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Lds Or Christian? - Page 2

From what I understand you do have peace. You have peace when you know that you have pleased the Lord through doing the right thing. So that is good. But for those times that you aren't obeying His commands, you cannot have it--you're sinning, and God isn't pleased... right? So what I propose instead is a peace (that I know through scripture and experience exists) that doesn't come through your performance, because in the big picture, following the laws of God can never bring any overall peace. Even when we're really trying, we simply can never be perfect--not even close. How about a peace that instead comes from God as a gift? One that isn't based on what you do or do not do. It is given freely to anyone, disregarding all faults in your life. It is given upon request.

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Not quite. I have peace because I know that God loves me as his daugther. I know that he wants what is best for me. I know that he is watching over me. I know that he cares about every detail of my life and wants me to be happy, just like my mortal Father does.

I get satisfaction from doing my best to please him. It is true, I will never be perfect. My faith doesn't teach me that I have to be perfect. That is why we need a Savior. Nothing less than perfection is acceptable in Heaven, which is why a Savior is needed. Since I can't be perfect, in order to make it to heaven, the Savior atoned for my sins. Through his actions, I am given the grace I need to be found acceptable to enter heaven.

However, I do believe I need to do my best to live the gospel. My best, may not be much or it might be a lot. It isn't for me to judge what anyone else should do. I believe after I do all that I can do, he will make up the difference.

Now, I can do nothing at all and still enter heaven. However, the rewards are different depending upon how much I did in accordance with my ability. The key being, not all are equal and what I am capable of doing is not the same as what someone else is capable of doing.

I do not believe that two people who have the same truths revealed to them and the same opportunities in life can expect the same reward if one does all in their power to live a life pleasing to God and does their best to live in accordance with the gospel (not perfectly, but making an honest effort to do what is right) and the other adopts a live and let live attitude and doesn't make any effort to live righteously. I think we both make it to heaven, but I think our eternal rewards will be different.

Edited: tenaheff on 4th Mar, 2004 - 8:03pm

Lds Or Christian? Studies Doctrine Mormon

From my experience, this peace that you proclaim is also fleeting, as it leads to laziness in obedience to God. Disobedience to God always leads to conflict and guilt, which remains until repentence.

If I feel conflict and guilt in my own life, I know that my conscience is telling me I need to improve in some area. This then will lead me to change my life, through repentence. At the same time, the Holy Ghost is working in me to make me strong in those areas where I am weak, through the Atonement of Christ, as long as I am repenting, seeking His will, and seeking to obey His will.

Now, from what I read, it sounds like your peace is static. My conflict, which is internal, is growth. It is growth towards what the Lord wants me to be. Growth never comes through peace, it comes through striving.

If you are satisfied with being static, not growing, that is fine. Just remember that the LDS are seeking greater blessings promised us by Jesus Christ.

NightHawk

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Tenaheff and Nighthawk,

Change that comes from the heart outward, will abide. It will govern our every action. It is "second nature." It is effortless to walk in the beliefs of the heart. Change on the outside is nothing more than behavioral modification. That change will only last as long as we put forth effort. Its motivation cannot be trusted. God wants a heart change in us.

Every religion in the whole world offers peace to man. Christianity, however, is the only one that delivers. For we are not a people attempting to achieve a state or status which will give us peace, we are a people who have been made right with God completely through the finished work of one man, Christ Jesus. And, because of His finished work, we have been granted peace with God. Neither one of you describe this as what you experience, but maybe I didn't read you right??

Nighthawk, it sounds like you are convinced that this good news of a peace given freely without fault through the cross of Christ, will lead people to abuse this gift. To walk all over it. However you may not have realized this yet, but, law only affects the outer man. While mercy and love and peace affect the inner man. You want to change someone's behavior? Preach the law. However if you want to change someone's heart, the only agent that can accomplish this successfully is a message of acceptance.

The good news that Jesus preached caused the people to fall in love with God. It caused people to trust the God they had grown to dread. It caused them to draw near to the One they had been hiding from. It caused them to come out of the stronghold of sin by entering into intimacy with God.

Jesus' preaching of the good news (reconciliation with God by faith alone), succeeded where law had failed. The natural response to goodness is appreciation, thanksgiving, committment and relationship. That is why it says that the good news is the power of God unto salvation. healing, deliverance, and every other promise God made.

1) it is impossible to do anything for God unless we are first declared incapable of sin. We need to die to the law, be declared holy, perfect, blameless, forgiven: incapable of sinning.

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth will come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." john 3:19-21

2) it is God who makes us obedient to the law--it is His promise, His responsibility. And He does it by the inside out.

There is nothing to fear, because no one will ever abuse the free gift of his undeserved favor, He swears:

"I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. ... I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." Ezek 36:25-27

"They will be my people and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and for the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasating covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul." Jer 32:37-41

It is God's one and only way to see us serve Him, because of Him, from the heart, by dealing with our lives from the inside, out. Anything else is just an appearance of godliness.

"we serve God in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code." rom 7:6

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No, actually what I am saying is that it DOES lead people to abuse it. That is why there are so many who consider all Christians as hypocrits. Since the gift of grace and mercy (in so many peoples' opinions) requires nothing but a simple statement of "I believe," people DON'T change. They loudly proclaim that they are christian, but their lives don't really reflect it.

Of course, the christian who is addicted to alcohol will say, "I have taken it to the cross of Jesus, and He has cleansed me." The person who has problems with sex addiction, or stealing, or lieing, or gossip, will proclaim, "I have taken this to the cross of Jesus, and He has overcome it for me." Well, guess what? That is repentance, and is exactly the "work" that so many "christians" criticize Mormons for.

So, some christian people obviously are sincere, are repenting, are changing. Many others appear to be christian in name only, because they have been taught that they don't need to do anything.

Actually, the good news that Jesus preached was full of work. He commanded the people to "love thy neighbor", to "feed the hungry", to "do the works that I have done", to pray, to repent, to become. He also commanded people to be baptized and to endure.

Actually, I won't disagree with you here. The only disagreement I have is that I participate, willingly in the process. As I listen to Him speaking through my conscience, and willingly obey the promptings I get there, I change. It isn't MY work, it is HIS, and I am just willingly obeying him. As I become more obedient and submissive to Him, then I become more the person that He wants me to be.

NightHawk

Lds Or Christian?

I don't disagree with this statement. However, you need to know that I consider myself a Christian. So, I believe this statement refers to me as well. My membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is like someone else being a member of the Baptist church or Pentacostal or Catholic. All of those faiths also have differences in what they believe and how they worship.

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Nighthawk,

In response to all of your points there are two things I would like to teach you, if you wouldn't mind, and we'll see if you see any wisdom in it:

1) The law provokes sin, not its opposite: obedience.

I think you are right that there are some Christians who live and repent of their sins like you do as LDS, for I was one of them at an early stage in my faith. But this is not what we hold dear as the vehicle for change. Let me explain.

What is law?

"Anyone, therefore, who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it, sins." james 4:17
"rather, it is through the law that we have the knowledge of sin." rom 3:20
"Indeed I would not have known what sin was, except through the law." Rom 7:7

So law is any good standard we can be convinced about.

Rom 10:4 "Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." What does this mean?

"I would not have known what coveting really was unless the law had not said, 'Do not covet.' But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetour desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. ... 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. ... 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 and making me a prisoner of the law of sin. ... 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." rom 7:7-10, 18-19, 21-23, 25

God continues "because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us" rom 8:2-4

The wages of sin is death, so we need to be delivered from death, from sin, from the sinful nature, and therefore, from the law: "where there is no law there is no transgression" rom 4: 15. "He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and stood opposed to us: he took it away, nailing it to the cross." col. 2:13-14

There is no way that we become more like God in the way we live through hearing the law and trying to follow it. Our nature is not like Jesus'. That's why we need to be given a new nature. The way we obey in the new nature is through asking for more of the undeserved favor (grace) we received when we first believed. We obey God through the strength of His Spirit, not through our effort. This is what it is talking about when it says: "Now whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law" rom 3:19-20. I will show you why the law ought to quiet your mouth, your effort, your self-worth:

2) Man is incapable of obedience.

I believe that all good things come from God. That includes obedience. Look again at what was above: I know that there is nothing good in me, that is, in my sinful nature. Let's read some more:

"We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written, 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. ... the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes." rom 3:9-12, 17-18

"The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." ps 14:2-3

"How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like flithy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins." is 64:5-7

Even our initial turn to God, our faith, is a gift from God--something not our own but given freely to us. God deserves the credit even for that.

We sound pretty lost if we rely on ourselves to accomplish anything redeemable: "worthless" is how God sees our accomplishment. Yet God is love.

"Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ." 2 cor 1:21

"for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose." phil. 2:13

"To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." col. 1:29

"Apart from me, you can do nothing." john 15:5

What is the point of all this study and consideration? Think about a driver that gets pulled over by a police officer. The officer says "you were speeding over the limit--you were going 70 and it was posted 55."

"Oh, officer, please, have mercy on me, because I promise I will never do it again," the driver asks.

"sin shall not be your master, for you are not under law, but under grace." Sin is a power that enslaves. Its power comes through the law. Just because the man sees his sin and regrets it, hearing once again what he already knows (that the speed limit is 55) does not somehow impart power to the driver to be better about speeding. No, the only thing the law can do is point out transgressions. Law provides no enablement to resist the power of sin; it only condemns the sinner. But grace, enables.

In my church, it does absolutely no good to talk about what Jesus did and taught that was exemplary, unless we are also given in the same breath a reminder of the cross of Christ. When you say you participate willingly in this process, you only do so because God has enabled you to. But you would have not been able if God had not taken pity on you (and I) and given you a free gift of His Spirit, which enables us to have those righteous desires and strengths. Jesus preached laws, but He also said "I am the Way." Why is peace and forgiveness given freely? Because otherwise we would never have it; we cannot earn it, we are not worthy of it.

Lds Christian Mormon Doctrine Studies - Page 2

All of this is true, but only if I allow it to happen. I have to do more than just say a prayer to accept Jesus as my Savior for the changes to happen. I need to be willing to allow the Spirit to work on me. I have to be willing to try to live righteously and make the changes in my life that He gives me the strength and ability to accomplish.

This is not contrary to my beliefs. We are not worthy of it because we are not perfect, but we can become worthy through his grace.