Atonement

Yes

Yes

Your immediate fellowship wiht God is broken, you are convicted by teh Holy Spirit, you confess and receive forgiveness.

 

Yes

Yes

Your immediate fellowship wiht God is broken, you are convicted by teh Holy Spirit, you confess and receive forgiveness. </font>[/QUOTE]What about those who continually ignore the HS conviction, can they become hardened as Heb. 3 warns against?

 

Honest question. If we have been saved, and set free from sin, why do we need to confess and receive forgiveness again? Are we not saved from past, present, and future sins upon our acceptance of Jesus Christ?

 

Yes.

Never, except for the occasional lie. (Just kidding, of course.) Yes, I sin.

I feel convicted and moved to confess and repent. I assume this is the working of the Holy Spirit.

 

A better way to start this question would have been, "If we have been saved and set free from sin," then why do we still sin?

My answer would be: Because we still live in the flesh, and the flesh has desires that run contrary to the Spirit.

"why do we need to confess and receive forgiveness again?"

The word "again" in this question implies that to confess and be forgiven of a sin we commit is the same thing as having to be "re-saved". IMO, that's the error. We don't need to confess and receive forgiveness from the perspective of salvation. We desire to confess and receive forgiveness because we are His, and the Spirit motivates us to remain in close fellowship with Him and conform to His will.

"Are we not saved from past, present, and future sins"?

Yes, we are saved from them, in that we are spared the wrath we deserve. The sins we commit, having been saved, do not put us back in a position of being objects of wrath, so there is no need to be forgiven in order to be saved from them again.

But it is the right thing to do, and we are better off in terms of our relationship with God here on earth if we confess the sins we commit even in our saved condition. It may also affect our heavenly reward, although I haven't really looked into that from a scriptural perspective, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

Pastor Larry,

I agree with your post dated March 31st. at 9:35 a.m. Excellent answer and Biblical.

Have a good day in Chrst.

Ray

 

Yes and at that point they would be giving evidence that they had never been saved as Heb 3, Col 1, 1 John and other passages indicate. The response to teh HOly Spirit is the evidence of salvation.

 

Yes to your last question. However, sin does break our fellowship with God (it does not break our salvation). So confession restores the relationship by acknowledging that our choices have violated God's desire.

 

I know the answer to that.

I'm not talking about salvation. Our sins, past, present, and future, are forgiven upon our salvation in Christ. Why do they need to be re-forgiven?

So you admit that this is not a necessity. But I want to know about the nature of confession, I suppose.

Agreed completely.

Where is the Scriptural basis for this? People often quote John 1:8, but this seems to be about confessing our sins at the point of salvation. Where do we see in the new convenant that we must continue to confess our sins even if we are saved?

I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but I have often wondered why we are told we must confess our sins daily, when I can't find anything like that in the Word. (I still do it, mind you, but I'd like to see what other people see as the Scriptural support for doing so.)

 

Scott E. You mentioned John 1:8 in connection with confessing. I take it you mean 1John 9. It is rendered "if we confess..." in some versions (KJV, ASV, Darby, LITV, MKJV etc.). It does not refer to "confessing our sins at the point of salvation", quoting you. I believe the tense of the verb proves this, which is present active, subjunctive. A T Robertson properly renders "if we keep on confessing" in his NT Word Pictures.

As for daily confessing sins I do not think I have seen any Scriptures in the NT which specifically speaks about such a thing. I come to think of the pedobaptist heretic Luther putting forth some such views, like daily mortifying the flesh and daily renewing oneself or something like it. It must be understood that no man is able to confess sins to God acceptably apart from Christ and Holy Spirit empowerment. Many be those who boast about how often they confess sins to God, making themselves look pious in the eyes of men, but the vast majority of such confessors have never confessed to God in the Holy Spirit, but their confessions is but empty and vain noise in God's ears.

I confess that I have no ability of confessing sins acceptably to God unless God should grant it to me by His Spirit. It is simply not in my power to confess righteously apart from divine enablement and empowerment. The same applies to repentance on the whole, and any other purely spiritual act or exercise.

Harald

 

I think you may be on to something there. I've always heard that passage from 1 John 1 used outside the context of salvation, too, but now that I re-read it, it seems pretty clear that it's addressing salvation.

Given the above, it's a better question than I thought.

 

No argument here...we'd call this 'prevenient grace'...a very catholic notion.

Harald, I suppose this is true,yet I imagine that most people who are serious about their 'religion'are not really interested in looking 'pious'. It would seem to me that the confessions that are truly 'empty' in God's ears are those that do not follow with acts of repentance.

 

I suppose it is just a question of holiness. If Christ imputes true holiness upon us, then we are seen as blameless before Him. Combine that with the struggle to have our holiness lived out, and there is an interesting dichotomy.

We see confession a good deal in the OT, but that seems to be a requirement for holiness - to constantly confess sin and repent. In the NT, however, there isn't as much about it. Very little, even. From what I understand, the Greek word in the passage is present subjunctive active. Subjunctive has no specific time reference - only indicative. But this is something that I will be wrestling with for awhile; perhaps others will be wrestling as well!

It's nice to find an issue that we are challenged with together. Times like this make us realize that we are not as far apart as we sometimes think!

SEC

 

You should familiarize yourself with the teaching of the book of Hebrews, particularly the warning passages. The author is warning them not be lazy with regards to sin because it has eternal consequences. Notice v. 14 because it refutes the very notion you brought into it: It says you have become partakers (past) is your hold fast (future). What if you don't hold fast (future)? Then you never became a partaker (past). This truth is taught all through Scripture, such as Col 1:21-23.

Because of the teaching of Scripture. The Scriptures teach that the one who responds to chastening of hte Holy Spirit is the true child of God.

Most of us wouldn/'t disagree with you in principle. You should know that. We have long maintained that the personal response is necessary. What you have failed to do is demonstrate that the Biblical passages that teach man's innate unwillingness and inability to do that are wrong. We go with Scripture on this one.

You conflated a couple of things and in so doing have twisted the point. We are talking about the response to sin after salvation, not about being saved. Here, you talk about what is generally called regeneration.

Not really. Since it came from Scripture, it is pretty easy to see in Scripture for those who have not been dogmatized away from Scripture.

The only nonsense is here what you are saying. Scripture says that they did not enter in because of unbelief. No one was "entering Israel," at least not in good hermeneutics. They were entering the promised land and they did not believe that God could defeat the enemies and so they were confined to 40 years of wilderness wandering until that generation died. This is not difficult. I don't know where you got the stuff you just made up here. What you said is pure nonsense. But it is you who, out of desperation, said it.

I believe they would. I did. And most others calvinists that I know turned from your position after serious study of the Scriptures.

[ April 01, 2003, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: Pastor Larry ]

 

Absolutely. Thanks for opening my eyes on that one.

 

Don't want to muddy the waters by jumping into the pool, but seems there is a great discussion going on here and while the answers have been supplied some would yet rather crawfish than to see the truth.

We are saved from past, present and future sin(s) when we receive the Grace of God. This has nothing to do with our "acceptance" of Christ. This is true whether we have a weak faith or a strong faith.

Christmas Evans once said (paraphrase) 'the same act that feeds an adult male in his greatest strength, also feeds a young child though that strength is not yet great.'

We are not 'saved' again when we do confess our sin, but we do restore our fellowship with God.

If folks could take John 11 for what it is it would easily be understood that we are called from the 'grave' as Lazarus and that we come forth from that place under the power of the Holy Spirit, yet bound by our 'graveclothes' until coming to the place where Christ is when we shall hear Him say 'loose him and let him go.'

Cofession of our sins, in order to restore fellowship is with the view of repentance rather than confession; this is in view of our future reward and that in the kingdom rather than in heaven where the whole family of God will be finally equal.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

In John 16:8 Jesus does not say that when He [the Spirit} comes that He will reprove the church of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. He rather certifies that when the Holy Spirit comes He will ' . . . reprove the world of sin . . . ' The first point of Arminian theology is "Prevenient Grace" which is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that goes before the sinner finds Christ or is found of Him. This is in contrast of the alleged, "Effectual Call" suggested by Calvinistic teaching. Since we understand the meaning of the just mentioned term, let me jot down the alternate view.

First, the ministry of the Holy Spirit before receiving Christ overrides the depravity of human beings, inhibiting the full intensity of the Fall, so that sinners can respond with mind, conscience, and will to the general call of the Gospel. Calvinism hides the 'image of God' in human beings [James 3:9] as though it were a demented child.

John Wesley used "Governance" to interpret Divine sovereignty, so also he used "Prevenient Grace" to explain depravity. Jesus still 'lights every sinner coming into the world.' [John 1:9]

Regeneration before a human response of faith is a unsubtle error. None of the Persons of the Godhead move into a human being without a personal welcome. What goes for the saints in Revelation 3:20 is also Jesus approach to the lost sinner. 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock!' Forced entry is not His forte.

 

Please be consistent, how is a child 'demented'?

This obviously is resulted by the sin nature inherited at birth and not that the sin nature is improved upon after exposure to this world. This is where your argument falls as explained elsewhere to bro. Bill, were each individual not depraved they would not be subject to death at the moment of conception, even prior to birth.

The way I understand Yelsew's post: "Atonement" his argument would be such that the atonement did not 'atone' his proof offered is that man continues to sin and must continue to confess in order to receive forgiveness.

The limitations placed on the work of the Son of God has no depth in the mind of a 'free-will' advocate.

Bro. Dallas