The Religion Discussion

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ we are NOT saying God does not exist nor denouncing his power and glory.

We are only saying that this "my way or the highway" attitude that you have is wrong and clearly NOT what God intended.

you yourself said

The Bible is still the world's best seller, and has been translated into more than 1400 languages. It was written over a period of 1500 years by kings, statesmen, prophetic seers, intellectuals, and commoners.

yet you say it is the word of God
and you take certain parts of it literally to mean what you want it to mean.

[megadoc1]

megadoc1 you are being incoherent

you don't become righteous by works, you become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ

and then you say

God is righteous not man but he counts your belief in Jesus as righteousness.

but how can faith be righteousness? The meaning of those two words are different!

faith is not righteousness but because i believe that jesus died for my sins
my sins are covered by the blood of jesus so when God looks upon me he judges me righteous

[megadoc1]

can anyone on tuner claim that they are sinless, I for one certainly can't.

Megadoc does! What do you say about that?

no one is sinless but through faith in jesus christ
God judges you righteous because your sins are covered or washed in the blood of jesus

[Sky]

faith is not righteousness but because i believe that jesus died for my sins
my sins are covered by the blood of jesus so when God looks upon me he judges me righteous

And that's why you can sin all you want.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

no one is sinless but through faith in jesus christ
God judges you righteous because your sins are covered or washed in the blood of jesus

I was brought up as a Catholic, but can you explain what you've said here from a practical standpoint?

[Sky]

no one is sinless but through faith in jesus christ

can you explain in detail to me?

No other god before him. Meaning you can do all the good in the world, but once you're of another religion, you're done for. But this can be interpreted in different ways. I honestly think he was talking about the romans. In the heavens above? Earth beneath? Water under the earth? and he said do not MAKE YOURSELF AN IDOL. Man made stuff like the romans and greeks. Then again he said he will punish the children for the iniquity of the parents. That could mean you can be born into another religion, but you're doomed anyway. But it's funny how AFTER this was said, a carpenter came claiming to be the son of God, and God himself, and he gained worshippers. Worshippers who btw, slaughterd followers (not worshippers) of John the Baptist

[nismotrinidappa]

i will try to bring some clarity and perspective about gandhi god goodness and the thread.

this is the most important
matthew 22

37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38This is the first and greatest commandment.
39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.
40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

we are to love god and love our neighbour. love them.. no matter what race or religion they are. hindu muslim christian we are to love them.gods love is an all encompassing love. god loves them and you need to love them. they are your fellow man. this is similar to what the beautiful lola and d spike were asking and talking about.

mark 10:18
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.

only god is good. Good is perfection. man does not have that perfection.that good is good in the truest purest form and fashion. Therefore NO MAN can JUDGE gandhi or anyone and say yes he is going to heaven or not. That is for God.

man aspires to be good. through sin man became disconnected with god. he sent his son jesus to be the intercessor and create a way to renew that union with god. so therefore it is a lifelong aspiration and commitment to be good and to get closer and closer to god just as jesus did. jesus came as flesh to show man the way to god.


1 samuel 16:7
But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

again you cannot judge anyone.. you do not know their true nature and their heart only god. you cannot say he did this and that so he is going to heaven.

concerning other religions
the example i was given was one of hindus and other religions going to mt st benedict. yes you may know them as hindus or muslims but you do not know what is going on in their hearts and minds.again leave the judging to the big boss

concerning gandhis works. god is good. wherever there is good there is god. when you feed the hungry. when you donate clothes and foodstuff to the st vincent de paul and charity. god is involved.

to conclude . leave the judging up to god. we need to love god. we need to love our neighbour. stop the hating and bashing others and their religions. have respect and patience and understanding. be civil to each other. talk to each other with a kind word and have a willing heart.

[d spike]

Worshippers who btw, slaughterd followers (not worshippers) of John the Baptist

Huh? Care to give details on this? Never heard of this before.

[Alpha_2nr]

^ we are NOT saying God does not exist nor denouncing his power and glory.

We are only saying that this "my way or the highway" attitude that you have is wrong and clearly NOT what God intended.

you yourself said

The Bible is still the world's best seller, and has been translated into more than 1400 languages. It was written over a period of 1500 years by kings, statesmen, prophetic seers, intellectuals, and commoners.

yet you say it is the word of God
and you take certain parts of it literally to mean what you want it to mean.

D00d....why do you even bother? Blind faith in religion is partially responsible for the world where it is (wars etc that is) right now. Preaching sense until you're blue in the face isn't going change someone who doesn't WANT to see what you're saying.

Fact of life.

[d spike]

Well I am going by the Bible, I have no problem with what you believe, I have a problem with you twisting the Bible to prove what you believe.
Well, I too, have a problem with you doing the same thing. Why is it when I interpret the scripture, I am wrong, but when you do it, you are right? Are you saying that all those I have studied under are wrong, misguided? Your opinion is your opinion. I am allowed mine as well. My studies guide me, just as they do all others who went before me. Using the label "eisegesis" to smugly give yourself the smell of authority isn't working.

If you disagree with the Bible fine, but allow it to say what it says
Where have I done otherwise? If you can't respond to what I say, chill... but don't come with dotishness, yuh taking lessons from Megadoc or what?
and not twist it to make it more acceptable.

...and what exactly is this about, or in response to?

things never change do they, man look at the marvels of life such as the human body, and logical gives reason to believe it came about by chance, just like your toaster or car.

What the dickens is "logical gives reason to" supposed to refer to?

[toyo682]

Well I am going by the Bible, I have no problem with what you believe, I have a problem with you twisting the Bible to prove what you believe.
Well, I too, have a problem with you doing the same thing. Why is it when I interpret the scripture, I am wrong, but when you do it, you are right? Are you saying that all those I have studied under are wrong, misguided? Your opinion is your opinion. I am allowed mine as well. My studies guide me, just as they do all others who went before me. Using the label "eisegesis" to smugly give yourself the smell of authority isn't working.

If you disagree with the Bible fine, but allow it to say what it says
Where have I done otherwise? If you can't respond to what I say, chill... but don't come with dotishness, yuh taking lessons from Megadoc or what?
and not twist it to make it more acceptable.

...and what exactly is this about, or in response to?

things never change do they, man look at the marvels of life such as the human body, and logical gives reason to believe it came about by chance, just like your toaster or car.

What the dickens is "logical gives reason to" supposed to refer to?

So are we both right in the way we interpreted the Bible then? Is there such a thing as truth? Is truth absolute?

What about Jesus claims to be God? why did He die from a christian perspective that is?

[megadoc1]

no one is sinless but through faith in jesus christ
God judges you righteous because your sins are covered or washed in the blood of jesus

I was brought up as a Catholic, but can you explain what you've said here from a practical standpoint?

jesus is the only man born sinless ,the only person perfect to make the ultimate sacrifice, he took all our sins upon himself and put it to death
and gives us all his righteousness

Romans 5:19
19 For as by one man’s disobedience(adam) many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience (jesus)many will be made righteous.

Romans 10
10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

so there is nothing a man can do to become righteous
other than belief in jesus christ he is our righteousness
and the only way to enter the kingdom of heaven is in righteousness
which comes to us through grace
not by our works

[toyo682]

^ we are NOT saying God does not exist nor denouncing his power and glory.

We are only saying that this "my way or the highway" attitude that you have is wrong and clearly NOT what God intended.

you yourself said

The Bible is still the world's best seller, and has been translated into more than 1400 languages. It was written over a period of 1500 years by kings, statesmen, prophetic seers, intellectuals, and commoners.

yet you say it is the word of God
and you take certain parts of it literally to mean what you want it to mean.

INSPIRATION. Noun formed from Latin and English translations of theopneustos in 2 Tim. 3:16, which av rendered: ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’ ‘Inspired of God’ in rsv is no improvement on av, for theopneustos means out-breathed rather than in-breathed by God—divinely ex-spired, rather than in-spired. In the last century Ewald and Cremer argued that the adjective bore an active sense, ‘breathing the Spirit’, and Barth appears to agree (he glosses it as meaning not only ‘given and filled and ruled by the Spirit of God’, but also ‘actively outbreathing and spreading abroad and making known the Spirit of God’ (Church Dogmatics, I. 2, E.T. 1956, p. 504)); but B. B. Warfield showed decisively in 1900 that the sense of the word can only be passive. The thought is not of God as breathing through Scripture, or of Scripture as breathing out God, but of God as having breathed out Scripture. Paul’s words mean, not that Scripture is inspiring (true though this is), but that Scripture is a divine product, and must be approached and estimated as such.
The ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ of God in the OT (Heb. rûaḥ, nesāmâ) denotes the active outgoing of divine power, whether in creation (Ps. 33:6; Jb. 33:4; cf. Gn. 1:2; 2:7), preservation (Jb. 34:14), revelation to and through prophets (Is. 48:16; 61:1; Mi. 3:8; Joel 2:28f.), regeneration (Ezk. 36:27), or judgment (Is. 30:28, 33). The NT reveals this divine ‘breath’ (Gk. pneuma) to be a Person of the Godhead. God’s ‘breath’ (i.e. the Holy Spirit) produced Scripture, as a means to the conveyance of spiritual understanding. Whether we render pasa graphē as ‘the whole Scripture’ or ‘every text’, and whether we follow rsv or rv in construing the sentence (rv has ‘Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable … ’, which is a possible translation), Paul’s meaning is clear beyond all doubt. He is affirming that all that comes in the category of Scripture, all that has a place among the ‘sacred writings’ (hiera grammata, v. 15, rv), just because it is God-breathed, is profitable for the guiding of both faith and life.
On the basis of this Pauline text, English theology regularly uses the word ‘inspiration’ to express the thought of the divine origin and quality of Holy Scripture. Actively, the noun denotes God’s out-breathing operation which produced Scripture: passively, the inspiredness of the Scriptures so produced. The word is also used more generally of the divine influence which enabled the human organs of revelation—prophets, psalmists, wise men and apostles—to speak, as well as to write, the words of God.
I. The idea of biblical inspiration
According to 2 Tim. 3:16, what is inspired is precisely the biblical writings. Inspiration is a work of God terminating, not in the men who were to write Scripture (as if, having given them an idea of what to say, God left them to themselves to find a way of saying it), but in the actual written product. It is Scripture—graphē, the written text—that is God-breathed. The essential idea here is that all Scripture has the same character as the prophets’ sermons had, both when preached and when written (cf. 2 Pet. 1:19-21, on the divine origin of every ‘prophecy of the scripture’; see also Je. 36; Is. 8:16-20). That is to say, Scripture is not only man’s word, the fruit of human thought, premeditation and art, but also, and equally, God’s word, spoken through man’s lips or written with man’s pen. In other words, Scripture has a double authorship, and man is only the secondary author; the primary author, through whose initiative, prompting and enlightenment, and under whose superintendence, each human writer did his work, is God the Holy Spirit.
Revelation to the prophets was essentially verbal; often it had a visionary aspect, but even ‘revelation in visions is also verbal revelation’ L. Koehler, Old Testament Theology, E.T. 1957, p. 103). Brunner has observed that in ‘the words of God which the Prophets proclaim as those which they have received directly from God, and have been commissioned to repeat, as they have received them … perhaps we may find the closest analogy to the meaning of the theory of verbal inspiration’ (Revelation and Reason, 1946, p. 122, n. 9). Indeed we do; we find not merely an analogy to it, but the paradigm of it; and ‘theory’ is the wrong word to use, for this is just the biblical doctrine itself. Biblical inspiration should be defined in the same theological terms as prophetic inspiration: namely, as the whole process (manifold, no doubt, in its psychological forms, as prophetic inspiration was) whereby God moved those men whom he had chosen and prepared (cf. Je. 1:5; Gal. 1:15) to write exactly what he wanted written for the communication of saving knowledge to his people, and through them to the world. Biblical inspiration is thus verbal by its very nature; for it is of God-given words that the God-breathed Scriptures consist.
Thus, inspired Scripture is written revelation, just as the prophets’ sermons were spoken revelation. The biblical record of God’s self-disclosure in redemptive history is not merely human testimony to revelation, but is itself revelation. The inspiring of Scripture was an integral part in the revelatory process, for in Scripture God gave the church his saving work in history, and his own authoritative interpretation of its place in his eternal plan. ‘Thus saith the Lord’ could be prefixed to each book of Scripture with no less propriety than it is (359 times, according to Koehler, op.cit., p. 245) to individual prophetic utterances which Scripture contains. Inspiration, therefore, guarantees the truth of all that the Bible asserts, just as the inspiration of the prophets guaranteed the truth of their representation of the mind of God. (‘Truth’ here denotes correspondence between the words of man and the thoughts of God, whether in the realm of fact or of meaning.) As truth from God, man’s Creator and rightful King, biblical instruction, like prophetic oracles, carries divine authority.
II. Biblical presentation
The idea of canonical Scripture, i.e. of a document or corpus of documents containing a permanent authoritative record of divine revelation, goes back to Moses’ writing of God’s law in the wilderness (Ex. 34:27f.; Dt. 31:9ff., 24ff.). The truth of all statements, historical or theological, which Scripture makes, and their authority as words of God, are assumed without question or discussion in both Testaments. The Canon grew, but the concept of inspiration, which the idea of canonicity presupposes, was fully developed from the first, and is unchanged throughout the Bible. As there presented, it comprises two convictions.
1. The words of Scripture are God’s own words. OT passages identify the Mosaic law and the words of the prophets, both spoken and written, with God’s own speech (cf. 1 Ki. 22:8-16; Ne. 8; Ps. 119; Je. 25:1-13; 36, etc.). NT writers view the OT as a whole as ‘the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2), prophetic in character (Rom. 16:26; cf. 1:2; 3:21), written by men who were moved and taught by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20f.; cf. 1 Pet. 1:10-12). Christ and his apostles quote OT texts, not merely as what, e.g., Moses, David or Isaiah said (see Mk. 7:10; 12:36; 7:6; Rom. 10:5; 11:9; 10:20, etc.), but also as what God said through these men (see Acts 4:25; 28:25, etc.), or sometimes simply as what ‘he’ (God) says (e.g. 1 Cor. 6:16; Heb. 8:5, , or what the Holy Spirit says (Heb. 3:7; 10:15). Furthermore, OT statements, not made by God in their contexts, are quoted as utterances of God (Mt. 19:4f.; Heb. 3:7; Acts 13:34f., citing Gn. 2:24; Ps. 95:7; Is. 55:2 respectively). Also, Paul refers to God’s promise to Abraham and his threat to Pharaoh, both spoken long before the biblical record of them was written, as words which Scripture spoke to these two men (Gal. 3:8; Rom. 9:17); which shows how completely he equated the statements of Scripture with the utterance of God.
2. Man’s part in the producing of Scripture was merely to transmit what he had received. Psychologically, from the standpoint of form, it is clear that the human writers contributed much to the making of Scripture—historical research, theological meditation, linguistic style, etc. Each biblical book is in one sense the literary creation of its author. But theologically, from the standpoint of content, the Bible regards the human writers as having contributed nothing, and Scripture as being entirely the creation of God. This conviction is rooted in the self-consciousness of the founders of biblical religion, all of whom claimed to utter—and, in the case of the prophets and apostles, to write—what were, in the most literal sense, the words of another: God himself. The prophets (among whom Moses must be numbered: Dt. 18:15; 34:10) professed that they spoke the words of Yahweh, setting before Israel what Yahweh had shown them (Je. 1:7; Ezk. 2:7; Am. 3:7f.; cf. 1 Ki. 22). Jesus of Nazareth professed that he spoke words given him by his Father (Jn. 7:16; 12:49f.). The apostles taught and issued commands in Christ’s name (2 Thes. 3:6), so claiming his authority and sanction (1 Cor. 14:37), and they maintained that both their matter and their words had been taught them by God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:9-13; cf. Christ’s promises, Jn. 14:26; 15:26f.; 16:13ff.). These are claims to inspiration. In the light of these claims, the evaluation of prophetic and apostolic writings as wholly God’s word, in just the same way in which the two tables of the law, ‘written with the finger of God’ (Ex. 24:12; 31:18; 32:16), were wholly God’s word, naturally became part of the biblical faith.
Christ and the apostles bore striking witness to the fact of inspiration by their appeal to the authority of the OT. In effect, they claimed the Jewish Scriptures as the Christian Bible: a body of literature bearing prophetic witness to Christ (Jn. 5:39f.; Lk. 24:25ff., 44f.; 2 Cor. 3:14ff.) and designed by God specially for the instruction of Christian believers (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:14ff.; cf. the exposition of Ps. 95:7-11 in Heb. 3-4, and indeed the whole of Hebrews, in which every major point is made by appeal to OT texts). Christ insisted that what was written in the OT ‘cannot be broken’ (Jn. 10:35). He had not come, he told the Jews, to annul the law or the prophets (Mt. 5:17); if they thought he was doing that, they were mistaken; he had come to do the opposite—to bear witness to the divine authority of both by fulfilling them. The law stands for ever, because it is God’s word (Mt. 5:18; Lk. 16:17); the prophecies, particularly those concerning himself, must be fulfilled, for the same reason (Mt. 26:54; Lk. 22:37; cf. Mk. 8:31; Lk. 18:31). To Christ and his apostles, the appeal to Scripture was always decisive (cf. Mt. 4:4, 7, 10; Rom. 12:19; 1 Pet. 1:16, etc.).
The freedom with which NT writers quote the OT (following lxx, Targums, or an ad hoc rendering of the Hebrew, as best suits them) has been held to show that they did not believe in the inspiredness of the original words. But their interest was not in the words, as such, but in their meaning; and recent study has made it appear that these quotations are interpretative and expository—a mode of quotation well known among the Jews. The writers seek to indicate the true (i.e. Christian) meaning and application of their text by the form in which they cite it. In most cases this meaning has evidently been reached by a strict application of clear-cut theological principles about the relation of Christ and the church to the OT. (See C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures, 1952; K. Stendahl, The School of St Matthew, 1954; R. V. G. Tasker, The Old Testament in the New Testament2, 1954; E. E. Ellis, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament, 1957.)
III. Theological statement
In formulating the biblical idea of inspiration, it is desirable that four negative points be made.
1. The idea is not of mechanical dictation, or automatic writing, or any process which involved the suspending of the action of the human writer’s mind. Such concepts of inspiration are found in the Talmud, Philo and the Fathers, but not in the Bible. The divine direction and control under which the biblical authors wrote was not a physical or psychological force, and it did not detract from, but rather heightened, the freedom, spontaneity and creativeness of their writing.
2. The fact that in inspiration God did not obliterate the personality, style, outlook and cultural conditioning of his penmen does not mean that his control of them was imperfect, or that they inevitably distorted the truth they had been given to convey in the process of writing it down. B. B. Warfield gently mocks the notion that when God wanted Paul’s letters written ‘He was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men He found there, seeking anxiously for the one who, on the whole, promised best for His purpose; and then violently forcing the material He wished expressed through him, against his natural bent, and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul’s, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters’ (The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 1951, p. 155).
3. Inspiredness is not a quality attaching to corruptions which intrude in the course of the transmission of the text, but only to the text as originally produced by the inspired writers. The acknowledgment of biblical inspiration thus makes more urgent the task of meticulous textual criticism, in order to eliminate such corruptions and ascertain what that original text was.
4. The inspiredness of biblical writing is not to be equated with the inspiredness of great literature, not even when (as often) the biblical writing is in fact great literature. The biblical idea of inspiration relates, not to the literary quality of what is written, but to its character as divine revelation in writing.

Bibliography. B. B. Warfield, op.cit. (much of the relevant material is also in his Biblical Foundations, 1958, chs. 1 and 2); A. Kuyper, Encyelopaedia of Sacred Theology, E.T. 1899; J. Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, 1910; C. F. H. Henry (ed.), Revelation and the Bible, 1958; K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, 2 (The Doctrine of the Word of God), E.T. 1936, 1956; W. Sanday, Inspiration, 1893; R. Abba, The Nature and Authority of the Bible, 1958; J. W. Wenham, Christ and the Bible, 1972; G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, 1975; TDNT 1, pp. 742-773 (s.v graphō), and 4, pp. 1022-1091 (s.v. nomos).
Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996). New Bible dictionary (3rd ed.) (507). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

[megadoc1]

i will try to bring some clarity and perspective about gandhi god goodness and the thread.

this is the most important
matthew 22

37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38This is the first and greatest commandment.
39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.
40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

we are to love god and love our neighbour. love them.. no matter what race or religion they are. hindu muslim christian we are to love them.gods love is an all encompassing love. god loves them and you need to love them. they are your fellow man. this is similar to what the beautiful lola and d spike were asking and talking about.

mark 10:18
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.

only god is good. Good is perfection. man does not have that perfection.that good is good in the truest purest form and fashion. Therefore NO MAN can JUDGE gandhi or anyone and say yes he is going to heaven or not. That is for God.

man aspires to be good. through sin man became disconnected with god. he sent his son jesus to be the intercessor and create a way to renew that union with god. so therefore it is a lifelong aspiration and commitment to be good and to get closer and closer to god just as jesus did. jesus came as flesh to show man the way to god.


1 samuel 16:7
But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

again you cannot judge anyone.. you do not know their true nature and their heart only god. you cannot say he did this and that so he is going to heaven.

concerning other religions
the example i was given was one of hindus and other religions going to mt st benedict. yes you may know them as hindus or muslims but you do not know what is going on in their hearts and minds.again leave the judging to the big boss

concerning gandhis works. god is good. wherever there is good there is god. when you feed the hungry. when you donate clothes and foodstuff to the st vincent de paul and charity. god is involved.

to conclude . leave the judging up to god. we need to love god. we need to love our neighbour. stop the hating and bashing others and their religions. have respect and patience and understanding. be civil to each other. talk to each other with a kind word and have a willing heart.

so are you saying that good works gets you to heaven?
are you saying that jesus wasted his time?
what did jesus died for?

[sMASH]

people please note jesus was very intolerant towards evil

jesus was rather tolerant of evil.... i because according to your book, he let the prostitute go and just tell her to sin no more, the men and dem who wanted to kill she (wrongfully) we let go, he made wine for the wedding, he disrespected his mother by being harsh, he just stood there and was tortured and killed... he was rather tolerant of evil..

mega,, no, eh

[toyo682]

no one is sinless but through faith in jesus christ

can you explain in detail to me?

JUSTIFICATION
I. Meaning of the word
‘Justify’ (Heb. ṣāḏaq; Gk. [lxx and nt], dikaioō) is a forensic term meaning ‘acquit’, ‘declare righteous’, the opposite of ‘condemn’ (cf. Dt. 25:1; Pr. 17:15; Rom. 8:33). Justifying is the judge’s act. From the litigant’s standpoint, therefore, ‘be justified’ means ‘get the verdict’ (Is. 43:9, 26).
In Scripture, God is ‘the Judge of all the earth’ (Gn. 18:25), and his dealings with men are constantly described in forensic terms. God’s Law is a complex of moral goals and standards by which his rational creatures should live. Righteousness, i.e. conformity with his law, is what he requires of his human creatures, and he shows his own righteousness as Judge in taking vengeance, i.e. inflicting punitive retribution (‘wrath’) on those who fall short of it (cf. Ps. 7:11, rv; Is. 5:16; 10:22; Acts 17:31; Rom. 2:5; 3:5f.). There is no hope for anyone if God’s verdict goes against him.
Because God is King, the thought of him as justifying may have an executive as well as a judicial aspect. Like the ideal royal judge in Israel, he will not only pass a verdict in favour of the accused, but actively implement it by showing favour towards him and publicly reinstating him. The verb ‘justify’ may focus on either aspect of God’s action. For instance, the justifying of Israel and the Servant, envisaged in Is. 45:25; 50:8, is a public vindication through a change in their fortunes. The justification of sinners that Jesus illustrates by his shock-ending story of the Pharisee and the publican (Lk. 18:9-14) and that Paul expounds in Rom. 3-5, Gal. 2-4 and 2 Cor. 5:14-21 is, however, simply the passing and sustaining of a favourable verdict. Jesus and Paul certainly believe that God shows favour to those whom he has acquitted, but they use other terms to describe this (chiefly, the family language of adoption, inheritance, and paternal care).
‘Justify’ is also used for ascriptions of righteousness in non-forensic contexts. Men are said to justify God by confessing him just (Lk. 7:29; cf. Rom. 3:4, quoting Ps. 51:4), and themselves by claiming to be just (Jb. 32:2; Lk. 10:29; 16:15). Jerusalem is ironically said to have ‘justified’ Sodom and Samaria by outdoing them in sin! (Ezk. 16:51). The passive can denote being vindicated by events against suspicion, criticism and mistrust (Mt. 11:19; Lk. 7:35; 1 Tim. 3:16; cf. Jas. 2:21, 24f., for which see below).
Lexical support is wanting for the view of Chrysostom, Augustine and the Council of Trent that when Paul and James speak of present justification they refer to God’s work of making righteous by inner renewal, as well as of counting righteous through remission of sins. James seems to mean neither, Paul only the latter. His synonyms for ‘justify’ are ‘reckon righteousness’, ‘remit sins’, ‘not reckon sin’ (see Rom. 4:5-8, nv) — phrases expressing the idea, not of inner transformation, but of conferring a legal status and cancelling a legal liability. Justification, to Paul, is a judgment passed on man, not a work wrought within man. The two things go together, no doubt, but they are distinct.
II. Justification in Paul
Out of the 39 occurrences of the verb ‘justify’ in the NT, 29 come in the Epistles or recorded words of Paul; so do the two occurrences of the corresponding noun, dikaiōsis (Rom. 4:25; 5:18). This reflects the fact that Paul alone of NT writers left us letters (Romans and Galatians in particular) that make the reality of justification by grace, bringing freedom from the dominion of sin and death, the focus for his exposition of salvation in and through Christ.
Justification means to Paul God’s act of remitting the sins of guilty men, and accounting them righteous, freely, by his grace, through faith in Christ, on the ground, not of their own works, but of the representative law-keeping and redemptive blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus Christ on their behalf. (For the parts of this definition, see Rom. 3:23-26; 4:5-8; 5:18f.) Paul’s doctrine of justification is his characteristic way of formulating the central gospel truth, that God forgives believing sinners. Theologically, it is the most highly developed expression of this truth in the NT.
In Romans, Paul introduces the gospel as disclosing ‘the righteousness of God’ (1:17). The most natural of the many views canvassed is that this phrase expresses the single, complex, dynamic idea of God’s morally glorious and eternally worship-worthy display of mercy and justice in bestowing on guilty transgressors the status of perfect lawkeepers. Within this frame, the phrase has two points of reference. 1. It refers to this status, which God through Christ freely confers upon believing sinners (‘the gift of righteousness’ as opposed to condemnation and death, Rom. 5:17; cf. 3:21f; 9:30; 10:3-10; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9). It has been argued that the essence of this gift is covenant status in the new Israel that is constituted by faith-union with the risen Christ, and certainly the justified are henceforth in covenant with God in just this way. But justification, as such, for Paul is pardon and acceptance, not covenant involvement, and the hinge-question throughout Romans is not who is in covenant with God, but how may sinners find eternal life. 2. Also, and indeed primarily, the phrase refers to the way in which the gospel reveals God as doing what is right — not only judging transgressors as they deserve (2:5; 3:5f.) but also keeping his promise to send salvation to Israel (3:4f.), and justifying sinners in such a way that his own judicial claims upon them are met (3:25f). ‘The righteousness of God’ is thus a predominantly forensic concept, denoting God’s gracious work of bestowing upon guilty sinners a justified justification, acquitting them in the court of heaven without prejudice to his justice as their Judge.
Many scholars today find the background of this phrase in a few passages from Is. 40ff. and the psalms in which God’s ‘righteousness’ and ‘salvation’ appear as equivalents (Is. 45:8, cf. vv. 19-25; 46:13; 51:3-6; Ps. 98:2; etc). This may be right, but since Paul nowhere quotes these verses, it cannot be proved. It must also be remembered that the reason why these texts call God’s vindication of his oppressed people his ‘righteousness’ is that it is an act of faithfulness to his covenant promise to them; whereas Romans deals principally with God’s justifying of Gentiles, who previously were not his people and to whom he had promised nothing (cf. 9:24f.; 10:19f.) — quite a different situation.
E. Käsemann and others construe God’s righteousness in Paul as a gracious exertion of power whereby God keeps faith with both his covenant people (by fulfilling his promise to save them) and his captive creation (by restoring his dominion over it). Both thoughts are Pauline, but it is doubtful whether (as is argued) ‘righteousness’ in Rom. 3:25-26 and ‘just’ in v. 26 point only to gracious faithfulness saving the needy and not to judicial retribution (cf. 2:5; 3:5) saving the guilty by being diverted upon the One set forth to be a *propitiation. The latter exegesis fits the flow of thought better; the former cannot explain why ‘and’ appears in the phrase ‘just and the justifier’ (av), for it finds in these words only one thought, not two.
It has been questioned whether Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith without works is any more than a controversial device, developed simply as a weapon against the Judaizers. But the following facts indicate that it was more than this.
1. The Epistle to the *Romans is evidently to be read as a full-dress statement of Paul’s gospel, and the doctrine of justification is its backbone.
2. In three places Paul writes in personal terms of the convictions that had made him the man and the missionary that he was, and all three are couched in terms of justification (Gal. 2:15-21; 2 Cor. 5:16-21; Phil. 3:4-14). In Rom. 7:7ff. Paul describes his personal need of Christ in terms of the law’s condemnation — a need which only God’s justifying sentence in Christ could relieve (cf. Rom. 8:1f.; Gal. 3:19-4:7). Paul’s personal religion was evidently rooted in the knowledge of his justification.
3. Justification is to Paul God’s fundamental act of blessing, for it both saves from the past and secures for the future. On the one hand, it means pardon, and the end of hostility between God and ourselves (Acts 13:39; Rom. 4:6f; 5:9f). On the other hand, it means acceptance and a title to all blessings promised to the just, a thought which Paul develops by linking justification with adoption and heirship (Gal. 4:4ff.; Rom. 8:14ff.). Both aspects appear in Rom. 5:1-2, where Paul says that justification brings both peace with God (because sins are remitted) and hope of God’s glory (because the sinner is accepted as righteous). This hope is a certainty; for justification has an eschatological significance. It is the judgment of the last day brought into the present, a final, irreversible verdict. The justified person can accordingly be sure that nothing will ever separate him from the love of his God (Rom. 8:33-39; cf. 5:9). His glorification is certain (Rom. 8:30). The coming inquisition before Christ’s judgment-seat (Rom. 14:10ff.; 2 Cor. 5:10) may deprive him of particular rewards (1 Cor. 3:15), but not of his justified status.
4. Paul’s doctrine of salvation has justification as its basic reference-point. His belief about justification is the source from which flows his view of Christianity as a world-religion of grace and faith, in which Gentiles and Jews stand on an equal footing (Rom. 1:16; 3:29ff.; Gal. 3:8-14, 28f., etc.). It is in terms of justification that he explains grace (Rom. 3:24; 4:4f., 16), the saving significance of Christ’s obedience and death (Rom. 3:24f; 5:16ff.), the revelation of God’s love at the cross (Rom. 5:5-9), the meaning of redemption (Rom. 3:24; Gal. 3:13; Eph. 1:7) and reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18f), the covenant relationship (Gal. 3:15f), faith (Rom. 4:23ff.; 10:8ff.), union with Christ (Rom. 8:1; Gal. 2:17, rv), adoption and the gift of the Spirit (Gal. 4:6-8; Rom. 8:10, cf. v. 15), and Christian assurance (Rom. 5:1-11; 8:33ff.). It is in terms of justification that Paul explains all hints, prophecies and instances of salvation in the OT (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11, quoting Hab. 2:4; Rom. 3:21; 4:3-8, quoting Gn. 15:6; Ps. 32:1f; Rom. 9:22-10:21, quoting Ho. 2:23; 1:10; Is. 8:14; Joel 2:32; Is. 65:1, etc.; Rom. 11:26f, quoting Is. 59:20f; Gal. 3:8, quoting Gn. 12:3; Gal. 4:21ff., quoting Gn. 21:10; etc.).
5. Justification is the key to Paul’s philosophy of history. He holds that God’s central overarching purpose in his ordering of world-history since the Fall has been to lead sinners to justifying faith.
God deals with mankind, Paul tells us, through two representative men: ‘the first man Adam’, and ‘the second man’, who is ‘the last Adam’, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:45ff.; Rom. 5:12ff.). The first man, by disobeying, brought condemnation and death upon the whole race; the second man, by his obedience, has become the author of justification and life for all who have faith (Rom. 5:16ff.).
From the time of Adam’s fall, death reigned universally, though sin was not yet clearly known (Rom. 5:12ff.). But God took Abraham and his family into covenant, justifying Abraham through his faith, and promising that in Abraham’s seed (i.e. through one of his descendants) all nations should be blessed (i.e. justified) (Gal. 3:6-9, 16; Rom. 4:3, 9-22). Then through Moses God revealed his law to Abraham’s family. The law was meant to give, not salvation, but knowledge of sin. By detecting and provoking transgressions, it was to teach Israelites their need of justification, thus acting as a paidagōgos (the household slave who took children to school) to lead them to Christ (Gal. 3:19-24; Rom. 3:20; 5:20; 7:5, 7-13). This epoch of divine preparatory education lasted till the coming of Christ (Gal. 3:23-25; 4:1-5).
The effect of Christ’s work was to abolish the barrier of exclusivism which Israel’s possession of the law and promise had erected between Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:14ff.). Through Christ, justification by faith could now be preached to Jew and Gentile without distinction, for in Christ all believers were made Abraham’s seed, and became sons of God and heirs of the covenant (Gal. 3:26-29). Unhappily, in this situation most Jews proved to be legalists; they sought to establish a righteousness of their own by works of law, and would not believe that faith in Christ was the God-given way to righteousness (Rom. 9:30-10:21). So many ‘natural branches’ had been cut off from the olive-tree of the historic covenant community (Rom. 11:16ff.), and the church was for the present predominantly Gentile; but there was hope that an elect remnant from fallen Israel, provoked by the mercy shown to undeserving Gentiles, would itself come to faith and find remission of sins in the end (Rom. 11:23-32). Thus both Jew and Gentile would be saved, not through their own works and effort, but through the free grace of God justifying the disobedient and ungodly; and all the glory of salvation will be God’s alone (Rom. 11:30-36).
These considerations point to the fundamental place of justification in Paul’s apprehension and analysis of what was always his central theme, namely salvation in and through Jesus Christ.
III. The ground of justification
As stated by Paul in Romans, the doctrine of justification seems to raise a problem of theodicy. Its background, set out in 1:18-3:20, is the solidarity of humankind in sin, and the inevitability of judgment. In 2:5-16 Paul states his doctrine of the judgment day. The principle of judgment, he says, will be ‘to every man according to his works’ (v. 6, rsv). The standard of judgment will be God’s law, in the highest form in which men know it (if not the Mosaic law, then the law of conscience, vv. 12-15). The evidence will be ‘the secrets of men’ (v.16). Only law-keepers can hope to be justified (vv. 7, 10, 12f). And there are no law-keepers. None is righteous; all have sinned (3:9ff.). So the prospect is of universal condemnation, for Jew as well as Gentile, for a law-breaking Jew is no more acceptable to God than anyone else (2:17-27). All, it seems, are doomed. ‘No human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law’ (3:20, echoing Ps. 143:2).
But now Paul proclaims the present justification of believing sinners (3:21ff.). God reckons righteousness to the unrighteous and justifies the ungodly (3:23f; 4:5f). The (deliberately?) paradoxical quality of the last phrase is heightened by the fact that these very Greek words are used in the lxx of Ex. 23:7 (‘I will not justify the wicked’) and Is. 5:22f. (‘Woe unto them … which justify the wicked …’). The question arises: on what grounds can God justify the ungodly without compromising his own justice as the Judge?
Paul maintains that God justifies sinners on a just ground: namely, that Jesus Christ, acting on their behalf, has satisfied the claims of God’s law upon them. He was ‘born under the law’ (Gal. 4:4) in order to fulfil the precept and bear the penalty of the law in their stead. By his *‘blood’ (i.e. his death) he put away their sins (Rom. 3:25; 5:9). By his obedience to God he won for all his people the status of law-keepers (Rom. 5:19). He became ‘obedient unto death’ (Phil. 2:8); his life of righteousness culminated in his dying the death of the unrighteous, bearing the law’s penal curse (Gal. 3:13; cf. Is. 53:4-12). In his person on the cross, the sins of his people were judged and expiated. Through this ‘one act of righteousness’ — his sinless life and death — ‘the free gift came unto all men to justification of life’ (Rom. 5:18, rv). Thus believers become ‘the righteousness of God’ in and through him who ‘knew no sin’ personally, but was representatively ‘made sin’ (treated as a sinner, and judged) in their place (2 Cor. 5:21). Thus Paul speaks of ‘Christ Jesus, whom God made … our righteousness’ (1 Cor. 1:30). This was the thought expressed in older Protestant theology by the phrase ‘the imputation of Christ’s righteousness’. The phrase is not in Paul, but its meaning is. The point that it makes is that believers are made righteous before God (Rom. 5:19) through his admitting them to share Christ’s status of acceptance. In other words, God treats them according to Christ’s desert. There is nothing arbitrary or artificial in this, for God recognizes the existence of a real union of covenantal solidarity between them and Christ. For Paul, union with Christ is not fiction, but fact — the basic fact, indeed, of Christianity; and his doctrine of justification is simply his first step in analysing its meaning. So it is ‘in Christ’ (Gal. 2:17; 2 Cor. 5:21) that sinners are justified. God accounts them righteous, not because he accounts them to have kept his law personally (which would be a false judgment), but because he accounts them to be ‘in’ the One who kept God’s law representatively (which is a true judgment).
So, when God justifies sinners on the ground of Christ’s obedience and death, he acts justly. So far from compromising his judicial righteousness, this method of justification actually exhibits it. It is designed ‘to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins [i.e. in OT times]; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus’ (Rom. 3:25f). The key words are repeated for emphasis, for the point is crucial. The gospel which proclaims God’s apparent violation of his justice really reveals his justice. By his method of justifying sinners, God (in another sense) justified himself; for by setting forth Christ as a propitiation for sins, in whom human sin was actually judged and punished as it deserved, he revealed the just ground on which he was able to pardon and accept believing sinners in OT times (as in fact he did: cf. Ps. 130:3f), no less than in the Christian era.
IV. The means of justification
Faith in Christ, says Paul, is the means whereby righteousness is received and justification bestowed. Sinners are justified ‘by’ or ‘through’ faith (Gk.pistei, dia or ek pisteōs). Paul does not regard faith as the ground of justification. If it were, it would be a meritorious work, and Paul would not be able to term the believer, as such, ‘one who does not work’ (Rom. 4:5); nor could he go on to say that salvation by faith rests on grace (v. 16), for grace absolutely excludes works (Rom. 11:6). Paul quotes the case of Abraham, who ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, to prove that a person is justified through faith without works (Rom. 4:3ff.; Gal. 3:6; quoting Gn. 15:6). In Rom. 4:5, 9 (cf. vv. 22, 24) Paul refers to the Genesis text as teaching that Abraham’s faith was ‘reckoned … as righteousness’. All he means, however, as the context shows, is that Abraham’s faith — whole-hearted reliance on God’s promise (vv. 18ff.) — was the occasion and means of his being justified. The phrase ‘reckoned eis righteousness’ could either mean ‘as’ (by real equivalence, or some arbitrary method of calculation), or else ‘with a view to’, ‘leading to’, ‘issuing in’. The latter alternative is clearly right. Paul is not suggesting that faith, viewed either as righteousness, actual or inchoate, or as a substitute for righteousness, is the ground of justification; Rom. 4 does not deal with the ground of justification at all, only with the means of securing it.
V. Paul and James
On the assumption that Jas. 2:14-26 teaches that God accepts men on the double ground of faith and works, some have thought that James deliberately contradicts Paul’s teaching of justification by faith without works, supposing it to be anti-nomian (cf. Rom. 3:8). But this seems to misconceive James’ point. It must be remembered that Paul is the only NT writer to use ‘justify’ as a technical term for God’s act of accepting sinners when they believe. When James speaks of ‘being justified’, he appears to be using the word in its more general sense of being vindicated, or proved genuine and right before God and men, in face of possible doubt as to whether one was all that one professed, or was said, to be (cf. the usage in Mt. 11:19). For someone to be justified in this sense is for him to be shown a genuine believer, one who will demonstrate his faith by action. This justification is, in effect, a manifesting of the justification that concerns Paul. James quotes Gn. 15:6 for the same purpose as Paul does — to show that it was faith that secured Abraham’s acceptance. But now, he argues, this statement was ‘fulfilled’ (confirmed, shown to be true, and brought to its appointed completion by events) 30 years later, when ‘Abraham (was) justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar’ (v. 21). By this his faith was ‘made perfect’, i.e. brought to due expression in appropriate actions; thus he was shown to be a true believer. The case of Rahab is parallel (v. 25). James’ point in this paragraph is simply that ‘faith’, i.e. a bare orthodoxy, such as the devils have (v. 19), unaccompanied by good works, provides no sufficient grounds for inferring that a man is saved. Paul would have agreed heartily (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9; Eph. 5:5f.; Tit. 1:16).
Bibliography. BAGD; G. Quell and G. Schrenk in TDNT 2, pp. 174-225; Klein in IDBS, pp. 750-752; commentaries on Romans: especially C. Hodge2, 1864; C. E. B. Cranfield, ICC, 1, 1976; A. Nygren, E.T. 1952; and on Galatians: especially J. B. Lightfoot10, 1890; E. D. Burton, ICC, 1921; J, Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, 1867; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1874, 3, pp. 114-212; V. Taylor, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, 1946; L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 1955; K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4. 1, E.T. 1956, pp. 514-642; A. Richardson, Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament, 1958, pp. 232ff.; J. Murray, Romans 1-8, 1959, pp. 336-362; J. A. Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul, 1972; H. Seebass, C. Brown, NIDNTT 3, pp. 352-377; E. Ka¬semann, Perspectives on Paul, 1971, pp. 60-78; N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 1991. j.i.p.

Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996). New Bible dictionary (3rd ed.) (636). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

[megadoc1]

sorry duane but to be a true follower of yeshua we must be biased and intolerant

This is the biggest heap of unadulterated crap I have read for quite a while.
If by "biased" you mean to prefer right to wrong, and by "intolerant" you mean refusing to accept that which is wrong, then I would agree with you. However, your warped and twisted way of looking at things will claim that YOUR system of belief is the ONLY one - and thus is "right" - and all else is "wrong".

I had pointed out earlier why it is that you refuse to accept the possibility that there are other paths to God, but neither you nor any of your ilk dared touch it ...all you could manage was a "that's your opinion", even though the dangers of fundamentalism have been well documented all through the centuries - but I forget, you don't read.

Help yourself, lad. Find a theologian who ascribes to your brand of christianity, and attempt some sort of learning procedure whereby you can clear up a lot of the misconceptions you cling to as "beliefs". Believe me, your faith will only grow stronger as a result.

D spike
you always talking about this "many ways" to god but
That sounds like a miserable god,
to teach one thing to one people and teach something else to another people
without taking into consideration, (conveniently) that the people will cross one another someday …....but I know that god you speak about he is the god of this world
and his name is satan he is the only god that can be reached via “many ways”

jesus said

Matthew 7:13-14
13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
John 10:9-10
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
John 10:14-16
14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. 15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.

jesus is the one shepard

[megadoc1]

people please note jesus was very intolerant towards evil

jesus was rather tolerant of evil.... i because according to your book, he let the prostitute go and just tell her to sin no more, the men and dem who wanted to kill she (wrongfully) we let go, he made wine for the wedding, he disrespected his mother by being harsh, he just stood there and was tortured and killed... he was rather tolerant of evil..

mega,, no, eh

Jesus is God in flesh he forgave the adulteress of her sins
he loves sinners but he hates sin
what wrong with making wine for a wedding?
how did jesus disrespect his mother?

he was tortured and killed ...for your sake and my sake

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

Romans 5:19
19 For as by one man’s disobedience(adam) many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience (jesus)many will be made righteous.

why do you figure God made it like this?

[zcarz]

you don't become righteous by works, you become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ

That's crock and bull

[zcarz]

again Megadoc1, what proof do you have that your beliefs are correct and Gandhi's beliefs are wrong?

I saw it for my self and
I personally exercised authority over Gandhi's gods
and that authority came from jesus because of my belief in jesus

What are you talking about? What did you see? And what do you mean by personally exercising authority over Gandhi's gods?

[Chimera]

he was tortured and killed ...for your sake and my sake

heh...wow God sure sounds forgiving and loving huh

torture and killed ftw.

[megadoc1]

Romans 5:19
19 For as by one man’s disobedience(adam) many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience (jesus)many will be made righteous.

why do you figure God made it like this?

because adam sinned
we all inherit sin naturally, no one needs to teach us to do wrong things
but through faith in jesus christ you are made righteous,
so natrually you do good things because of your faith and love for jesus


not because you want to get to heaven
or because its the right thing to do

[megadoc1]

you don't become righteous by works, you become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ

That's crock and bull

do you have something better to offer?

again Megadoc1, what proof do you have that your beliefs are correct and Gandhi's beliefs are wrong?

I saw it for my self and
I personally exercised authority over Gandhi's gods
and that authority came from jesus because of my belief in jesus

What are you talking about? What did you see? And what do you mean by personally exercising authority over Gandhi's gods?

because of my belief in jesus christ
I have been given authority over every god other than jesus,
they are all under me

[illumin@ti]

you don't become righteous by works, you become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ

That's crock and bull

do you have something better to offer?

again Megadoc1, what proof do you have that your beliefs are correct and Gandhi's beliefs are wrong?

I saw it for my self and
I personally exercised authority over Gandhi's gods
and that authority came from jesus because of my belief in jesus

What are you talking about? What did you see? And what do you mean by personally exercising authority over Gandhi's gods?

because of my belief in jesus christ
I have been given authority over every god other than jesus,
they are all under me

[zcarz]

you don't become righteous by works, you become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ

That's crock and bull

do you have something better to offer?

again Megadoc1, what proof do you have that your beliefs are correct and Gandhi's beliefs are wrong?

I saw it for my self and
I personally exercised authority over Gandhi's gods
and that authority came from jesus because of my belief in jesus

What are you talking about? What did you see? And what do you mean by personally exercising authority over Gandhi's gods?

because of my belief in jesus christ
I have been given authority over every god other than jesus,
they are all under me

i can offer sense.
and the second part is crock and bull

[megadoc1]

can you prove otherwise?
or are you just talking "crock and bull" ?

[berjnsan21]

Drinking an alcoholic drink and smoking during pregnancy and her baby become disabled is not God fault, Aba trading. It's the woman's fault who smokes and drinks alcoholic during pregnancy. It's the carelessness of pregnant women.

[sMASH]

sorry duane but to be a true follower of yeshua we must be biased and intolerant

@ this.

yes show me an unbiased and tolerant "christian"
and I will show you someone who don't know God
people please note jesus was very intolerant towards evil
and was hated and stoned when he speak out against it
I am following HE

lets extend this ghandi scenario more. ghandi not goin to heaven because he helped is fellow man, not because he inspired many to stand up against injustice, not because he lived in peace with the people and animals and environment. no
he is not going to heaven because he never uttered the words and believed that jesus is the son of god and/or god.
where do babies go when they die then,,, i am left to believe that because of original sin, babies did not repent, and did not proclaim jesus so they goin to hell.














if the original sin was done ages ago, everyone inherits it, and are born in it, so babies are inherently sinful so if they must go to hell. if they do not go to hell, it proves that original sin is not incumbent on any one, and u do not have to worship jesus as god and/or son of.

[sMASH]

So question to those who believe that good works would get you the heaven (if you believe in one). Do we need to repent and turn away from the sin we commit against God, that our good work nullifies as you claim. Or can we continue to sin? If so are you sorry for what you have done that is wrong against God? How many righteous works does it take to nullify one sin? In civil law that fines vary depending on the crime, is it this way with God? How do you know on the day of your death that your good works out weighs your back works? How do we measure it, or do we just hope for the best? Also if your good works are aim at appeasing God’s wrath, is your works of love? Do you really feed the homeless because you love them, or because it is another tick in your goodness column on the day of judgement? Do you really love God if you continue to transgress his law wilfully? Do you think in a court of law, if you say to the judge, yes Judge I did rape that woman, but I was good and kind to others he would let you walk away? If no why does your goodness not supercede, your one bad deed in man’s courts, but it does in God’s? Are we of a higher moral standard that God? Do we demand justice when God does not? Recently I was reading in the papers about a man who was killed, his mother was claiming he was a good man, and he only started selling drugs to help his grandmother build her house. Now lets say he was not killed but arrested and brought to court, should the judge release him from the drug trafficking charges because the use of the money receive from drug sale to do good by building a house for his grand mother? So to sum it up, by whose standard do we measure our goodness, men or God’s? If God’s can you really understand how holy he is?

if was so direct, then there would not be a judge, the police would just lock them up according the what crime they discover. the judge is to weigh the actions against the intentions.
yes, when the judge would consider the reason being to get money for the grand mother, so may give the lesser part of the sentence or may make the sentence hard labor. if the man after time, continued doing it for the business benefits, then he would get maximum penalty.

the intentions of the person is taken judged as well when they commit a wrong act. as soon as the condition which justifies the wrong act is alleviated, so to is the justification, so u need to stop. u supposed to exhaust all of your lawful means first before u do something wrong. and when u do it u need to beg for forgiveness, cause u did it....and hopefully, u are honest that god will accept.