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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Are Positional and Practical truths true | Ex 1:1 | Aliehs | 22121 | ||
Hi Joe, First of all, I'm sorry if I had misunderstood you at some points and if I had offended you in any way. Also, if the tone of my post comes across to you as "prideful", it is not intended. The problem with communicating via the Internet or written form is that you lose all facial and audio expressions, and what was excitement to me may come across as prideful to you. In any case, I apologise as it was not meant to be that way. Forgiven, I hope? :o) Ok, let me try to address your agruements without too much excitement this time ;). First of all, am I now correct in understanding that yes, you DO believe we are righteous IN CHRIST and God sees us that way, BUT we are "not yet righteous in our nature and in our practice"? My reply now is going to be based on this understanding, so if you think I'm STILL misunderstanding you, then you'll know what my reply is based on instead. Actually, when I answered you the first time, I had posted it first and THEN realised that I was replying to a 3-month old post ;o). Didn't mean to bring you back into this discussion here again, but well - since you're already back, then we might as well continue :o). Ok - I'll start by answering some of your questions: "Where in Scripture do we find that our own spirits are seated at the right hand of God?" That's found in Eph 2:6 as follows: 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,.... He MADE us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. "Made" means it's already happened. So yes, it is CHRIST seated at the right hand of God ABOVE (as you pointed out and which I agree too), but aren’t we as well “IN CHRIST" as you do agree too? So since He's seated there, am I not right to say that we are too, since I'm IN Him seated “together in the heavenly places”? True, we're not PHYSICALLY in Him, so what part of us is it that's IN Him then? Must be our spirit, isn't it? Seated together in Christ. And now, the question which I did not answer previously - the million dollar question ;o) : "are we righteous just like Christ was in nature and in practice? First of all, when God sees/calls us righteous, does He make a distinction as to whether He's calling us righteous in nature like Jesus and / or righteous in spirit like Jesus? I fail to see Him making any distinction? When He says we're righteous, I take His word for it and claim by faith that we ARE righteous full stop. True, our flesh at times doesn't BEHAVE righteous, but we ARE righteous nevertheless. So I would say that we ARE righteous like Christ in EVERY aspect, but we're not BEHAVING perfectly righteous like Him yet because I am still LEARNING HOW to behave righteously, and my body is not helping much in the process because it has not yet been transformed to my glorious body. Me and my present body cannot yet comprehend my new righteous nature and my body is also constantly warring with it. As such, it doesn't always give me the righteous results/practices hoped for. You gave me the passage which Paul wrote about pressing on. My first question is, HOW does he press on? Did he say he uses the law to press on? My second question is, WHAT is he pressing on for? Did he say “righteousness”? You say "Paul sees that the righteousness to be gained from the Law is what is our own" but I don't see that he sees that at all. The only time he mentioned the word "law" in that passage is to say he counts all his losses as rubbish so that he may gain Christ, AND “….may be found in Him, NOT having a righteous of my (his) own derived from the Law, BUT that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." (It's actually a full stop at the end of that sentence. Either a full stop or a ; or : which means the end of that sentence or point). As mentioned in my previous post, there are TWO ways to righteousness which Paul mentions consistanly in his epistles. The first way is through the law. The second way is through faith in Jesus Christ. In the Philippians 3:8-14 passage, all he did when he mentioned "law" was to once again show these two ways, and the way which HE was found in Jesus was righteousness through faith. So, he goes on to talk about pressing on. Did he give an idea as to WHAT he wants to press on to? Yes, he did. In the NIV version, a new sentence starts at verse 10: (post continued in the following post).... |
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2 | Are Positional and Practical truths true | Ex 1:1 | Reformer Joe | 22140 | ||
You wrote: "He MADE us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. "Made' means it's already happened." Does it? Paul often uses the past tense to assure us of a future glory, such as he does in Romans 8:30: "and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified." He has justified me, but he hasn't glorified me yet (Philippians 3:21, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Colossians 1:27). There are those who will become believers who have not been called nor justified as of yet, since those things come just prior to and at conversion. Still, Paul uses the past tense to describe it. And, as I cited in the Colossians verse before, in a very real sense Christ is seated ABOVE, which means that we are BELOW, by comparison. In other words, it is not done yet, but rather "just as good as done." We see this all over Scripture. Has Satan been defeated? Yes, but he is still active in the world. How can those two be true? In the same way, we can be considered glorified even though that isn't a reality for us until the Second Coming, and we can call ourselves "saved" even though in another sense we are "being saved" (1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor 2:15). Same thing in Ephesians 2. We have not been physically raised up with Christ yet (that is a future reality as well -- 1 Corinthians 15:51 ff), but Paul describes it in the past to accentuate the future certainty of it. Only in the sense that Christ, the Second Adam, has become our head are we indeed seated next to the Father at this point in time. This is the historical understanding of the passage, and the one held by the majority of Christians throughout chruch history. You wrote: "You say 'Paul sees that the righteousness to be gained from the Law is what is our own' but I don't see that he sees that at all." "...not having a righteousness OF MY OWN derived from the Law..." --Philippians 3:9 You wrote: "As mentioned in my previous post, there are TWO ways to righteousness which Paul mentions consistanly in his epistles. The first way is through the law." No. "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly." --Galatians 2:21 "Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law." --Galatians 3:21 --Joe! |
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