Saturday, December 29, 2007

Christian Faith



Christians debating the differences in Christian beliefs and denominations. Faith in Jesus is not commitment to your church or denomination. It is total faith in Christ and not in a denomination or church, though you may love the church and respect and love your leaders and your denomination. But your commitment is to Christ. As Christian believers (assuming each of us are a believer), the Holy Spirit will lead each of us to the truth. Truth is often prevented if Christianity is known as a legalistic system which cause a delusion of eternal life. Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorite theologians said: "It is perilously close to being sinful for any person to learn doctrine for doctrine's sake."

It is no use to deny that Christ was crucified by persons who would today be called fundamentalists. This prove distressing to us who pride ourselves on our orthodoxy.

All of us are born spiritual ignorant, not stupid. Through Adam, we are born spiritually dead. The nineteenth-century Scottish commentator John Eadie described it as a case of "death walking". Spiritually dead people are like zombies--they don't know they're dead and they're still going through the motions of living. God is a sovereign God and we have to understand that somehow, mysteriously, within the framework of predestination and within the framework of His sovereignty and the framework of election, which I believe in, there is a place for human freewill which is whether they respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Recognizing Jesus voice is like a sheep recognizing the shepherd's voice. Only the Holy Spirit can prick a person's heart to cause a person to hear Christ's voice. Jesus said in John 10:14-15 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.

Not a priest nor any other pastor would know if a person's salvation is true. Am I, no matter what kind of belief I have, willing to change my mind and believe the truth, if it can be proved that I am mistaken? Is there anything more valuable to me than to be accepted by God? Or am I unwilling even to consider the possibility of I am wrong? The Bible warns, "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:10b NIV)

"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."
John Milton 1608-1674, British Poet

"I shall never be a heretic; I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally; on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men."
Martin Luther 1483-1546, German Leader of the Protestant Reformation

I see things and I hear of things that Chistian people are doing, and as I watch them operate within the profession of Chrisitanity, I do raise the question of whether they have been truly converted. - A.W. Tozer, I Call it Heresy

"You never know how much you really believe anything until truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." C.S. Lewis

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