Welcome to Gaia! ::

For the original question I always thought that the unforgivable sin (or blasphemy of the Holy Spirit) was referring to not accepting God's love and turning to him. You deny God or Christ, that would be blasphemy. The way I see it God DOES forgive all of your sins if you repent and turn to Christ, but if you are committing the sin of rejecting God by not accepting Jesus as your saviour then you cant be forgiven because you haven't repented. If that makes sense.

Unjust in the sense that if He were just we'd all burn in hell. But instead He chooses to save those who believe. It's unfair sure, but those who are saved probably won't complain. Those who do complain got what they deserve. His world, His rules, complaining doesn't solve anything. God is more than just loving anyway. There is a wrathful side.

Not feeling sorry for it doesn't make it right though. And not believing in something doesn't mean it's not there.

But according to the Bible, everyone is without an excuse, whether they have been "witnessed" to or not. The entire Creation bears witness of its Creator, and that is enough to leave us all without excuse. At Judgment Day, a person can't just say "well, no one ever told me..." and expect to get off. That's ridiculous - we live our whole lives in this world made by the Creator, and our own consciences convict us of our sin and of God's existence. The penalty of sin is death, it doesn't make a difference if someone didn't do a "good enough" job of witnessing to us; it doesn't change the penalty.

After all, how can anyone do a perfect job at witnessing? We are all sinners. If I share the gospel with someone and then he sees me sin, so he then decides that Christ isn't any good, it's not my failure to be perfect that prevents him from being saved, that's him using it as an excuse for why he rejects God.

If saying "I wasn't witnessed to well enough" is a good enough excuse to get out of hell, then we can all say that, because none of us have been witnessed to by a perfect person. Salvation is the work of God, not of man, and the power of a witness to save is in God, not in the person witnessing.

A person isn't condemned because they weren't witnessed to or "shown" Christ by another person. A person is condemned because of their own sin. "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world... whoever does not believe is condemned already." (John 3)

If someone wants Bible verses, well considering that the issue of "sin" is one of the main themes of the Bible, I am going to wager that there are well over a hundred verses that illustrate that the penalty for sin is condemnation.

Prominent verses often used are "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," and later in that letter, "The wages of sin is death." (Romans 3:23 and 6:23)

We are all sinners and deserve punishment because of our sin. This is illustrated throughout the entire Bible, but the early chapters of Romans are especially clear on this; chapter 1 is mostly what I was basing my last post off of, particularly:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ~Romans 1:18-20

My statement was that "according to the Bible, everyone is without an excuse, whether they have been 'witnessed' to or not. The entire Creation bears witness of its Creator, and that is enough to leave us all without excuse." It was just a paraphrase of the above passage.



According to the Bible, God is sovereign and providential, so technically everything that happens does so because God wills it. However, that said, anyone who refuses to allow someone such as Gandhi to enter a church because of racism commits a terrible sin, and goes totally against the Bible's teachings. But for Gandhi or whoever it is who experiences that, that does not remove his own responsibilty and guilt for his own sins. Gandhi was a sinner, just like all of us, and he deserves punishment, just like all of us.

Also, Gandhi was fully aware that people who follow a cause such as "Christianity" do not always live up to their own beliefs correctly. He had plenty of people who were supposedly following his own teachings who did things he did not agree with. If he refused to believe in Christ just because he met a racist person at the door of a church, he was deliberately allowing himself to be shortsighted. He knew all about racism and how it worked, and that there were plenty of people in a society who may be racist without that society itself being evil. In fact, his entire mission in life was based around the philosophy that you have to go to the society as a whole, past those who are racist or "evil," to appeal to the true nature of that society.

If Gandhi rejected Christ for the reason that you said, then he was being hypocritical against his own philosophy and allowed himself to be blinded. Such is the case for all who reject Christ, is it not?

I would also add that Gandhi had read the Bible, and actually the New Testament's teachings had a very significant influence on him developing his philosophy of nonviolence. So he was fully aware of who the real Christ was and what the gospel was. If he did not accept Christ as his savior, it is not the fault of a racist man at a church door.

I'm not saying I know whether Gandhi is in heaven or hell; no one could possibly know that. That's why I used the word, "If." But we know these things for sure: that according to the Bible, Gandhi was a sinner like all of us. He and we are guilty and deserve punishment, and the only way for us to be saved is for each of us to receive Christ as our savior. We can't use someone else's sins as an excuse for our own.



That's a pretty bombastic statement. I'm know there are some churches that may apply to, but it is absolutely not true for a majority. Christ views the church, metaphorically, as his body: to reject churches entirely is to reject the body of Christ. We need to look at a church to make sure it is faithful, and avoid the ones that aren't. But to say completely that all churches in a given nation are false, is to reject the body of Christ.

God and his spirit are moving in all regions of the world, building up the body. God is not racist or nationalistic, he has his people from all different countries and ethnicities. Some may make up a smaller percentage of a given population than others; but for America, I assure you there are plenty of churches here that preach the gospel of Christ, and according to the Bible, that makes them a true and faithful church. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. - 1 John 4:2

A church may have some varying denominational beliefs than you or I, but to reject them wholesale is going against clear teachings of the Bible, besides being rather arrogant and antagonistic (which is also against the Bible's teachings xp )



My claim is simply that we are all held individually accountable to God, that we can't use anyone else's failures as an excuse for our own, that we are all sinners and deserve punishment, and that we all need a savior who has paid our penalty in order to be saved from that punishment. These are basic teachings of Christianity, they are repeated numerous times throughout the Bible. You may be able to find some individual Christian writers who disagree with that, but the Bible's teaching is far more important than the beliefs of any church father. Besides, I am quite confident that many of the early church fathers agree with my statement. I also don't know of any prominent denomination of today that disagrees with it either. These are among the most fundamental of Christian beliefs.



Jesus Christ.


But to elaborate, salvation is being saved from the condemnation that we deserve for our sins. It is a gift of God, achieved through the work of his Son Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect a sinless life and died as a substitute, paying the penalty for those who accept him as their savior. We accept him through faith; faith in Jesus Christ. This faith, like the salvation itself, is a free gift from God. Faith comes from hearing the message of the Gospel, which is the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection; and this faith leads us to trust in Christ as our Lord, repent of our sins, and openly and outwardly proclaim him as our Savior.

To sum it up, salvation is from Christ, by Christ, and through Christ. Here are some Bible verses that support each point.

Salvation is needed to avoid the punishment of God's wrath for our sin: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by Christ's blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. - Romans 5:9

Salvation comes through Jesus Christ, because he suffered the penalty for us: For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us. - 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10

It is our sin that separated us from God and made us deserve punishment in the first place, but Christ's salvation can reunite us with God eternally. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23

Only God can bring us this salvation, and it comes through the message of the Gospel: God saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. - 2 Timothy 1:8-10; The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. - Romans 1:16

Salvation is free and is received through faith: By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. - Ephesians 2:8

Salvation can be found nowhere except for Jesus Christ: There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. - Acts 4:12; Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - John 14:6

Salvation requires us to turn from our sinful ways and follow Christ: Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out. - Acts 3:19

Summing up how we can be saved:
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." ...For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." - Romans 10:9-13

Thats a very powerful statment and perhaps the most well thoughtout I have seen for a long time

lolz
oh is that way the lady in the funny dress kept hitting me with the ruler

Relax, man. He wasn't twisting your words, he was just disagreeing with you. He agrees with you that it is unjust, but he disagrees with the way in which you see it as unjust. His saying "unjust in the sense..." was not twisting your words, but changing what is labeled as unjust.

He was just making his own point in response to yours.