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Originally posted by Bill Gray:
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Originally posted by gbrk:
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Originally posted by Bill Gray:
You have missed the whole point of Jesus' story and my post. What Jesus Christ is saying is that a person must be willing to turn from following the world, i.e, turn from worldly things -- do a 180 degree turn -- and FOLLOW HIM.
See though Bill I may still be misunderstanding it but when you say that a person must be willing to turn from following the world, stop sinning or however you want to put it then that to me is a form of Works. It's something that the individual does on their part in order to achieve salvation and a right standing with God.
Hi GB,
Yes, we are told to repent, i.e., turn from following the world and turn 180 degrees to follow Jesus Christ.
If you want to swim in the semantics pool and call this "works" -- not a problem. However, this is not the "works" God speaks of in Ephesians 2:8-9 when He tells us,
"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God -- NOT as a result of WORKS, so that no one may boast." But, if you want to believe that you have to WORK your way into heaven; I have one question for you:
"When will you know that you have WORKED enough to earn entry into heaven?"And, what did God mean in Isaiah 64:6 when He tells us, through Isaiah, that our WORKS are, to Him, like filthy garments?
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Bill, you continue to avoid the obvious and clear teaching of the new Testament on baptism.
The unfortunate diminution of the role of baptism in remission of sins and salvation traces back to the Protestant Reformation and to the rejection of the elements of Catholicism that elevated good works to an exaggerated position of significance. With the Reformation, the pendulum swung to another extreme, namely an un-scripturally narrow concept of “salvation by faith only” that irrationally declares that baptism as not necessary for salvation on the grounds that baptism is a “work.”
But baptism is never portrayed in scripture as a work of merit, carried out for the purpose of earning one’s salvation. Baptism, in the new Testament, is a passive act in which the penitent believer, having faith in salvaton through Christ, submits to an action that God has ordained as the place and event in which the believer is “…buried with him [Christ] by baptism into death.” In baptism, the believer gets into the death of Christ. Christ shed his blood in His death, and that blood is the agent of atonement (“What can wash away my sins?” Nothing but the blood of Jesus”). It is that blood, and not the action of the believer, that redeems the lost soul. This concept of baptism is described with beautiful clarity in Romans 6:
1What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
3Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
4Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7For he that is dead is freed from sin.
8Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
9Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
10For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
So there you are–the believer, in baptism, dies with Christ; in baptism, the believer’s ’old man’ of sin is “crucified with Him” (sounds a lot like that “remission of sin” Peter spoke of in Acts 2:38:“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins….”)
Baptism as necessary for salvation was rejected by John Calvin and Uldreich Zwingli and others of the Protestant Reformation following about 1400 years in which the church uniformly held that baptism was for the remission of sins. Their rejection was couched upon the argument that baptism was a work of merit, and they lumped baptism with actual works of merit demanded in their era by the Catholic Church. But baptism, as taught in scripture is no work of merit at all. It is the penitent believer’s passive acceptance of the God-ordained place and event in which the sins of the sinner are brought into the “likeness of His death” with the result (v. 5) that “we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” It is a deplorable artificiality to lump baptism with “works of merit” and then to degrade the significance of baptism on the basis of that unscriptural characterization.
Have you heard of Charles G. Finney? Finney was perhaps the premier evangelist of his time, the early to mid-19th Century. It was Finney who popularized what has been called the “mourners’ bench,” of as he preferred to call it, the “anxious seat.” Finney unflinchingly and candidly admitted that in his employment of the “anxious seat,” he had doctored up the New Testament concept of repentance and salvation. Here is Finney’s description of the “anxious seat,” in his own words:
“ the appointment of some particular seat in the place of meeting, where the anxious may come and be addressed particularly, and be made subjects of prayer and sometimes conversed with individually.” (Hm-m-m–sounds quite a bit like that counseling tent where those who answered Billy Graham’s altar call were sent).
As to how., if at all, this “anxious seat” business could be related to baptism, Finney states as follows:
“If you say to him, ‘There is the anxious seat, come out and be on the Lord’s side,‘ is he is not willing to do so small a thing as that, then he is not willing to do anything, and there he is, brought out before his own conscience. It uncovers a delusion of the human heart, and prevents a great many spurious conversions, by showing those who might otherwise imagine themselves willing to do anything for Christ, that in fact, they are willing to do nothing.
The church has always felt it necessary to have something of the kind to answer this very purpose. In the days of the apostles baptism answered this purpose. The Gospel was preached and those who were willing to be on the side of Christ were called on to be baptized. It (baptism) held the precise place that the anxious seat does now, as a public manifestation of their determination to be Christian.”
The above is a verbatim quotation from page 254 of Finney’s most famous book “Revivals of Religion,” 2nd Edition October 22, 1868, Fleming & Revell, publishers).
See what Finney has done. Finney contends that baptism, as practiced in the early church (“in the days of the apostles”), answered the purpose that Finney has boldly and un-scripturally assigned to the “anxious seat.” Baptism, as taught in the New Testament, does far more than what the “anxious seat” is said to do; thus Finney’s assertion that baptism and the “anxious seat” hold analogous places in the scheme of redemption is to be rejected. But how arrogant it is for a mere man to presume to substitute his invention for the scripturally-prescribed ordinance of baptism, all the while and without shame or regret admitting that he has thus tampered with the teaching of the Word of God!
The Finneys of today tell us that baptism is not necessary for remission of sins, notwithstanding all the clear teaching of scripture to the contrary. The Finneys of today tell lost sinners to pray a “sinner’s prayer;” to “ask Jesus to come into your heart” and to “get saved” on the basis of those actions, without the necessity of baptism. The Finneys of today can no more find scriptural grounds for that doctrine that Finney himself could find a scriptural rationale for intruding his “anxious seat” into the place for