The theological answer, as I learned it, is most clearly spelled out in James 2:14-26, often referenced through the phrase "faith without works is dead". The short version is: faith in Jesus will save you, not good deeds. However, if you have faith in Jesus, then that faith will manifest itself through good deeds. If someone proclaims their faith but doesn't act lovingly, then they don't actually have faith and won't be saved. So a Christian should be a good person not because being good will save them, but because being good is a result of genuine faith.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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IIRC the trick is to get your forgiveness after the last dick move, but before you die. If you mess up the timing, eternal damnation so it’s safer to be good.
Seems to me this is a protestant thing, i grew up Catholic and repentance was a major part of it. You don't change and become a better person? Then no absolution for you.
Depends on the protestant branch, I'd heard repentance defined as "turning away from sin 100% and leaving it behind" but that kind of theology gets mixed up in "faith not works" and the idea that if you haven't immediately asked forgiveness for every little time you mess up you're going to hell until you do. Swear while falling down the stairs, then die in your living room? Hell.
Of course there's also the opposite which is "once you accept Jesus there's no possible way you can ever not be saved" which doesn't match up with free will in my opinion.
TLDR: He doesn't forgive anyone who sins, he forgives those who repent. Repent not meaning "feeling sorry" as many seem to explain, but actually meaning "to turn away" which means changing fundamentally as a human being. From a bad person to a good person.
Someone who doesn't change and act good most of the time isn't repentant, so isn't forgiven. So basically, you prove it with your actions and how you live your life, not with just words only. By this measurement, Republican "Christians" aren't repentant and so aren't forgiven.
Not a Christian anymore, but I used to be for a very long time. Sidebar: "You will know a tree by it's fruit" AKA you'll know what kind of person someone is by what they do. Anyone who's even skimmed the bible (especially the new testament) would easily understand that most conservative "christians" aren't Christian at all, but rather like the Pharisees (phony religious types) that Jesus constantly argued with and condemned.
Other note: Sikhs actually live the way Christian claim to. I could easily make a "hard to swallow pill" meme which said: "Sikhs are better Christians than actual Christians are."
Romans 6:1 "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"
This is typically the best reasoning behind the idea of eternal forgiveness. You can rack up points on your sin bill. But it's contrary to the overall goal of someone who is following the teachings of Jesus and Paul.
I was raised in a very religious environment. And while it's taken me many years to rid myself of the scars that caused me emotionally. I still have answers from time to time. And if it helps someone be a better person, I'm happy to share what I know.
Questioning an aspect of a belief structure is important for personal growth. And I hope that some of the comments here help you get what you need.
You won't be forgiven no matter what. If you carry on sinning, there is no more forgiveness. The only thing you can expect is to be thrown into outer darkness forever where you will be mourning and regretting your decision.
Put it this way: you drove drunk and killed someone. You've been given the death penalty by the judge. But a person called Jesus steps in and says "I'll take his place. Let him go free".
Would you ever drink drive again after someone died in your place to give you a second chance? Surely not! You would be sober, very grateful and even yet to help other people not make the same mistake.
It's the same with sin. Jesus paid a HEAVY price to redeem you. Don't spit in his face by carrying on with the same sins. Instead be grateful and find out how you should live instead.
Read the 10 commandments in Exodus 20. And also read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) to see how Jesus further explains and practices these.
The goal is to become holy like Jesus
Hope that helps.
Good ELI5 answer. The “push” to do good comes from the feeling of thankfulness that you don’t have to take a death penalty from a wrongdoing, someone else is taking it instead.
Another take: Imagine when a friend takes you for a dinner treat, you’d be thankful for them that they paid for your food (and the food is not necessarily free, someone actually paid for the food). You’d at least try to be nice to him, as a gesture of thankfulness, and you wouldn’t want hurt their feeling after they took you for a treat. Deliberately or not.
Catholic here. Despite God's forgiveness, Jesus never said salvation is guaranteed. As he said, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven". And that's just for the rich. There are other passages that emphasize the difficulty of gaining eternal life in Heaven, " the way is narrow", "you must take up your cross", and so on. Christ's death and resurrection made salvation possible in the first place. We couldn't even have a hope of it without His help. He also gave us the way that we must follow to gain salvation now that it's possible: belief in God and Christ, and following His commandments, given through the Church.
To put it in another way, we all have a relationship with God. That relationship was damaged through original sin in a way we could not repair on our own. God still has always loved us, but without Christ's sacrifice, He could not forgive our betrayal through sin and therefore we remained separated from Him. Once Christ bore the burden of our sin and overcame it, that repaired humanity's relationship with God overall and God is willing to forgive any sin, past or present, that we commit against Him. As long as we do not commit a serious sin, that relationship will stay intact. Two people in a relationship may do little things that annoy or lightly anger the other person, but we've all got stuff that aren't "deal-breakers" with each other. But a serious sin done with full knowledge and of one's own free will, which in the Catholic Church we call a mortal sin, is a "deal-breaker" that once again severs our own personal relationship with God and threatens our salvation. It's basically a betrayal of God's love. God has these rules and morality and such because He loves us so much He wants the absolute best for humanity and the world. Sin does damage to that, and mortal sin does damage to that in a big way. God is always willing to forgive, but in order for that to happen we have to show that we are sorry for breaking that relationship and promise/resolve that we will do our best to try not to do it again. We have to reconcile with God just as two people in a strained or broken relationship have to reconcile with each other. In the Catholic Church, we believe that reconciliation happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we confess what we did to a priest, who is in the person of Jesus at that time, and make that resolution to not sin again. The priest then offers a penance as a way to basically "make it up" to God, or as a theologian I heard once say, "clean up the glass and repair the window we broke", and the good relationship with God is restored. Basically, yeah, God is always willing to forgive if we ask for it... But that doesn't mean we still can't break that relationship. I'd always be willing to forgive a best friend if they were to betray me, but if they actually did that, I'd still be mad, and if they don't respond to my calls offering that forgiveness, well, there's not much more I can do to fix the relationship with my friend at that point if they don't want to be forgiven.
This is an excellent summary. Thanks for the insight.
Basically just the bible says you are supposed to be good, and Jesus says you are supposed to be good. It is kind of a big loophole though, if you really aren't interested in being good.
This seems to be the stance evangelicals I've known take.
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For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries - Hebrews 10:26-27
There is a lot of debate about this verse and others like it, but this is the way I understand it.
First, let's get a little more context. This particular book of the bible is actually a letter written to a Jewish community who has come to believe Jesus was the coming king written about in their Bible for thousands of years. This is wonderful news for them, but it also puts a target on their back from other Jews (who happen to be in political power) who disagree. They now have to make a choice, abandon this idea for the sake of safety, or hold true to what they believe is true which has had beautiful results in their lives, despite the risk of mistreatment and death. The writer is appealing to their Hebrew bible (what the Christians call the old testament) to show that walking away is not what they really want.
Here are the verses again with what they are surrounded by:
By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us. For we know the one who said, “I will take revenge. I will pay them back.” He also said, “The Lord will judge his own people.” It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Think back on those early days when you first learned about Christ [the messiah, coming king]. Remember how you remained faithful even though it meant terrible suffering. Sometimes you were exposed to public ridicule and were beaten, and sometimes you helped others who were suffering the same things. You suffered along with those who were thrown into jail, and when all you owned was taken from you, you accepted it with joy. You knew there were better things waiting for you that will last forever. So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised. Hebrews 10:20-36
Hopefully this helps make this make more sense. This isn't a blanket statement for all people of all time, it is about people considering abandoning their King for their own sake.
Also a little more about "the day of judgement" refered to here. This capital D "Day" is something referred to many times in the Hebrew bible. This is my understanding of the gist of it:
God doesn't like the way us humans have decided to run the world. We kill and mistreat each other and the world around us. So he has decided to make everything right again and bring the world to peace. Great news if you are the one being mistreated, terrible news if you're the one in power mistreating others. When the owner shows up, the managers are in trouble. The day of the Lord (the day of Yahweh)
The author of the letter is pleading with them to stay on the right side of history and not to align with the oppressors in power before God comes to make everything right.
Thanks for providing more context. The verse does take on a more encouraging tone with it and puts it inline with the other teachings of personally not wanting to sin as a result of a new relationship with God.
I was not aware of the debate surrounding this verse, I just thought it was the most straightforward in addressing the question.
In Jesus's time, there were three different sects of Judaism.
One of them, the Sadducees, allegedly believed there was no life after death and that God didn't care at all about what people did or didn't do.
Their answer to your question of following the law is perhaps the most interesting.
They believed that what was put forth as laws were a gift to humanity and that following them inherently led to a better life in the here and now.
While I don't personally see all of the laws put forward as beneficial, there are certainly instances where that makes a lot of sense.
For example, look at the full version of one of the commandments:
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
- Exodus 20:12
Would following a commandment to take care of your parents in their old age ('honor' here comes from the word for burden) benefit you by setting an example such that when you are old that you too would be taken care of?
This was almost like social security in antiquity, much like the Sabbath was one of the first labor laws preventing working anyone more than 6 days in a row.
There's something called the overjustification effect, where when you introduce external reward systems for something intrinsically rewarding people over focus on the external and forget the internal benefits. I think a number of religions have serious issues with that.
There's even a certain irony in Job, named 'persecuted' in Hebrew because even though he lived a good life he experienced suffering which it explains by the intervention of Satan, today in the most common language among believers being the exact same word as "to do a task with the expectation of a reward."
Maybe we're too focused on the rewards.
Now see a post like this makes me wish there was Lemmy gold. Thanks!!
I come from a protestant tradition that says you can't ever be good enough to be saved. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and acted as a substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf to make us righteous before God. All the work of salvation is done through Christ. If salvation required anything other than faith to save ourselves (e.g. being good), then his death and resurrection would be meaningless. So once we are made righteous by God through faith, God begins the work of sanctification (being made holy and more Christlike). We don't believe this will fully happen in this life but is a process that we go through as we walk with God.
TLDR: It isn't about doing good things to be saved but rather we're saved and slowly begin to orient our lives around doing good things.
It varies significantly between denominations, I know that much. Guaranteed salvation is protestant-specific, at the very least, and isn't even held by all denominations within.
I am no longer a Christian, I came from a super fundamentalist bent of Christianity. The idea of choosing to not sin even if you know your sins are forgiven has to do with love.
"For God so loved the world he gave his only son for our sins" etc
So the pastor tells us that we know we are a real Christian who is really saved by our "good fruits", that is, the good things we choose to do and the bad things we choose not to do. So by choosing not to sin, you're proving to yourself that God is real and that God really saved you, because, as everyone knows, it's impossible to be for even a moment anything but absolutely selfish without God's help.
Most Christians aren't that Calvinist though. That was the church I grew up in.
I'm atheist, but I've been interested in religion in general for quite some time.
From what I know, it's that you have to genuinely have remorse for the bad things you've done and then Jesus will forgive you. It your remorse is fake, Jesus won't forgive.
Oh snaps! A Christian question I'm qualified to answer! I'm not sure this will be five year old appropriate, because the cross is a difficult topic for theologians, but I'll do my best. This will be an oversimplification.
A lot of people think the people think the cross and forgiveness are about going to have a heaven when you die, but that's not really correct. The eternal life is more of a side effect.
The cross and resurrection are an invitation to partner together with God in the rescue of creation. Which means bringing the world back to the place God originally intended before humanity sinned.
In practical terms, it is the possibility of living like Jesus and treating others how he did. This way of living is so radical and transformative that not even death can overcome it.
Brilliantly said!! We could be friends I know it.
Imagine Jesus as a director of a company that accepts all sincere applicants. The director assumes responsibility for all the mistakes his employees make, but he doesn't assume responsibility for people who only claim to be employees. People who purposely commit crimes get fired and applications by people who apply with the purpose of commiting crimes get rejected for not being sincere. (That's not to say someone who once was fired can't reapply if they're actually sincere about it, but since God sees into people's hearts and minds, you can't trick him.)
You have to be truly sorry for your sins and make an honest attempt at not doing them again. That being said if you sneak in a really sincere confession right before death, then by the book, you should go to heaven. This is a loooot like Christians last rights, the sacraments they use on the dying.
Fun fact anyone can preform last rights for a Christian should they request it. Reason being that people don't always get to choose when they need their last rights so holy men may or may not be around.
Isn't it last rites?
Christians aren't a monolith. There isn't a single right answer here. Everyone practices religion in their own way. You'd have to ask this to Christians on a personal level.
I think the counterargument is, if you continue to be a huge dick, have you really accepted Jesus into your heart? It's the actual reason Pascal's Wager is such a shit argument: one of the unstated premises is that you can pull a fast one on God.
You have to be sorry to be forgiven. If you weren’t trying in the first place, it’s hard to be sorry.
But also, the thing isn’t designed to be balanced or suitable.
Jesus will forgive you because that’s how it works. The system wasn’t designed by humans.
Please dont give them a logical reason to be shittier than they already are
Its like disappointing your mother (or anyone else who loves you unconditionally). Even if you know she’ll forgive you, you want to good by your mother if not for the simple fact that you love each other.
You don't...not really. It's like a child leaving their parents house - you "can" now do whatever you want: good luck with that.:-)
Another take: the whole "being good" part is Santa Claus, not Jesus. The whole "acting in a well-behaved manner" is more what parents tell their kids that Jesus wanted (oh uh...yeah, it's JESUS that wanted you to be quiet in your room at 8pm, totally), while what Jesus actually said essentially translates to: fuck hypocrites, imma leave you behind when I'm in charge beotches!
I mean that seriously though - like to pick just one example:
If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar;
(1 John 4:20)
So hating gays is...a choice one could make I suppose, but if you say you are a follower of Christ at the same time, then Jesus calls such people "liars".
The real question is: if Jesus says one thing, but a particular church/pastor/priest/pedo says something else, which one defines the "religion"? Just like everything else in the world, truth gets mixed in with fiction, and sold as a package to control the masses - e.g. Orwell's Animal Farm, like overthrowing The Man was a good thing, but then who they picked to replace him... urg:-(.
It's all about how you arrive at the pearly gates. You could live a sinful life of you truly redeem yourself on your dying bed; accept Jesus and free yourself of your sinful ways.
The strategy of living sinfully with last minute redemption comes with two big drawbacks. First, death could come for you at any moment - you won't necessarily have time to prepare. Second, your conviction in time of dying needs to be sincere. It would be hard to fake, and most sinners probably wouldn't even know where to start. That's why it's all but impossible for rich people to get to heaven - their minds are twisted towards justification of their inaction, and their chance of redemption is close to zero.
That's my understanding anyway, I'm an atheist from a Protestant country living in a Catholic one.
My general understanding is that you're forgiven if you choose to accept Jesus. (Note that I am not christian, but was raised as such.) You are not required to accept salvation. Actions, by themselves, mean nothing; you can be a fantastic, moral person, and work all of your life to help other people, and without accepting Jesus you're still damned. OTOH, if you have truly accepted Jesus, then ipso facto you're going to work tirelessly to help people; actions are a natural consequence of the belief. Therefore, someone that acts contrary to the teaching of Jesus is not saved, because they do not have true belief.
For a real world example, Jimmy Carter would be a person that you could say would be saved (...if any of this was real); his effort demonstrates the faith he claims. OTOH, looking at all of the televangelists, you could quite reasonably say that their daily lives contradict the teachings of Jesus, and therefore no professed belief can ever result in their salvation.
That's the fun part! It depends on which branch of Christianity you believe in. Some think it's only faith, some the baptism/saved, and some good works.
How odd, that one should be good not for the sake of goodness, but out of fear of damnation.
Jesus is an example of an ideal person. Being literally divine Jesus is capable of setting a perfect example of love, forgiveness, and compassion. We humans are not. We have flaws, but should still strive to be good people, just as Jesus was a good human.
If you are "being good" or "not being bad" for selfish reasons, you aren't acting out of love or goodness. Heaven, hell, reward, punishment, these shouldn't matter when it comes to virtue or vice.
I'm catholic, and to me it's because behaving in a good way will simply make you live better;
the idea is that sin is something that turns you away from God, but being close to God is what makes you truly happy
So even in this life, behaving in a good way would make you live better and happier
The simple answer is that the "you have to be good" Christians are not the same people as the "Jesus forgives no matter what" Christians. Beliefs and doctrines vary wildly throughout Christianity, and different Christians often believe contradictory things. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bible itself, being a collection of many books by many authors, contains contradictory viewpoints. This allows believers to focus on the elements they like and ignore the ones they don't.
The “be a good person” and “you’ll be forgiven” are two separate ideas. Digging into it requires digging into a lot of different religions and their beliefs. Churches and people disagree on how those go together.
I don’t feel your request of “understanding the reasoning that Christians use” relates well to the question in your title. Much of religion now is repeating dogma rather than spiritual awareness and bettering yourself.
Raised Catholic. Don't believe in hell. Lost my mom recently so i hope there's a heaven. If there is i assume it would be accepting of all. I try not to do things that hurt people because i don't like to see people hurt.
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