Comments on The mind and soul of Ian: Holiness

Your post is awesome, as well as your comments and...

2009-01-29T06:29:00.000-08:00

Your post is awesome, as well as your comments and Elliot's comments regarding the post. You both are gifted in expressing your beliefs. You have blessed me!

Wonderful post, Ian.

2009-01-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

Wonderful post, Ian.

Actually, Romans chapter 7 is Paul talking about h...

2009-01-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

Actually, Romans chapter 7 is Paul talking about his life while he was still under the law. In his mind he wanted to do what was right, but since he was still enslaved by the sinful nature, he was unable to break free of sin on his own.

I also don't believe that we are born sinners. When we are born, we cannot have possibly commited a sin, and therefore God would be holding us accountable for somethingw we did not do. I think I will do another post on that later.

Romans 7:9
Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

Deuteronomy 30:11
Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach

It's pretty clear to me that becoming sinful is a decision that is left up to every individual man to make for himself. God says that it is within our reach to avoid becoming sinful, and God cannot lie. One of the things Jesus did when He came to earth was prove that it was indeed possible to live a sinless life on this earth. He was God, yes, but He also lived the life of a man, and lived it in complete obedience to God.

However, we all made the choice to become sinful, so we need the perfect strength of Jesus to free us from our condition.

About having the body of a wolf:

Romans 6:6-7

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might e done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

There are more such verses in the book of Romans, which talk about crucifying the flesh. They seem to make it pretty clear that when we accept Jesus, our sinful selves are crucified along with us. We have to kill our old selves so that we can become new in Jesus - yes, even before our physical deaths.

I join with you in praising God for His willingness to forgive. His mercy and love is beyond everything.

:)Ian(:

Rom 7:15-25I do not understand what I do. For what...

2009-01-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

Rom 7:15-25

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

I think this passage sums up what I want to say. I heard a national preacher talking about this very passage, and what he said really hit me. He talked about how, as being born into a sinful nature, we are born as 'wolves'. As wolves, we have the mind and attitude of a wolf, and sin.

However, when we accept Jesus, God does a miraculous work in our hearts by taking away our wolf heart (aka sinful nature) and putting in the heart of a lamb (aka Christ living in us). However, there is still one challenge. We now have the heart of a lamb, but the body of a wolf!

That's what Paul is talking about when he says "So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."

God gives us the power (when we ask) to take control of our 'wolf body' through our 'lamb heart'. However, even though we have the heart of a lamb, we sometimes fall with what our body of a wolf tells us to do. We cannot truly live in perfection until we are born into heaven, and we recieve our new bodies, which, in that case, we will then have the 'heart of the lamb' with the 'body of the lamb'.

Until that day comes, we have to rely on Christ every day to help us through our feuds of our 'wolf body.' Sometimes the desires of our body quench the influince of our lamb's heart, and we fall for sin. Praise the Lord, he is both willing and able to forgive us and bring us back into his way.

~Elliot

Elliot, this may seem contradictory to what I've s...

2009-01-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

Elliot, this may seem contradictory to what I've said, but I agree - Jesus is the only one who can achieve perfection on this earth.

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" Galatians 2:20

No human is able to; but if Jesus is in complete charge of our lives, if we have totally surrendered to Him, then it is possible through Christ to no longer sin.

If you read Romans, you will find many places where Paul talks about the Spirit controlling our minds rather than the sinful nature. It is on these things that I base my belief that we can be truly righteous on this earth.

We will still make mistakes, such as accidentally hurting people's feelings and such. That will not stop until we are in Heaven, so if that's what you meant by perfect, I wholeheartedly agree.

:)Ian(:

Pre-comment: no, I don't at all mind you using my ...

2009-01-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

Pre-comment: no, I don't at all mind you using my post as referance. It's hard to express any emotion through comments like this, but please assume I mean all of my points with Christ-like love and kindness.

Honestly, I agree with what you say. I would say that the piece of this that could be confusing/debating is the term 'holiness', and specifically, 'complete holiness'.

Being as straight forward as possible, I believe that while Christians are on earth, they cannot be 'completly holy', because I veiw that phrase as meaning 'perfection'.

But like I said, I believe that Christians are 'being made holy', a part of sanctification, which, like you said, could be related to a Christian stuggling with an issue of sin, praying, and feeling God's amazing mercy make that temptation far easier to refuse. I believe that 'complete holiness/aka prefection' will be accomplished when we are born into our new bodies in heaven, and although we can certainly, without a doubt, through God's amazing mercy and grace, grow to be more like him in the process of holiness, I firmly believe that no one besides Jesus Christ can achieve complete holiness while on earth.

~Elliot