Sonship

[Jerusalem Blade]

Hello Meg,

Please, you are most welcome to discuss -- and argue -- theology with me. This is an open discussion forum, both genders accorded exactly the same rights to participate and benefit from vigorous, gracious, debate. This is not a church situation where our respective roles might modify our conduct. I have found your remarks on various topics to be well considered and often edifying. Please don't hold back the intelligence you have by virtue of the Spirit of Christ indwelling you, and Christ's word in your mind and heart! It is "with all the saints [male and female]" that we "comprehend...the love of Christ" (Eph 3:18, 19), and the truths of His gospel.

To the point: Yes, you are right, election is the first all-inclusive category, of which justification is a component. Yet I venture to say that adoption is the primary purpose -- after God's glory -- of that election: "predestinated...unto the adoption of children" (Eph 1:5), and all the redemptive work of our Savior was done to merit for us what was required for that adoption to be realized. Thus the work by which we are justified is a component -- a part of the whole -- of the larger end, which is adoption. When all of faith is passed away as being of the age prior to Glory, adoption shall remain, our unending joy, and God's delight.


Chris,

I would think "sanctification by faith" the Biblical view of all theological paradigms, as it is the Scriptural view. That it was part of the Wesleyan is no condemnation of it (even as the EO and RC holding to the Trinity is no condemnation of that).

I was actually in the thrall of the Wesleyan perfectionism and Finney's Pelagian doctrine of self-effort and the will of man for too long (as a young Christian). So please don't assume I would have any friendship with Wesleyan doctrine, or even terminology. Sanctification by faith is to me a no-brainer, for we can receive nothing from God except it be by faith. As Paul says, "Are you so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" (Gal 3:3) And in 1 Cor 1:30, it is Christ who "is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption", and it is by faith alone we receive Him and His glorious benefits us-ward.

So sanctification by faith is a Biblically respectable doctrine, given its presence in the Reformed panoply of truth.

 

[Iconoclast]

sin boldly quote

CL,
Thanks for supplying the sin boldly quote. I had not read that material before. When I looked at the section discussing the context of the two quotes you offered, I found a helpful explanation offered in the article
explaining that these quotes were not worded in the clearest way.
The idea trying to be expressed was that Jesus saves to the uttermost those that will come to God by Him.
Here is the part of the article that clarify's this;

For Luther, the remnants of sin were not a license to “sin boldly”. Commenting on Romans 7:17, the sins that remain in a believer’s life are there to be fought:

“Sin remains in the spiritual man for the exercise of grace, the humbling of pride, and the repression of presumption. For he who is not busily at work driving out sin without a doubt has sin by the very fact of this neglect, even though he has committed no further sin for which he may be damned. For we are not called to idleness; we are called to labor against our passions. These would not be without guilt—for they are truly sins, indeed damnable ones — if the mercy of God did not forego imputing them to us. But He does not impute them to those only who manfully undertake the struggle with their failings and, calling upon the grace of God, fight it through. Therefore he who goes to confession should not fancy that he is laying down burdens in order to live a life of ease. On the contrary, he should know that by laying down the burden he is undertaking to serve as a soldier of God and is taking a different burden upon himself, the burden of battling for God against the devil and his own failings. The man who does not know this will suffer a quick relapse. Therefore he who does not intend henceforth to fight—why does he ask to be absolved and to be enrolled in the army of Christ?”[32]

“No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.”

Luther’s critics often quote this statement. The Catholic scholar Jared Wicks has correctly pointed out, “One needs to be on the lookout for Luther's rhetorical flights, and to be judicious in discriminating between the substance of his message and the linguistic extremes with which he sometimes made his points.”[33] The above statement is a perfect example. The point Luther is making is not to go out and murder or fornicate as much as possible, but rather to point out the infinite sacrifice of Christ’s atonement. There is no sin that Christ cannot cover. His atonement was of an infinite value. That this statement was not to be considered literally is apparent by Luther’s use of argumentum ad absurdum: do people really commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day? No. Not even the most heinous God-hating sinner is able to carry out such a daily lifestyle.

Clearly then Luther was not speaking against the idea of mortification of sin, or of the dominion of sin being broken in a child of God. No one advocates sinless perfection here. No one advocates a believer living a life of self condemning ,and morbid introspection leading to bondage. Chris let me ask you how you understand keeping a balance in these area's. Take some time to explain if possible how we are to follow peace with all men and holiness.
Or how we are to examine ourselves. I am thinking of the practical implications of almost every epistle that instructs us how we should live in light of the doctrine we are given by our Lord.