so you believe that salvation and the new birth are two seperate occurances then? please don't believe i'm trying to be condescending, i just have to wrap my mind around an ideal before i can understand it.
doesn't the Bible say 'the new man', or 'new creature' in Christ, is a state of being that exists after salvation has already taken place?
i think at the very root of this, and correct me if i'm wrong, we're both trying to convey the same point but we have different means of getting to it. if i'm understanding things right, you're saying that only a select few people are actually capable of being saved, and i'm saying that anyone is capable of being saved. is that factual or am i in error?
i can totally understand what you're saying, but you're completely removing any form of free will from the equation; maybe i'm not understanding things completely though, i might just be missing something in this.
what i'm gathering is that you're saying that free will doesn't exist at all, right?
i mean the Bible also says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and if anyone opens the door He'll come in. i mean, even if that's in a different context than what i'm meaning, it would be illogical for God to say that He'll come in to anyone that receives Him in one place and then limit to whom He'll dispense salvation in another.
maybe i'm not making any sense, i don't know.
yes, but not in the way that most people would probably think. or maybe they would, i don't know.
think of it another way; doesn't the Bible refer to Jesus as 'the lamb slain from the foundation of the world'? this is why the isrealites were able to get saved before Christ's death on the cross--our perspective of before and after is different from God's perspective of before and after. if Jesus' sacrifice, in God's eyes, was already complete before God even created humanity, this would mean that God already had established that man had the choice of putting faith in Him and His sacrifice, or putting it something else.
i think the reason people have trouble with what i'm saying is because to the casual observer, it seems as though i'm saying that we're saving ourselves ('playing god' somehow), but that isn't at all what i'm saying. Jesus' blood paid for all men's sins. we have the ability, and more importantly the responsibility, of choosing whether or not we'll have faith that His sacrifice-His blood that already covers our sins-is truly enough to save us. i mean, in a visual sense it's sort of like a christian accepts Christ's blood as all he/she needs for salvation, whereas a lost person would be covering over the blood of Christ with his/her own ideals, theories, beliefs, and works as what they think they need for salvation.
i explained why some go to Hell. Christ's blood is sufficient for our salvation, that's never the issue. the issue is whether man accepts Christ's blood as sufficient or rejects it as insufficient.
that was my explanation of that comment. i just mis-stated what i was trying to say in the first place, which was what i just said now.
sorry, my reply is up at the top. still getting the hang of this :P does this allow html in your posts?
what i'm trying to say is that we are all equal as humans. i mean, Christ died for all, therefore His blood already covers all of mankind's sins. the choice comes into play in the form of us choosing whether or not we're accepting that payment (Christ's blood) as our choice of salvation or not. ____ofcourse i'm not suggesting there IS another choice for salvation, i'm meaning that from the point of view of a lost man trying to find his own way of salvation.
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Ruckus