Featured Bought versus Redeemed

Van, you absolutely tell us that it is the human will that seals the deal with God.
You tell us that God bought and ransomed all humanity, 100% of humans from Adam to the end of time, but that is only effective if the individual person "believes into Jesus" so that they won't perish.
To restate:
All that Jesus did is only actually effective and complete...if...the individual person "believes into" Jesus. If the individual human does not do the believing then Jesus great sacrifice on their behalf was completely and utterly wasted blood that does nothing and does not purchase the individual out of sin and damnation.
@Van, it is right there in your own words. Any discerning person can see what you teach and any Christian with any discernment can see the massive contradictions and problems that your teaching causes.

I leave the readers to decide.

 

Bravo!

Bravo! Bravo!

Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Yes, a difficult passage. Thank you, for your treatment of it!!

 

At issue, is the Son, who is God's Lamb, the same God as His Father?

 

If a person is under the New Covenant then that person receives an eternal inheritance.

*Hebrews 9:14-18,23-28*
How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

 

You snipped the Bible and what it tells you and then declare a false assertion. You don't even address Hebrews 9.
*Hebrews 9:15-17*
Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

Read the passage. The New Covenant established an eternal inheritance to those who are called.

Is the entire world called and does the entire world receive the New Covenant by being bought, as you have asserted? If so, then the entire world would receive an eternal inheritance.
However, it is only those sheep to whom Jesus speaks and hear his voice that are called and receive the New Covenant. The entire world was not bought or ransomed by Jesus. If they all were bought/ransomed by Jesus, they all would receive an eternal inheritance.

 

Agorazo simply means to buy, purchase or acquire. The context determines its exact meaning. Revelation 5:9-10, NASB. 'Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased [Gk. agorazo] for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.' Christ has purchased us for God by His blood, and it is clear that it is for all time. The difference between this verse and 2 Peter 2:1 is that there it appears to have been the Father who 'bought' these false teachers and there is no mention of the blood of Christ.

I shall be interested as to what you think is the difference between 'buy' and 'acquire.' But the rest I think you need to read again. I don't think you wanted to say what you have written.

Revelation 5:9-10 (see above) refutes this strange concept. I reject utterly your unique mistranslation of hilasmos in 1 John 2:2.

That is not what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says:
'For this is the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I shall be their God and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbour, and none his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I shall be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’ (Heb. 8:10-12).
If the new covenant is made with 'humanity' then there can be no objection to baptizing infants into it and we should all become Presbyterians. But as you can see by the parts of the quotation that I have underlined, the new covenant is made with those who have God's righteous laws written on their minds and hearts, who know God and whose sins God has forgiven. The Mosaic covenant was made with the physical descendants of Abraham (via Isaac); the new covenant was made with the spiritual descendants of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 26-29. Contrast Exodus 19:5-6 with 1 Peter 2:9-10).

 

You stated these exact words:
"Christ’s sacrifice on the cross bought us out of our prior condition and put us, all mankind, under the New Covenant in His blood.. We no longer must remain separated from God, because our sins can be washed away by the blood of Jesus."

So, those words speak universalism.

But, you backtrack on this and then share (my interpretation) that Jesus blood only potentially bought people. People have to choose God and God must declare their faith as righteous before that blood payment is actually finalized.

Your teaching, Van, is a twist on what the Judaizers taught and Paul condemned in Galatians. No matter how you try to talk around it, that is the essence of your teaching and it is decidedly not what God teaches.

 

Read what you assert.
You make Jesus ransom a secondary action that can only be effective if men choose to believe. Therefore man's willful choose to believe is more powerful than Jesus sacrifice on the cross.
Can you see this or is this just a huge blind spot for you?

 

It does appear that the 'Master of 2 Peter 2:1 is the Father because of the O.T. allusion, of which more later. There is a textual variant in Jude 4 which makes it somewhat uncertain who 'Master refers to. However every other appearance of despotes in the N.T. that does not refer to human masters (Luke 2:29; Acts of the Apostles 10:29; Revelation 6:10) clearly refers to the Father or to the Triune God rather than to Christ.

Nope. The text does not say so.

Agreed.

This is fantasy. Christ died to redeem those whom the Father gave to Him and He has lost not a single one (John 6:37). He laid down His life for the sheep, not the goats.

With what then did He ransom the individuals to deliver them out of darkness etc.?

No. Christ laid down His life for the sheep.

I note that you have not relied to my point about the New Covenant. Here it is again in case you missed it:

That is not what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says:
'For this is the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I shall be their God and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbour, and none his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I shall be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’ (Heb. 8:10-12).
If the new covenant is made with 'humanity' then there can be no objection to baptizing infants into it and we should all become Presbyterians. But as you can see by the parts of the quotation that I have underlined, the new covenant is made with those who have God's righteous laws written on their minds and hearts, who know God and whose sins God has forgiven. The Mosaic covenant was made with the physical descendants of Abraham (via Isaac); the new covenant was made with the spiritual descendants of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 26-29. Contrast Exodus 19:5-6 with 1 Peter 2:9-10).

 

Do you see your massive contradiction in what you just posted. You assert man's work and deny it at the same time. You nullify yourself with your comment here.

 

Absolutely.

The vast majority of the extant MSS have the textual variant. Those who favour the Critical Text will favour one view; those who (like me) favour the Majority or Byzantine text, the other. But we shall have to agree to disagree.

Nice begging of the question! Even if we allow Jude 1:4 as referring to Christ, which is uncertain, it has no bearing upon 2 Peter 2:1.
This leads us to the question of Deuteronomy 32:6. The question is whether qanah (7069) means 'Buy' or 'create' in that verse? I have no knowledge of Hebrew, but I can read Vine's Expository Dictionary as well as Van, and it is clear that the word can mean either. The KJV, NKJV and NASB have 'buy'; the "agenda-driven" ESV and NIV have 'create.' I will simply observe that the only other appearance of qanah in Deuteronomy is in 28:68, where it can only mean 'buy.' Also, it seems rather likely that 2 Peter 2:1 is alluding to the verse and whether it means 'buy' or 'create' there, it can only be God the Father rather than the Son who is being referenced.

But more important than any of this is that in Van's misunderstanding of salvation, the cross, to him, is not the pivotal thing. Christ, he says, died for everyone without exception, and therefore His sufferings and death have no direct bearing on who is saved. But Paul declares, '... I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified' (1 Cor. 2:2). For him, Christ's death was absolutely centre stage.

I am still waiting for Van's answer concerning the New Covenant.

That is not what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says:
'For this is the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I shall be their God and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbour, and none his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I shall be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’ (Heb. 8:10-12).
If the new covenant is made with 'humanity' then there can be no objection to baptizing infants into it and we should all become Presbyterians. But as you can see by the parts of the quotation that I have underlined, the new covenant is made with those who have God's righteous laws written on their minds and hearts, who know God and whose sins God has forgiven. The Mosaic covenant was made with the physical descendants of Abraham (via Isaac); the new covenant was made with the spiritual descendants of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 26-29. Contrast Exodus 19:5-6 with 1 Peter 2:9-10).