You are a Christian because Jesus chose you, and not because you chose him. You were dead in sin, and in bondage to the powers and doctrines of demons. But Jesus took you away from them and raised you from the dead. He rescued you. He saved your life. A Christian consciousness that is unaware of this, or that fails to think of salvation as…salvation, is at best a defective faith, if it is genuine at all, since that awareness is itself a manifestation of salvation. It is faith in the gospel. This awareness is what makes our sins all the more repugnant to us. That we must all reach unity in the faith involves becoming like-minded in doctrinal matters. It is strange and foolish to believe that true Christians can unite without being agreed on doctrine, since our faith is defined by it. Once Christians with vastly contradictory doctrines unite, such a union can only be based upon humanistic interests, and not spiritual ones – it is a false and ungodly unity. Here, the faith does not refer to our subjective assent to the gospel or to moral character, but to theology, as the term is also used with such a meaning in passages such as 1 Timothy 4:6, Titus 1:13, and Jude 3, the last of which reads, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. That such unity is founded on doctrinal accuracy and agreement is seen in verse 14, Vincent cheung,,,,
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 03:59:19 +0000
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