unsafe said:
it seems no one wants to answer because the truth is we Christians who follow Christ can't separate the 2 ---The 2 are connected and we are away from God and under our sin nature until we accept Christ
Well. Almost no one. Have I never mentioned the doctrine of Total Depravity? Ever? Think I have at least once.
Of course if we are going to take something like "sin nature" seriously we need to honour the fact that the sin nature complete corrupts and twists humanity so that it will not look for God or even attempt something so noble as accepting Christ. Hence the need for God's grace which God bestows on whomever God wills to give it.
God's grace is not given to us because we manage the magic words. God's grace is not given to us because we wear the right clothing. God's grace is not given to us because of anything we do, think, or believe. None of it matters. Why? Because all of it is sinful, all of it falls short, all of it is corrupted. Humanity, in its totality, is depraved.
God's grace convicts us of our sin and only God's grace can begin to convince us of God's forgiveness.
It is a sign of our sinful nature that we assign ourselves roles in our own salvation. It is a sign of our sinful nature that we will condemn others because their beliefs differ from our own.
Redeemed by the Grace of God through the death and resurrection of God the Son we are at best extras with non-speaking parts in the drama of salvation. God chooses us while we are dead in our sins and only God has the power to raise us to life out of that sin.
So, those who are found in Christ Jesus are those that the Father gave to him. We were lost not Jesus.
Whether we choose to identify as Christian, Born Again, or Regenerate we are confronted with the truth of scripture that that new life we enjoy is a product of God's free and perfect will not our human and fallen one.
If the Spirit convicts me that what I am about is sinful. I should repent of it.
If the Spirit of God chooses not to convict me of a specific sin there are two possibilities. One, that I am so hard of heart that God has stopped trying or, Two, that what I am about is not sinful.
Because I know that I have the ability to lie to myself and deceive myself I belong to a community which holds me accountable and I continue to engage in the study of scripture.
My language of choice might differ from other Christians, that is more a matter of dialect than it is an ability to hear (or lack of ability to hear as the case may be) the Spirit of God speaking.
All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. Any Christian want to disagree with that?
Do we come nearer to the standard by correcting others? I'm not convinced that we do.
So what do we do when our brother or sister has a different idea about what is or isn't sinful than we do?
Eating pork prohibited in scripture. Later it is permitted. "Let no one call unclean what I have made clean."
Is God talking about what was made clean at Creation or is God talking about what has been made clean through the redemptive work of Christ?
Does it really matter?
Do we have permission to call the one unclean and not the other?
We are called not to bear false witness, is it enough to do so, shrug our shoulders and then say that we never claimed to be perfect? If so then the excuse must be permitted to others must it not.
In the realm of competing claims does the claim of person A automatically negate claim of person B? Only if Persons A and B are making claims about the same thing.
The first commandment is to love God. The second commandment is to love our neighbour. How far down the list do we go before we reach the commands that tell us our neighbours are flat out wrong?
I suspect that depending on the prevalence of our sin nature it is closer to the top than it is the bottom.
