Featured Sincerity

I was sincere the first dozen or so times I gave my heart to Jesus.

And yet, I was no more saved than I was the man in the moon.

 

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."

Sincere - "free from pretense or deceit; proceeding from genuine feelings. (of a person) saying what they genuinely feel or believe; not dishonest or hypocritical." -Webster

 

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ."

Eisegesis - "personal interpretation of a text (especially of the Bible) using your own ideas"

 

"Let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the LORD."

Boasting - "talk with excessive pride and self-satisfaction about one's achievements, possessions, or abilities."

 

... the righteous by his stedfastness liveth. Hab 2:4 YLT

...to them that by patience in well-doing... Ro 2:7

...I will shew thee out of my works my faith: Ja 2:18 YLT

 

Yes, that's absolutely how it is.

You probably were saved...but, you aren't aware of it. If you had indeed made the mockery of God's plea for salvation that you think you did, God would have shaken the dust off his feet and left you in your sin......
You can frustrate the Spirit for a long time...you can't insult him forever.

Quite likely, it's only because you were indeed saved that God never gave up in the work of sanctifying you, and by his grace you finally "Got it" later.

But God did HIS work when you FIRST believed.....
It just took you a while to catch up with the program. :thumbsup:
Sometimes, Christians mistake the time they truly give in, grow up some, and surrender everything for the actual moment they got saved. I disagree.
I think God radically begins a process of sanctification sometimes (especially with those who were in church 9 months before they were born)...that is entirely new to them. I think that is often later confused with salvation.
Salvation, though, is about God's faithfulness TO YOU....not your faithfulness TO HIM.

That's why Christians understand that justification and sanctification are two different things.

I also got saved "dozens of times":
It's when I grew up that I found out that I had been saved all along...I just hadn't given into the process of sanctification; not quite. I also hadn't the faith to simply believe his promise as stated in his word.

You might very well have indeed been saved.....and you are possibly mistaken about when that took place. God honors his promises to save even when we don't honor ours to obey.

 

"Having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame."

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." - Jesus

 

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast."

"And here we must advert to a very common error in the interpretation of this passage. Many persons restrict the word gift to faith alone. But Paul is only repeating in other words the former sentiment. His meaning is, not that faith is the gift of God, but that salvation is given to us by God, or, that we obtain it by the gift of God." - John Calvin

 

^^Dead on and batting 1,000 :thumbsup::thumbsup::applause:^^

This bears repeating:
Also in clude vs. 8 with it! :thumbsup:

Rom 10:8
But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
Rom 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

There are no other conditions...none.
That's God's word....It's a simple gospel folks. REALLY SIMPLE.

 

I see you constantly twisting the words of the bible to suit your arguments...in that you fail with your arguments! If you are not sincere when you confess how can you be saved? You cannot! If you are not sincere then you do not believe in what you confess! Jesus says who ever believes in me will be saved!

 

If you make faith to be an act of the creature then it is indeed 'from ourselves'.