Are we born justified?

[8thdaypriest]

KJV  Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)" (KJV)

 

Yes - God loved every human being.

Paul is writing to the Ephesians.

When Paul says "we WERE dead in sins" but now have been "quickened together with Christ" - he is speaking of those who have come to be in Christ, through belief and baptism. 

 

When Paul says "we" - he is NOT speaking of every human being on the planet.

In My Opinion

[8thdaypriest]

Can I ask it again Robert? 

Where is the evidence (from Scripture) that "the rest of the dead" will ALL BE LOST?

[LifeHiscost]

 

Where is the evidence (from Scripture) that "the rest of the dead" will ALL BE LOST?

I know this wasn't addressed to me but I thought I'd point to Revelation 20 as the place I've seen to identify that reality.

 

4.........And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.5The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed.....

      7When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison,.... 8and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. 9And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.... Revelation 20

 

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[Robert]

 

When Paul says "we WERE dead in sins" but now have been "quickened together with Christ" - he is speaking of those who have come to be in Christ, through belief and baptism. 

 

 

That, in my opinion, is heresy.  Christ's corporate humanity died once.  Therefore it is not just believers, but all men just as it states.

[Robert]

Can I ask it again Robert? 

Where is the evidence (from Scripture) that "the rest of the dead" will ALL BE LOST?

I don't think I said anything about your reference above

[Robert]

Christ's corporate humanity died once.  Therefore it is not just believers, but all men just as it states.

 

"For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one (Christ) died for all, therefore all died" 2 Cor 5:14  Where?  "In Christ".

 

Christ's death, as the son of man, was a corporate death.  It included all humanity because all men came from one man, Adam. 

[8thdaypriest]

Robert,

I do not believe that any person will enter the New Jerusalem to become a "priest of God and of Christ" without FIRST having believed, and confessed that belief.  

Baptism is simply an ACT which confesses belief.   So is the LORD's Supper. 

 

Infants CANNOT believe. 

 

I'm going to bow out of this thread now, because I don't see either of us changing our position. 

[Robert]

Okay

[Gerr]

The events at Tokyo bay aboard the Missouri in 1945 helps me understand this issue  when Japan signed the papers of surrender and peace treaty.  All hostilities were to cease.  All those who accepted it were free to go home.  However, a number of Japanese soldiers kept on fighting.  Likewise, peace, forgiveness, or justification was declared at the Cross, if you please, but it's blessings cannot be mine unless I accept it and  give up fighting. 

[Robert]

Likewise, peace, forgiveness, or justification was declared at the Cross, if you please, but it's blessings cannot be mine unless I accept it and  give up fighting. 

 

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ....

 

Yes, I agree, but my point deals with those who have not reached the age of accountability....

 

Now Ellen said the faith of the parent saves, but "faith" in not the Savior.  Christ is the Savior and faith is a meaningless term without Christ.

 

Everyone who is in heaven will be there because of Christ.  Faith is mental choice that accepts what Christ has already done in Himself 2000 years ago.

[Robert]

 Faith is mental choice that accepts what Christ has already done in Himself 2000 years ago.

 

If I were to tell my 1 year old grandson that his corporate life from Adam died in Christ 2000 years and therefore he has been justified unto life (see Romans 6:6/Rom 5:18) he would just grin at me and probably laugh.  Why?  He doesn't have a clue to what I'm saying and neither can he comprehend it!  So until he reaches the age where he hears & comprehends the gospel I have concluded that he is safe in the doing & dying of Christ.  

 

And, just in case my theology is wrong (since I'm not infallible), I ask that my faith, in Christ, may cover my grandson since his parents are, as far as I known, unbelievers.

[8thdaypriest]

The events at Tokyo bay aboard the Missouri in 1945 helps me understand this issue  when Japan signed the papers of surrender and peace treaty.  All hostilities were to cease.  All those who accepted it were free to go home.  However, a number of Japanese soldiers kept on fighting.  Likewise, peace, forgiveness, or justification was declared at the Cross, if you please, but it's blessings cannot be mine unless I accept it and  give up fighting. 

Same for a declared amnesty.  Those to receive it, must come forward first to be identified. 

[Samie]

Robert (and Samie also) teaches that all children are born in a saved condition, and can only be "lost" if/when they reject Christ as their savior. 

If THAT is so, then we should NOT send out missionaries to teach them. 

If they never know the Gospel, then they cannot reject Christ, and won't be lost.

Teaching them actually hastens their demise. 

Doesn't make sense - to me. 

. . .

It would make sense if you try to consider that there are 3 tenses of salvation. I am like a broken record in reiterating this for the nth time.

[8thdaypriest]

It would make sense if you try to consider that there are 3 tenses of salvation. I am like a broken record in reiterating this for the nth time.

Yes - like a broken record. 

So am I. 

[Samie]

So are people born justified? I would say No. Why? Because IMO, only the unjust are being justified, that is, made just. But sanctified, Yes, with their names in the book of life. Having our names in the book of life means that we are just in God's sight.

 

If we commit sin, then, we become unjust. This is where Jesus - Who was resurrected for our justification (Rom 4;25) - comes into the picture and justifies us automatically by NOT imputing against us the sin currently committed (2 Cor 5:18,19) because the sin committed had been forgiven on the cross (Col 2:13).

 

Those who teach that people are born with their names NOT yet written in the book of life, have a lot of explaining to do with babies dying at infancy. If their names were not yet written in the book of life when thy die, then they are doomed. To teach that these babies will be among those resurrected at the 8th millennium to be taught, is to set aside what Jesus said concerning all the dead being raised (John 5:28,29) when He comes again (Rev 1:7) and rewarded according to what each has done (Matt 16:27; Rev 22:12).

 

So if babies will be resurrected to be taught and had to make a decision first before gaining entry into the new earth, then why are there babies in the new earth as seen in vision by prophet Isaiah? see Isa 11:6-9.  Because by the time they make their decision, they are no longer babies. IMO, the 8th-millennium-teaching-of-babies and the presence of babies in the new earth are mutually exclusive.

 

Also, that resurrection of babies will have to wait until the 8th millennium and NOT at the 2nd Coming seem not to be compatible with Jesus' words that there is a coming hour when all in the graves will be raised (John 5:28,29). If this resurrection is not at the 2nd Coming, then when?

[12tribes]

We are not born guily for sin is transgression of the Law, it is an act. We become guilty when we know the law.

[LifeHiscost]

God's redemptive work in Christ Jesus is finished.  You can't add to it....As I've always said, when you reach the age of accountability you must exercise your faith.  You either reject or accept the gospel.

…7so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith;and that not of yourselves , it is the gift of God; 9not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.…Ephesians 2

 

7Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.…James 4

 

12So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 14Do all things without grumbling or disputing;....Phil 2

 

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[Robert]

…. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith;and that not of yourselves , it is the gift of God

 

 

But you must go back to verse 5:  (God) made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

 

Grace has saved you, not through faith, but because of God in Christ.  Hence we are born delivered from under law...

[LifeHiscost]

But you must go back to verse 5:  (God) made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

 

Grace has saved you, not through faith, but because of God in Christ.  Hence we are born delivered from under law...

The term, "and that not of yourselves'" would seem to me to apply both to the grace provided when we were dead in our transgressions, and "faith", which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, totally undeserved, fulfilling another of the promises received while still in this fallen condition.

 

13for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure....Philippians 2

 

However if we are unwilling to yield to the outworking of His "good pleasure, our salvation is not secure.

 

24and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. 25For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls....1 Pet 2

 

Our free will is given over to the Guardian of our souls that we not interfere to the working out of our salvation.

 

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[debbym]

First, I'll see what Ellen White stated since this is an SDA forum:

Okay, that was in 1885

In 1890, she stated the following:

Two years later she stated the following:

So let's investigate.

Eph 2:5 But because of his great love (agape) for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions (sinners)--it is by grace you have been saved.

Note that Paul does not say, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" as he does later in verse 8. When we were sinners God's grace "in Christ" saved us, not by faith, but by grace...by God's mercy poured out on us "in Christ Jesus".

When do we come into this world "dead in transgressions"?

Ps 51:8 "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

Are newborns sinners? Yes! While they aren't murdering, stealing and committing adultery, etc, they are, at no fault of their own, selfish. They, like all of us, are born "bent-to-self". The question is, are newborns guilty before God's law since they are sinners? The answer is no! Why? One word: Volition!

Guilt requires volition. Newborns cannot even fathom the concepts of guilt, sin and their need of Christ. Therefore they can't be guilty before God's law.

 

 

Jesus is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

 

The grace of Christ made life and even birth possible or the race would have died the moment sin entered the race.

 

Because of that grace we are born with blessings abounding and life happening, and nature continued though everything experienced the touch of the curse of sin, and particularly our nature being bent to sin.

 

We are born sinners, into a life with suffering present, into an atmosphere of mercy and grace, and given light.  What we do with that light we do with our destiny whether we ever hear the gospel or not.

 

But because of the light, when we experience the message of the Gospel we are able to recognize it and respond.  and depending on what we have chosen in response to the light we have been given we either hate more light or love it.

 

Problems come with true spiritual teaching, because those who have had it then reject it are usually the most developed in evil, because they had privileges to be closer to God and when you reject God your darkness becomes greater.

 

The world cannot reject what is not made known.  Pharaoh's heart  was increasingly  hardened because he increasingly rejected every demonstration of truth that exposed his spiritual errors.   One by one his god's were proved to be powerless and nothing.  The very god's he had been worshiping were exposed, and he still turned from God.

 

The world will not becomes worthy of the last plagues until they reject more and more completely the light of heaven, which that cannot do until it is made known.  So True believers who reveal the character of Christ will bring the condemnation of the world, when they reveal God and His love becomes completely rejected.

 

Just as Christ exposed Satan and uprooted any sympathy for him in all the angel host's and inhabited universe.

 

It is progressive because sin is deceptive, and God is on a timeline clearing up the misconceptions and lies and deception.  Over time God is cleansing the universe of sin  in a way that does not violate his creation and does not violate His eternal character.

 

So in the timeline of an infant from birth to the end of their life God alone is able to weigh and measure their participation in life, His light, sin, and mercy, and where their destiny will be.

[Gerr]

No! ESV | ‎Ro 3:21 "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—  ‎22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:  ‎23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  ‎24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  ‎25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins."

 

ESV | ‎Ro 5:1 "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

 

A newborn does not yet have the capacity to receive that righteousness. 

[Robert]

A newborn does not yet have the capacity to receive that righteousness. 

 

And therefore if he/she dies before having that capacity, what then?  Please do not tell me that they are lost because if that is the case the devil is winning in the great controversy.  How so?

 

Number of abortions: 57,776,264 world wide since 1973.

 

What is clear is that Christ has legally delivered the world from under the curse.  He has legally reversed our condemnation in Adam.  The Bible refers to this as "saved by grace".

 

Eph 2: 4 "....God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved."

 

Only to the one who has reached the capacity to understand spiritual things does it becomes "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" (verse 8)

[Samie]

KJV Isaiah 11:

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 

7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 

8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.

9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

 

KJV Luke 20:

34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: 

35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:

 

In light of the above verses, the babies in the new earth are therefore NOT procreated there. So, from where are they then? The only possible answer is that they are among the resurrected throng of the just at the Second Coming. And because only those whose names are in the book of life can enter the heavenly portals (Rev 21:27), it necessarily follows that babies are born with their names already written in the book of life. This sits well with the Savior's words that the little children are for the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:3; 19:14).

 

And because all of us were babies once, then by God's grace given us in Christ Jesus before the world began (2 Tim 1:9) and chosen before the foundation of the world for adoption as children of God in Christ (Eph 1:3-5), we were all born with our names in the book of life. Unless blotted out at death for not overcoming evil with good while alive, we all are heaven-bound.

 

In a nutshell, this is the everlasting gospel, pure and simple: the gospel the Savior wanted preached to the world before He comes again.

[pnattmbtc]

Jesus is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

 

The grace of Christ made life and even birth possible or the race would have died the moment sin entered the race.

 

Because of that grace we are born with blessings abounding and life happening, and nature continued though everything experienced the touch of the curse of sin, and particularly our nature being bent to sin.

 

We are born sinners, into a life with suffering present, into an atmosphere of mercy and grace, and given light.  What we do with that light we do with our destiny whether we ever hear the gospel or not.

 

But because of the light, when we experience the message of the Gospel we are able to recognize it and respond.  and depending on what we have chosen in response to the light we have been given we either hate more light or love it.

 

Problems come with true spiritual teaching, because those who have had it then reject it are usually the most developed in evil, because they had privileges to be closer to God and when you reject God your darkness becomes greater.

 

The world cannot reject what is not made known.  Pharaoh's heart  was increasingly  hardened because he increasingly rejected every demonstration of truth that exposed his spiritual errors.   One by one his god's were proved to be powerless and nothing.  The very god's he had been worshiping were exposed, and he still turned from God.

 

The world will not becomes worthy of the last plagues until they reject more and more completely the light of heaven, which that cannot do until it is made known.  So True believers who reveal the character of Christ will bring the condemnation of the world, when they reveal God and His love becomes completely rejected.

 

Just as Christ exposed Satan and uprooted any sympathy for him in all the angel host's and inhabited universe.

 

It is progressive because sin is deceptive, and God is on a timeline clearing up the misconceptions and lies and deception.  Over time God is cleansing the universe of sin  in a way that does not violate his creation and does not violate His eternal character.

 

So in the timeline of an infant from birth to the end of their life God alone is able to weigh and measure their participation in life, His light, sin, and mercy, and where their destiny will be.

 

I wouldn't say we are born sinners, because "sinner" seems ambiguous to me.  If a "sinner" is one who "sins", and sinning involves volition, then it wouldn't seem to make sense that a newborn is a "sinner", but it might make sense if one used a different definition for "sinner", hence my concern that "sinners" is ambiguous.  I think saying we are born "fallen" would be less ambiguous.

 

At any rate, this is a minor point.  I really liked this post a lot.  In particular, this is a very nice thought, "It is progressive because sin is deceptive, and God is on a timeline clearing up the misconceptions and lies and deception.  Over time God is cleansing the universe of sin  in a way that does not violate his creation and does not violate His eternal character."

 

It is easy for us to grossly underestimate how difficult a task this is.

[LifeHiscost]

But you must go back to verse 5:  (God) made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

 

Grace has saved you, not through faith, but because of God in Christ.  Hence we are born delivered from under law...

 

As an adult grown enough to reason, are you saying now it is ok to ignore this; 17“You must not covet your neighbor’s house."? Exodus 20

 

Or perhaps this; 14“You must not commit adultery. Exodus 20 Or maybe this; 12“Honor your father and mother. Exodus 20 Or even this;   8“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

 

Is there any one of the decalogue it is safe to justify our ignoring those principles of conduct? If nothing I do is detrimental to my eternal salvation, why be concerned about what sin is?

 

…3And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 4Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. 5You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.…1 John 3

 

Considering that last, it is important to reflect on the believers right of the promise, not given to the unbeliever.

 

12So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure....Philippians 2

 

God is Love!  Jesus! saves!