Originally posted by Alex:
Hi, post it:
I believe tht you may be missing part of what salvation is, MAYBE! You indicated that to believe in Jesus was all that was required, may be wrong here, so correct me if I am wrong. The way I say believing to be is thus: To accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior AND repent of you sins. Now sins here, at first, would fall into the category of what I would call major sins such as murder, rape, adultry, robbery AND Homosexuality. God Bless..........Alex
[/QB]
To turn from sin is a code of conduct that we do after we are saved. The acutal criteria of being saved can't have anything to do with "works". We are saved by our faith in the resurection of Jesus and acceptance that he is God.
Paul says we are not under the law of sin, nor can sin be counted against us. However we "should" not sin. That we shouldn't want to sin.
Let's look exactly at what scripture says about the homosexual issue an see if it falls under the same light you and most people think it does.
"effeminate" we will assume means homosexual.
1 Corinthians 6
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
Most people fly right by the key phrase "the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom" The list of types of behaviour that is typical of the unrighteous is then given. Does this mean that righteous people who happen to be effeminate will not inherit the kingdom, no it means the unrighteous effeminate will not.
So that leads us to examine what righteous means and then the following meanings of words such as "moral" which make up being righteous. At the core you will find that knowing right from wrong is what it boils down to. And we know what is right and wrong by what our heart tells us is right or wrong after we are saved (Holy Spirit).
There are behaviors of both homosexuals and heterosexual that are wrong and those that are right.
There are theives in this same list that are the same Christians who cheat a little on their tax returns, that don't give the amount of tithe they know their heart is telling them to give. But if sin is now written on our hearts, and the homosexual doesn't have a heart message from the Holy Spirit saying it is wrong, then it can't be wrong.
The tax cheat is wrong, the gossiper is wrong, because their own heart convicts them, not the Bible, not the Church. If a homosexual or a heterosexual goes from affair to affair, commits adultry etc. then it is sin and they are not righteous. They are sinning. When these passages were written, it might have been the norm for gays to be postitutes or fornicators, but now a gay man can find and be in a long term marriage and protected under the law and evil behaviour is not the norm any longer.
Times change and so do sins. Eating pig was a sin at one time, now it isn't.
[ September 04, 2002, 01:45 AM: Message edited by: post-it ]