I can’t imagine being responsible
for deliberately keeping someone from being saved. However, our predisposition and
loyalty to our own denomination may in fact keep others from salvation. Speaking
about the Jews who killed Jesus Paul said, “They displease God and are hostile
to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so
that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit”
(1 Thess 2:15b-16a NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----God’s name alone can wholly express His magnificence. He saves no man whom He has not called. And nothing can defeat the salvation God gives when the called man comes.
-----This world is a place of imperfection. Nothing in it is perfect. But everything in it serves God’s purpose (Prov 16:4.) Certainly Jesus noted by His prayer that seeing the unity of His followers the world would identify Him as sent by God. But we failed to unite. It was not good enough for us to divide into denominations, but we moreover applied all our intellectual prowess to developing theologies and doctrines which would accentuate our own distinction from the Others. They will go to hell; we won’t. And so the world is not only convinced Jesus is hooey, but it also is sharpening a knife for His follower’s throats.
-----I don’t necessarily see any denominations which actively interfere with the salvation ambition of other people seeking the Lord through other denominations. But precisely like you say, it is our predisposition and loyalty to denominations instead of simply to Jesus which convinces those who won’t seek to not seek.
-----But this is where His magnificence can be seen. In that everything serves a purpose for God I reason that nothing in this world is entirely and wholly evil. Everything is everything. The term leaves nothing out. Those whom He does not call are not not-called just because their name was written on the short straw drawn. They are not called because they are not of life’s substance. Life’s substance is truth and love: the attraction to what is real in its very being. And the purest sense of the term real recognizes all being is in God. In this place of imperfection, only God can make the determination of what is real or not. The callable one understands this as the necessity to look to other than his own designs or imagination to find his salvation from eternal despair. He understands something as endless as perfection and eternity requires something greater than all things to be its grantor. So he searches for that Overarcher. That is, he is called. And those who are not called determine their own realities, accusing by their own imaginations rather than finding real causes by careful consideration of actual effects. They will always end up accusing God.
-----The disunity of the church is caused by the same mindset which causes the not-called nature of the arrogant. Although the church is His precious bride, purchased and sealed, her imperfections, yea her dastardly deeds, do serve God’s purpose of giving the arrogant their chosen cause for being not-called.
-----For in looking to the name of Christ for salvation, the humble greatly attend the nature of His Father’s name - I AM WHO I AM. So the humble are good with not knowing what they don’t know. After all, what we don’t know is usually what makes some other denomination tick. The humble abide in what they do know: the saved man in the other denomination calls on Christ Jesus for his salvation, too. The humble understands that unity is not in knowledge, for knowledge puffs up (I Cor 8:1.) Therefore unity can not be in theology or doctrine, since those are constructs made by knowledge which puff up. But unity is in love, which builds up. So I AM by His very being precisely what He is can quite competently sort the called from the not-called of all denominations. And all the called ones will recognize each other simply by whom they know (which can be seen in their reflection) rather than by what they know.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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