Featured The gospel according to Paul

“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Did Abraham believe? Yes. Was he made to believe? No! What would have happened if stopped believing, would God have still credited His righteousness to an unbelieving Abraham? No! Therefore faith is not a one time response. We must continue to believe....

 

I'm new here. Why do you close down threads?

 

You wish....

 

No, it means exactly what it states. No ridiculous contortions needed...."If" is conditional. Christ will present your "new creation" perfect in Himself IF you keep your faith in Him.

Heb 11:6 "without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him."

Faith is placing your confidence and trust, daily, to the God of heaven.

Heb 3:12 "See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has an evil, unbelieving heart that forsakes the living God. 13 But exhort one another each day, as long as it is called “Today,” that none of you may become hardened by sin’s deception. 14 For we have become partners with Christ, if in fact we hold our initial confidence firm until the end. "

The writer of Hebrews (who I believe was Paul) is warning the Hebrew believers not to give up their faith in Christ.

If you can't give up your faith, then why did Paul warn believers not to? Apparently Paul understood that a believer could give up Christ.

 

The NASB states it better: "the deceitfulness of sin"

How is sin a deceiver?

First, I'm not speaking of transgression. I'm talking about "indwelling sin" - our fallen, human nature. How can our nature deceive us?

Before I touch on this let me say that our natures get the best of us many times. If not then we aren't sinning and coming short of the glory of God. So our natures are alive.

The gospel states that we are incapable of producing genuine works of righteousness. All we can produce is self-righteousness, that is, righteousness produced by our natures, which if filthy rags in God's eyes.

That is why Jesus said, "Without me you can do nothing." He didn't mean we couldn't do math or drive a car - He meant that without His Spirit we cannot produce genuine righteousness.

The problem with our fallen natures is they try to convince our hearts that we really aren't that bad. In fact we are basically good. I'm sure you've heard that statement, that is, that people are basically good.

Well, that's "the deceitfulness of sin".

Let me explain using 1 John 1:8

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

To say we are as perfect, as God is perfect, is a deception. IF a believer maintains this...if he persists that he is righteous and that He doesn't need Christ, he is deceived by his own sinful nature.

We are warned not to give up Christ. "Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires". In other words they put no confidence in the flesh.

 

Yes, but we still have our natures to contend with....Therefore we must allow, through faith, for Christ to defeat our doubt and unbelief. Without faith in Him we stand no chance against our fallen, human natures. Therefore we must keep the faith until the end.