PAWN SHOP (grace) (page 4)

PSacramento

Clearly I'm not making my question understandable. Let me try another way.

Why wasn't it within God's power and imagination for any OTHER way to forgive man?

AH, I understand now.

It wasn't really about God forgiving Man, it was about Man, in many ways, forgiving himself.

Something we are still doing it seems.

Why not assemble all the nations of the earth and take a vote, for example?

"Who wants to be friends with me (God)??

Actually, he was doing that all that time and still is, God is just not "crashing into" our lives like a gangbuster.

But why did it have to be that WAY, right?

Because, for that time, it was the only way it could have been.

IF God had chosen NOW, it wouldn't have been that way.

But why did God decide on THEN?

I don't know.

Terry

The explanation given in scripture is so convoluted and wrapped in badly reasoned metaphor (see my 1st paragraph) I don't think

writers of scripture knew or understood anything about it. They just didn't KNOW.

Paul (or whomever) tried to create an analogy that somehow got turned into a vast and inexplicable doctrine called GRACE.

There are at least three or four versions of Grace, by the way. None of them sensible or explicable.

Divine grace, Theology.
Grace in Christianity
Actual grace, a Catholic theological concept
Irresistible grace, a Calvinistic Christian theological concept
Prevenient grace, a Methodist Christian theological concept
Sola gratia - "grace alone"

PSacramento

Yeah, with interpretations come more interpreations and doctrines and what not.

All it takes is for someone else to agree with a different POV on a subject and then you have a different versions/doctrine of that subject.

Paul view on grace was rather simple - a free gift given to Us by God because of Christ sacrifice that we don't have to do anything to earn.

Maybe if he had used "unconditonal love" it would have worked better, who knows.

Christ certainly didn't speak much of "grace" per say.

I think Paul was just trying to make it clear to people that were so focussed on "doing A, B and C, to be saved" ( Leverage On God and whatnot), that there was nothing they coudl do to be saved, Christ had already done that and from THEIR, all the good acts they did, they were to do out of love and NOT for recompence, NOT to balance out the bad shit, nor to use as leverage with God.

In other words, all the door-to-door preaching you do means nothing unless you do it out of Love for God, out of a desire to serve God and that you DON'T view it as doing MORE than someone that doesn't do it.

tec

What is justice without mercy?

PSacramento

What is justice without mercy?

Revenge, which is what people who are wronged basically want and what Grace denys them.

Terry

What is justice without mercy?

God provided cities of refuge in ancient Israel. If you left the city an avenger of blood could kill you with impunity.

Cain murdered his brother Abel. God put a mark on his forehead so that "others" (who the hell was there?) wouldn't kill him.

God sent Noah to preach 120 years in advance of the Flood that wiped away all but 8 souls.

Not every one confessing the name of Jesus will be saved.

Every rule is put to the test by its exception.

God's JUSTICE is put to the test by GRACE.

tec

Does the idea that God might show mercy to those who don't deserve it bother you?

PSacramento

Does the idea that God might show mercy to those who don't deserve it bother you?

I think it bothers Terry;s sense of Justice and to be honest, it used to bother mine as well.

Knowsnothing

If God abandons His standard of Perfect, Balanced, Fair, Proportioned Justice He ceases to be a JUST God!

Life isn't just about legalism. You have only taken one aspect of life, and elevated it above the greatest aspect.

Love.

Were it not for love, God wouldn't have even created anything. He didn't need to. He was and is "complete" in every sense.

Why do parents pay their stupid children's bail (for jail)? Out of justice? No. The kid deserves to be in jail by his own merits. But, parents love their children, and do so out of mercy, so that the children won't suffer a horrible fate.

Your analogy fails in the highest and strongest point of morality and life.

Love.

Terry

Does the idea that God might show mercy to those who don't deserve it bother you?

Double standards bother me. You can't call it anything but having a false set of scales. Makes God a hypocrite.

Giving people rules, commandments and law requires us to think of behavior in terms of matching the standard of same.

It makes the punishment fair rather than summary and arbitrary.

If we would consider arbitrary, capcricious and whimsical punishment as the opposite of Fair, Just and Moral we can't

turn around and accept arbitrary, capricious and whimsical grace. Just because we like one better than the other doesn't make it okay.

PAWN SHOP (grace)

Share this