my thoughts about jesus and god.. and questions to the more experienced.

reply to post by ccseagull

How Does God Make Us Righteous?
How does God make us perfectly righteous in His sight? He does this by putting us IN CHRIST. The Bible says,

"Of Him [God] are you IN CHRIST JESUS...." 1 Corinthians 1:30


The words IN CHRIST express the glorious position God has given to the believer. How did we get into Christ? God put us there! We could not put ourselves IN CHRIST, but God has done this for us. The Bible says, "Of Him are you IN CHRIST JESUS."

We ourselves are not righteous, but God has put us IN CHRIST. When God looks at us, He does not see us as we are; He sees only Christ. Because we are IN CHRIST, we have a perfect righteousness before God. Christ is our righteousness. The Bible says,

"For He [God] has made Him [Christ] to be sin [a sin offering] for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." 2 Corinthians 5:21

You are missing the context so don't understand what Paul was teaching.
He says, "where is the teacher of the Law" and "the wise".
What you had then was this great monolith of a thing that was Judaism, that prided itself on legalism and wisdom.
Paul is saying that you gentiles have actually a greater thing than that, in the person, Christ.

reply to post by ccseagull

This verse says that we are made "the righteousness of God" IN CHRIST. This righteousness is perfect because Christ is perfect. This righteousness never changes because Christ never changes. This righteousness is now our righteousness because we are IN CHRIST.

This perfect righteousness is not obtained by our works. We cannot produce it ourselves. It is given to us as a free gift when we take Christ as our Saviour. The Bible says,

". . . those who receive abundance of grace and THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ." Romans 5:17

The Apostle Paul was a very religious man. He worked hard trying to produce his own righteousness. But Paul came to see that he could never make himself acceptable to God by his own works.

What did Paul do? He put his faith in Jesus Christ and received God's gift of perfect righteousness. Paul wrote,

". . . I count all things but loss. . . that I may win Christ, And be found IN HIM, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Philippians 3:8, 9

This wonderful gift of perfect righteousness is not just for the Apostle Paul. It is for all believers. The moment we believed, God put us IN CHRIST and we received this perfect righteousness.

God Accepts Us Because We Are In Christ

People in that time and culture had one way to be righteous, and that was to become a Jew by being circumcised and obeying all the laws in the Old Testament.

Paul was saying there was another way to be righteous and that was through believing that Jesus was Lord and obeying the law of Faith, which is what replaces the old way of righteousness by following a bunch of old written codes, but following a spirit that comes from God and lives in your heart that guides you into true righteousness.

reply to post by ccseagull

One doesn't work to belong to Christ or to get to heaven. We have been forgiven for past/present/future sins. We don't want to continue to sin because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, guiding us and because we love Jesus too much. To cause pain to others causes Jesus sadness.

We are saved to good works.
It says that in Ephesians.
When it says "saved", it means it in the sense that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai became a holy nation (or at least that was the intention of the One who led them there).
This is what the New Testament is all about, it says here was this thing and it is described in a book that the Jews keep as holy and is basically their constitution for this kingdom that they think that they belong to.
The Gospel is that we now have the equivalent of that former thing but it is more real and its promises are better and you are just as much in a kingdom, and you are just as saved as those who trod across the dry path through the Red Sea, to be a holy and sanctified people to God.

reply to post by ccseagull

I wouldn't want anyone to think that there is anything else they have to do to live eternal life. To do so is impossible as none of us are perfect and we will never attain any kind of level of righteousness (being good and without sin) in front of God and instead this just creates such self defeat and hoplessness that it pulls one away from God. If one is a Christian or wants to be one then all they have to do is believe. That is faith. And it all begins with believing there is a God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. How can we think that there is anything else we have to do to gain such purity to achieve these goals if we don't even believe in our Father? What I'm saying is that yes we have historical records, objects, the Bible. But ultimatelly it boils down to faith. And so by saying to someone that by just believing doesn't get you eternal life then none of God's word is true.

So you discount the entire Bible in favor of some friendly sounding pseudo-psychology?
"Faith" is turned into a technical term by Paul and it means the thing in Christianity that the Mosaic Law was in Judaism, so it is just as much a way of life as all the things that the Jews did to be considered as Jews, and makes the exact same demands, which is perfect obedience.
It just isn't a bunch of stuff that only serves as show but is practical things that are done out of love and serves a real purpose that is helpful to our fellow men.

reply to post by ccseagull

It is those that cry out to God that they spoke the word, used his name, did good works that God will not take.

This is apparently your response to my earlier mention of the saying of Jesus about those who in the judgment cry "Lord, Lord".
Jesus calls them "workers of iniquity".
So they weren't people "doing good works" as you are claiming, but were those acting like the Pharisees, doing things for their own glory to be considered by others to be holy while behind the scenes they are robbing people.

I just read a number somewhere of the amount of pastors/ministers/etc that have lost their faith but they keep at their "job" because they have no other way to make a living. THESE are the people that God will call out. It is the tv evangelists who are ripping people off by asking for more and more money while acting like they live the word of God but fail miserably. It is those that pray loudly and give the impression they are so holy but don't really believe - they don't realize God knows what is in everyone's heart and He knows who genuinely loves Him and BELIEVE instead of the poser.

Right.
But what sort of message do those people have?

So to all confused and worried people - believe. I do believe it is that simple.

Belief is the first step, then you repent and are baptized and then you are filled with the spirit and sanctified to good works.
If you are sinning then there is a failure and no amount of hypothesizing and theorizing will fix that.
Salvation theory will be worthless in the judgment.

reply to post by Belcastro


God the Father and Jesus, His Son, both have existed from the dateless past. When Jesus said "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father," he was replying to Philip, one of the disciples, who said, "Show us the Father, and it suffice us." All the works that Jesus did while here on earth were done by the Father, through Him. He even said that he did nothing of Himself, but that it was the Father through Him. To see Jesus performing those miracles and preaching the Word as it had never been preached before, was essentially to see the Father. Jesus said in John 14:10:

John 14:10(AKJV)
10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by Him. He is not equal to the Father; He even said that no one is good, not even I, but the Father only. However, when we accept Him, we accept the Father. We cannot accept God into our hearts without having first accepted His Son and the sacrifice He made on the behalf of all humanity, so that anyone may have eternal life.

The Trinity is a Roman Catholic doctrine. There are three distinct persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was baptized, the sky opened and the Holy Spirit ascended upon Him, while the voice of the Father was heard from Heaven saying, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased." This shows that there are three distinct persons, in three different places at the same moment.

The sword that Jesus came with is the Word of God. Not a literal sword, or a sword in the sense that He was here to punish or fight. He preached as no one had ever preached before; He called sinners to repentance, He established a church which would spread the gospel around the world. That is the sword he wielded.

If you were to meet Jesus, He would not be angry at you for not knowing the truth. The depth of His love, pity, and forgiveness will never be understood in this lifetime. There is even some of it which will never be fully understood for all of eternity. He prayed for the forgiveness of the people who were murdering him, as they were doing so. If you truly, in your heart of hearts, do not know or understand something, we are not held accountable for it. We are judged according to the light which we have been given.

Jesus is our Redeemer, the one who created us in cooperation with the Father. He definitely deserves our worship. We are to come to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. When we pray, we are to pray to the Father in the name of His Son. The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in us. We can only come to the Father through the Son.

reply to post by jeramie

Matthew 10:34 & 39
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
(2011 NIV)

I think that this mention of "a sword" is to alert the listener that he is about to make a military reference.
What he says in the second verse here sounds like a rewording of what had become a sort of motto in the Roman legions, that whoever tries to save their own life in battle becomes a disgrace, and would be better off if they had died.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I'm saying that there is an exception to normal rules when it comes to this particular word because of a standardized usage of it to always mean a particular sort of idea.

I wanted to add a little explanation to what I mentioned briefly earlier.
The lexiconal form of the Greek verb in question is ginomai.
It is given the Strong's number, G1096.
The literal meaning is, to come about.
Also to be born.
A common usage of it in the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament is literally to give birth to a child.
Somehow something comes into existence, and generally, when the form of this verb is egeneto, which occurs in John 1:14, is used, it means that a certain situation has come about.
Much like how in the Old Testament the Hebrew word Hiyah (or way·hî ) וַיְהִ֗י is used to mean, and it came to pass that.
There are 75 different morphological forms of this particular Greek verb found in the New Testament, and what I am proposing is that generally this one form, egeneto, is set aside for this specific usage. One out of 75. In English, there isn't 75 forms of any word, but Greek is a little more complex in where it came from, though it was somewhat simplified by the time that the New Testament was written.