KCU/03/Team Lambo

Topic 14: Assurance of salvation?

Based on what you know from the Bible & other sources (including the Theology Matters reading), what are the ways we can be sure that we’re saved? (Be sure to do more research into the issue. If the group cannot come to a consensus, feel free to have different group members each express their own opinions.)

Contribution of Kyle Mundell: The question “How can you be sure you are saved?” is a common one. It is not an easy one to answer either. However, this paper will make an attempt at helping people understand the complex and intricate problem of assurance of salvation. Opinions of this topic range in many ways. For instance, some believe that it is as simple as a prayer. Yet, there are those who feel they must work their entire life to attain salvation. These are obviously large differences. Also, many religions believe different things, and since this topic is involved with religion it is automatically difficult to explain and understand. For instance, the Christian belief is that salvation comes through a relationship with Jesus Christ who dies on a cross. And to receive this salvation all that is required is repentance, baptism, and a life long commitment to a Christian lifestyle and faith. This is contrasted by what Muslims believe about salvation. To them, salvation comes with a life full of strict rules and prayer to their prophet Mohammed. Also, their view of God is much different from Christians in that they believe that God is malicious, and unsympathetic, whereas the Christian God is a loving, caring, and gracious God who gave his son to save the souls of sinners.

Sources:www.evangelicaloutreach.org/assure.htm

       www.founders.org/FJ58/article4.htm

Contribution of Andre' Brooks: According to Lambert Dolphin Muslims duty are that of five daily prayers, a welfare tax called zakat, fasting (during the month of Ramadan), and a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca; these four elements plus the profession of faith are called the Five Pillars. Muslims believe in God but they choose to worhship the Prophet of God Muhammad. Muhammad is thought to be the last prophet of God. To Christians we don't believe in any Muhammad as being a prophet. Our proof to the is the Holy Bible:no where inside the bible does it even mention the name of Muhammad. Whenever Muslims pray they pray to the eastand they also pray only the five times a day like their duties are to because that is the direction that Mecca is. Unlike Christianity we pray at anytime and place and as many times a day that we choose to. When it comes to Muslims they have certain rules when it comes to clothing and how they dress. Christians on the other hand don't believe or have set dress rules we just understand that we need to dress modestly so that we don't cause fellow brothers and sisters to fall or anyone around us. For Muslims Friday is the weekly holy day. To Christianity Sunday is the day of rest: the day of worship because it is the sabbath day that God created. With Muslims they find that it is okay to have multiple spouses, but if they are caught having adultery or false accusations of adultery they are severely punished.(A Short Summary of Islamic Beliefs and Eschatology)by Lambert Dolphin. According to christianity it is not okay to be married to multiple spouses. Through out the whole bible you never read of anyone having multiple wives. So there for that it self is enough evidence itself to prove that it is wrong. With Christianity you are not punished physically but emotionally and Spiritally. You can cause you fellow brother in Christ to fall with this type of action. You not only hurt yourself and family with actions like this but you lose your witness and you deliberatly disobey God. (In Exodus Twenty God states the Ten Commandments and very clearly the seventh Commandment states I shall not commit adultery. So you not only hurting yourself and others around you but you are hurting god because you sinned. In (Matt 19:9) Jesus says "I tell you that anyone who devorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." Sources:The (NIV) New International Version The Qur'an, A Short Summary of Islamic Beliefs by Lambert Dolphin lambert@ldolphin.org Web Pages: http://ldolphin.org/ Blessed are poor in the Spirit http://atheism.about.com/od/islammuslims/p/Beliefs.htm http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/beliefs.htm

Beati Pauperes spiritia quia ipsorum est regnum caelorum (Matt 5:3)Bikash Poudel

Beauty itself opened its mouth of wisdom and said “Blessed are the poor in the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. All angels, all saints, and everything that was ever born must keep silent when the wisdom of the father speaks for the wisdom of angels and all creatures is pure folly before the unfathomable wisdom has declared that the poor are blessed. There are some who don’t properly understand the meaning. These people who cling with attachment to penances and outward practices making much of these. May God have mercy on these folk for understanding so little of divine truth? These people are called holy for their outward appearances, but inwardly they are asses for they are ignorant of actual nature o divine truth. For man to posses’ true poverty, he must be as free of his created will as he was when he was not. For I declare by the eternal truth, as long as you have the will to do and God, you are not poor: for a poor Manis one who wills nothing and desires nothing. If a man is to be poor of will, he must and desire as little as he willed and desired when he was not. And this is the way for a man to be poor by not wanting. Secondly, he is a poor man who knows nothing. For a man to posses this poverty he must live so that he is unaware that he does not live for himself, or for truth or for God .He must be so lacking in all. Knowledge He must that he neither knows nor recognizes nor feels that God lives in him: more still he must be free of all the understanding that lives in him .God is free of all things and so he is all things. The poor man is not who wants to fulfill the will of God, but he who lives in such a way as to be free on his own will. A man should be poor that neither or nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve distinction.

But , in breaking through, “where I stand free of my own will, of God’s will of his works and of God himself , then I am above all creature and I am neither God nor creature , but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. There I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall no the be content with God in as much as he is God or with all this divine work for this breaking - through guarantees to me that I and God are one”.(According to Meister Eckhart, from the book “the problem of Evil”)

In my opinion , they will be blessed who have faith in God They mustn’t be rich , the main theme is not external poverty they should be rich internally in God’s faith and for those who are following God’s path Kingdom of Heaven is waiting. Form those soul both knowledge and love flows for the glory of God, and they are blessed by the God. So, in this valuable life we should be careful and follow the path of Jesus. We should understand that god loves more than we can imagine .He sacrificed his only son Jesus because of our sin and to bring closer to him. God loves us immensely because we are his children and we are proud to be called as God’s children .So; we should try to be God’s children and should accept the truth that death is there. So, we should try to be blessed by the God .And be prepared for biuilding the steps of kingdom of Heaven which is determined by our deeds that we perform in this life.

Assurance of salvation Assurance of Salvation is all about how we can be shaved .Salvation also means going to Heaven after Death. Book’s View only points(Philosophical Theology and Christian Doctrine by Brian Hebble Thwalte)

Christ is held to have defeated the powers of evil, or purchased our liberation or, endured in our place the penalty of sin or offered a sacrifice sufficient sufficient or “atone” for our guilt , This last suggestion makes one aware of the two fold meaning of the word ‘atonement’. In its etymological sense, it simply ‘at-one- ment’ and is virtually synonymous with ‘reconciliation’ God in Christ at once shows us the truth about ourselves reveals the nature and the cost of the divine forgiveness and draws us into union with the triune God

Mercy can only be meritorious retribution is right Mercy goes beyond justice. Richard Holloway “The mystery remains that this prodigal universe sometimes redeems its own pain through extraordinary souls who from somewhere beyond all possibility, forgive the unforgivable” By setting both the offence perpetrated and the suffering caused in the context of God’s love for both offender and victim, the latter is enabled to forgive, in the hope and trust that, in the end truth will out , the wrong will be rectified and both offender and victim will be transformed and reconciled. The above understanding of forgiveness is God’s own merciful love and very great The Christ life and death were openly intended by him as an offering to God to make expiation for human sin. Christ died on the cross to give us a perfect human life. He died because of our sin to give us a life and in order to win us back to God and to appear a wrathful God. Christ life and death are such value to God that they enable or permit him to remit both repentant and apologetic sinners freely, whether or not they are in a position to plead Christ’s sacrifice .By incorporation into Christ’s death by baptism wearer set free from guilt and reunited with God God is merciful to sinner, not because their debt of punishment is paid by Christ’s passion and death rather, Christ’s passion works by prevailing upon God not to be severe in his dealing with sinners. In my opinion, after reading the book. I think that it is hard to say that I can be saved because God has given us each and everything his only son Jesus Christ, he gave to us and he was peeled on the cross .This gives an idea that God loves us more than we think and beyond our imagination .The one and only way of saving or being saved is following the way of Christ i.e. try to go in path that bible tells. Try to give him honor by spreading his message of love i.e. preaching about his greater deeds and his love towards the mankind. Trying to baptize the innocent people who have faith in him and give them an idea to the path that Jesus told us to follow. If we follow the path he taught us and try to go in that path spreading his message of love i.e. first love your God and love your neighbor than there’ll be no war only peace and every innocent will get chance to live and love each other . In this way we are able to create the lovely world of God and we can be saved.

Who needs to be saved? Everyone does. No one who matures to the point of moral awareness does only and always what they believe they should do. And even when we obey our consciences, we do not do so for the right reason – to glorify God – unless God graciously transform us. As Paul told Romans,’whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”. On the other hand, a very large number of human beings never achieve moral awareness .Many die before birth, and many more die in early infancy. But these people are also sinners .By God’s appointment, Adam acted on behalf of the race, in his moral probation in the Garden of Eden ,so that when he sinned we all did ; this is why we die ,even if we do not mature physically to moral awareness. We can all say with David, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). Unless our sin is dealt with, we cannot be reconciled with God .So next we must ask how sinners can be saved .Paul has taught that the free gift of God “in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ,” brings justification (Rom 5:15-16) Just as all who are “in Adam” die, so all who are “in Christ” will be made alive. Whom is God Trying to Save?

“To recapitulate, everyone needs to be saved, but there is only one Savior for all of humankind, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. Because Christ is the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, all of God’s saving work among the peoples of the world, in all times and places, has been objectively accomplished in and through the one act of obedience of the incarnate Son of God. All sinners who will stand before God in the final judgment and hear God’s wonderful declaration that they are found not guilty will be justified because Christ completely obeyed the righteous demands of God in all the ways that they did not. They will be invited to live with God forever in the glorious new earth and heaven because they died to sin and rose again to new life in union with Christ. We say that someone was saved, or is now saved, but the fullness of salvation is something that still lies ahead of us. The saved are people who once were lost but now have been found; they were blind but now see; they were dead in sin but now are alive in Christ. All of this was accomplished for us totally by God’s grace through a work of the triune God; having been chosen by the Father, God’s people were redeemed by the Son who gave his life for those whom the Father chose in him; they were illumined, regenerated and sanctified by the Spirit. So then, everyone needs to be saved, and the Word became flesh, lived a perfect life, died a sinless death and was raised from the dead to accomplish salvation for those whom the Father chose in him. Adam, Noah, Job, Abraham and David, who all lived before Christ, were saved because of Christ’s sacrifice for them. None of them knew what we now know about the triune nature of God or the means by which God reconciles sinners to himself, but they were saved by Christ’s work nevertheless. We are left wondering, however, about the many people who had no contact with any of these figures familiar to us because of the biblical record. When Abraham was called, there were people in North America and Australia who were completely ignorant of God’s covenant promises to Abraham. Must we conclude that all of those people were outside God’s saving purposes, that none of them were among the elect? What about people who do not hear the good news concerning what Christ has done to save sinners even now? Must we assume that God has not chosen even one of them to salvation? On the other hand, if some of the elect were among those who had no contact with revelation concerning God’s covenant with sinners, how was God making himself known to them and what did he ask of them by way of an acceptable response that would constitute “saving faith”? Furthermore, how significant are the non saving benefits of God’s gracious work in Christ to such people? To such questions we now proceed.” (Terrance L. Tiessen, Who can be saved?)added by Bikash Poudel

Salvation is made up off two words: justification, and Sanctification.(Bikash Poudel) Justification may be defined as “that judicial act of God by which on the basis of the Meritorious works of Christ, imputed to the sins and received enough faith, God declares the sins absolved from sin released from its penalty and restored as righteous”. Expressed simply it is being placed by God in a right relationship with himself. The major emphasis in justification is that it is an act of God. Although an act of God, it necessarily leads in the believer to a “walking in the spirit,” “bringing forth the fruit of the spirit” and “serving righteousness” for God who justifies and also gives new birth. And a call to whole hearted commitment. Saving faith leads to faithfulness to God in life. Paul clearly shows this in Galatians and Romans. (Source bible dictionary)

     Sanctification is the process of being made holy .As the article on holiness makes clear, holiness when applied to things places and people means that they are consecrated and set apart for the use of God, who is utterly pure and apart from all imperfection and evil. God is said to be holy because God is unlike anything else that exist. People and things are said to be holy insofar as they are associated with God; thus spirit of God is the Holy Spirit. This association with in a cultic sense as separation from profane people, places and things or in an ethical sense as separation from social and individual wrongdoing. 

         Paul says Christians have died to the law through the body of Christ by becoming part of the body of Christ. Christians participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus, just as Jesus death and resurrection set him free from sin and death. So, Christians’ union with him in death and resurrection set free from their sin and death. It also sets them free from the law because the law was given to increase sin so that people would be ready to accept salvation when it was offered. The coming of salvation also means freedom from the law because the purpose of the law has been fulfilled. One way of expressing the unity of Christ with God is to say that they have the same spirit that they know and will in the same way.
    The Christians possession of the spirit of God is a way to be united with Christ and with God in such a way that all will know and will do in the same way. As Christ died and raised, so do Christians die and rise with him. As Christ possesses the spirit of God, so do Christians possession of the spirit of God, however is a matter not only of union with Christ but also of union with God. Dying and rising with Christ not only free human beings from sin but also gives them a place in Gods life.

  Christians are already children of God. Through the Christ has taken all our sin out of our lives. This new life is possession of the spirit of Christ, which is also the spirit of God. The law of God sets forth God’s will because of its content 

but because it was incapable of setting people free from the power of sin. Once people have been set free from the power of sin, however they do not follow the law because its purpose was to prepare for the coming of Christ, not serve as guide for life afterwards. Instead walk according to the spirit. In this way they do the will of God which is also what the law presents. With Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, the most important way of expressing the unity of believers is to say that they are incorporated into Christ, that they become part of body of Christ. Christ was raised from dead by the glory of the father, so we might walk in newness of life one day.

Baptism may have been accompanied by anointing that symbolized the gift of the Holy Spirit. Baptism creates an intimate union between Christ and the believer but also an intimate union among believers.

On the other hand, drinking the Eucharistic cup is participation in the blood of Christ, eating the Eucharistic bread is a participation in the body of Christ. This strongly suggest that when Christian do this in the memory of Jesus ,the Eucharistic bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus; therefore consuming the Eucharistic bread and wine unites the one consuming with the blood of Christ. Also like baptism, Participation in the Eucharist is union with Christ in death and resurrection .Celebrating the Eucharist is remembrance of Jesus' Last supper and his subsequent death and resurrection, and a participation in that death and resurrection.

As we know, salvation as a free gift of God .By incorporating people into Christ, God brings them to the proper goal of human life.(source Dying and Rising with Christ, The Theology of Paul Apostle )