSELVES.
If you believe in Faith plus works, then you are saying Jesus' death was not good enough, and that is a horrible thing to say to God!
This is the reason many religious types will end up in Hell, and Jesus said this would happen.
How can a person be saved? ONLY by faith in Jesus ALONE.
Sir James, you hit the nail on the head and gave a most concise explanation that faith alone saves us and not the law.
Romans 10:17 �So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
John 7:38 �He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
John 7:38 �He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
One point I didn't see made was that the Law and its ordinances have been abolished.
Ephesians 2:14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
15 �Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.
Since we have peace and no fleshly ordinances, good bye water baptism and other fleshly ordinances.
Philippians 3:3 �For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
Thank God all we need is Christ's perfect righteousness.
Romans 1:17 �For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Romans 3:25 �Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
Romans 5:18 �Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
Ummmm...Pixy aint been here long enough ta know that Beefcake/Ron an GaryLane AKA TomJones Etc...Drop in ON an OFF the Forums ta...well... Participate an Stir Stuff up in the pot...:rolleyes:...Some GOOD an some not so good....
Yall hava a nice PICK-NICK at he BBQ an may God Bless ya on yer journey through the Treads....
This is not the place for strong meat anyway as it's just a dating site so I will chill for awhile to let the post sink in and if it doesn't register don't worry about it...
@beefcake- Your post is fine... and it registered... I just got silly thoughts in my head whenever I saw the title of your post. And at last, my humour got the best of me.
Romans 7:4-6
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. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But 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.
Galatians 2:15-21
"We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
"If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
