Artfuldodger
Senior Member
We know that God has forgiven us of our sins that would have sent us to eternal death or He11. But does he still punish his children for their sins?
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If God has forgiven us of our sins, does he still punish us for our sins?
- Thread starter Artfuldodger
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NE GA Pappy
Mr. Pappy
all choices we make have consequences. Just because we are forgiven doesn't mean the consequences are removed.
Imagine a little girl get hold of a pair of scissors and butchers her hair. The mother is livid because the girl was told again and again not to play with scissors. The child is sorry for the behavior, and is forgiven... but her hair doesn't magically reappear.
Imagine a little girl get hold of a pair of scissors and butchers her hair. The mother is livid because the girl was told again and again not to play with scissors. The child is sorry for the behavior, and is forgiven... but her hair doesn't magically reappear.
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
In reference to God though, exactly how does he punish his Children for their sins other than not for eternal death? I mean is there some scripture such as God saying you don't have to worry about your sins sending you to he!! but because you were jealous last week, you're not getting the raise you want.
I realize that's a bit overboard or extreme but is it more than just suffering from the consequences of our actions?
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
In simpler terms, suffering from our consequences may be the result of free will. God punishing us for a certain sin isn't.
Israel
BANNED
I can't get very far away from what you said in the other thread...for to me it appears the very heart of the matter:
For, not only are we told this...we are told "how" God is in this. And I find two very pressing considerations. God knows how many more He sees "pressing" (into which pressure He has entered through Christ to our relief in, and by, His enlightening), but at least two:
1. Is there ever any benefit to believing God "in part"? (which has a very distinct corollary) Has God rationed...does God ration...Christ to us?
2. How does a man know anything of God, especially in this matter of His disposition of sin? For there seems to me, no matter how much any man, either presently in the world, or writing from eons ago may express himself in this regard, every hearer is so pressed to "know for himself" whether these things be true.
These two are not unrelated and may actually be more singular than I yet know or express.
The first question of believing God "in part" goes to this matter mentioned of " 'how' God is in this". For God not has not only expressed the matter of forgiving His people their sins...but this, no less:
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
We might ask then...if there be any claim of faith to the first part...is there any lacking of faith "for" the seeming second? Perhaps any "on the fence" response is more indicative that perhaps, what we may assume:
"oh, my faith is quite complete to the first part"
is really just an unknowing confession of unbelief in toto. In other words...the fault itself is found in any thinking that there is left to us a "believing God in part".
Against whom do we find ourselves arguing, if not our very own selves? Opposing ourselves. For who amongst us, if we hold (or seek to) to the testimony of Jesus Christ...would not be loathe to say
"Jesus Christ has been given 'in part' "?
Do we not see...(unless we do not see?) there has been no withholding? No "yes and no" on God's part toward us...having given the all in Christ at which there can only be a right marveling?
If the matter of "How much is given?" is not being turned in us to "How much is given!"...well here I am reminded of Paul's words of having no dominion over the faith of any...but merely a helper of joy.
These matter of "how we are" to our deepest dispositions, appearing now before him with whom we have to do, who sees all thoughts and intents of heart, are these disclosings to be to our health...or shame? This question is no less fundamental than your own consideration, which, if phrased only slightly differently is really the question:
"has God forgiven us our sins...or hasn't He?"
And...if so...does He no less "do it" after the manner He says? Willing Himself to not remember?
In the silliest of senses, but I believe that such reduction to silliness for me has often proved a help:
"Is God just storing up ammo?"
Is that the "end" of Jesus unyielding and unremitting gaze upon me, and into me, in me? By the spirit whom searches out all things...even the deep things of a man? Or...despite how it may "feel" at times...is there something else actually going on? A teaching? A loving instruction to submission...where only joy is found...even if (might it even be especially when!) it provokes my unalloyed confession, "Oh, sorry, I thought you were just like me...poking around looking for ammo!"
No...no...not at all.
That "no" is where all my joy is discovered. Thanks be to God someone "not like me" is being disclosed...revealed, not to the end of shaming by the firmest and most absolute "No" (those whom I love I rebuke and chasten)...but to the end that light's joy is seen!
What a relief to a thing that has operated all in "furtivity"...how much effort, struggle, endless labors and striving...of such unyielding and crushing burden, has been devoted to the hiding of a thing!
Sobriety makes me gladly confess, I am glad I have been so wrong about whom God is! "How" He is. Always the "so much more" that anything I may think I have already apprehended...in that light...comes to appear as nothing...nothing at all! This work is so thorough I do not see how any man "in time" would not clearly see...it is eternal.
And that is "how" the second question appears to me in answer. Something comes, is coming, from a place where time has not instructed. Where time cannot instruct. Someone comes. Someone has come to man in all his wrongness...to give him joy, there.
"In time" this does not square...being wrong...is all that must be resisted, striven against, so thoroughly identified as all that is for the fight against...that by it is the means by which every man is bidden, any man may hope to show himself...right! So much so...we don't even know how much we are wedded to it in the deepest devotion. We have had desire...to see what's wrong.
Until...it is us. (And how much the more then is the Lord's appearing there, in that place with "oh...that? I have so thoroughly taken care of it that it merits no attention nor effort to the hiding...")
Faith is given...not merely for the bearing of it...but the rejoicing in it. How right...the Lord is. We have at last been given to see...what is right. What right...is. Who, right is.
A thing which only saw "what is wrong"...has worked furiously, feverishly, almost endlessly (ahhh, but how he is now shown outstripped!) to keep us from ever seeing beyond the what is wrong, has been defeated. He has little time. Always did...have little time. His fury displays it. Limit, limit, limit.
He even still works in fury whose breezy winds of storm may still be sensed "in spirit" seeking to influence..."what's the limit to forgiveness...find it...and find where forgiving would itself be now wrong. " Oh, but he is clever and crafty! Find out where such a thing is, where being "too merciful" can be seen!
Yeah...he wants us to seek a place...and stay there. Little do we know until we do...that if finding "for others", the place where no mercy seems to us could ever be "deserved"...he has us already in his capture of minding. We are simply exploring he11. We can see no mercy if based thus.
Thanks be to God for the One who takes captivity...captive.
You brothers may have little inkling as to how great a mercy you appear to me. You (but really not only you...but Christ through you) compel me to consider things in a light of which I am desperately in need.
I am reminded there's a fire coming...a blazing revelation, an irresistible and unutterably heated display of the true One...and how my storing of certain things needs rebuke...needs contradiction...needs a better tending in my house.
It is very much the Lord reminding me..."I see you have some old ammo kept around...won't do your house any good at all when the fire rolls through...chuck it, and don't miss it...be ready."
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Artfuldodger
Senior Member
Does he withhold blessings? Seems to remind me of Prosperity Preachers. It does seem a bit off though. If I've been forgiven of my sins, then I would think I've been forgiven of my sins.
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
Maybe I've only been forgiven of my sins as far as the ultimate punishment of death, but I'm still being punished for committing them in today's world. Hard to explain exactly. Christian Karma maybe.
Maybe Jesus only died for our eternal punishment.
Maybe Jesus only died for our eternal punishment.
IMO,,,,if God withheld blessings,wouldn't that be considered a punishment?
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
I can't see God saying "look at Art, he has lust and jealously in his heart. I think I'll make his wife have an affair to punish him."
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
Any scripture where God has punished a Christian after the Cross?
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Hebrews 12:5–6)
So how does God discipline without punishment?
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Hebrews 12:5–6)
So how does God discipline without punishment?
Israel
BANNED
I consider Ananais and Saphira, but not for what may (even/especially to me) be apparent reason.
Was it punishment? I don't know. What if it were all merely [not merely] God's mercy being worked through them/upon them to a man who would come years later with a not unlike or unrecognizable disposition...in order to sober him?
God sees all. (Don't foolishly hold any doubt to it)
Be made aware of a disposition to "seem" like you give more than your fellows...or have. And just as importantly...what is yours is yours to dispose of as yours...be careful of trying to seem to make, or be making a sacrifice.
How could such a man, if so sobered...find any fault in the use of those by which he may find sobriety?
Any, or all the places that man may be inclined to "point fingers"...only shows he has not yet learned the lesson.
Do you know what's funny/not funny in this?
Such a man has tried to run this game on his own wife. God alone knows how many times she has been used to remind this man "you are being seen."
"For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?"
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Madman
Senior Member
Sin causes separation from the fountain.
j_seph
Senior Member
yes
gordon 2
Senior Member
Yes. Via the Church which is via Paul in this case as in " I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. " But in order to understand this as I do, you have to understand first that the church is an institution with this purpose in mind by God when he formed it. If you don't think that Paul was called by God and ministered to by the Church( as per God's instructions to the Church) to be an agent of The Church globally in his ministry ---- than this does not make sense.
Sin grieves the Spirit and the spirit in a person and can effect the persons and institutions around the sinner. The Church has power to discipline and to minister towards restoration.
It is impossible to discipline a follower, in the days of latter rain, that does not believe that the Church is essential to the economy of one's personal salvation. This is all nebulous and superfluous to the bible alone sects of Christianity. After all... you can jump from worship house to worship house if you don't like the flavors of discipline... and still hold a bible in your hand.
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Artfuldodger
Senior Member
Paul passes judgement;
hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
So in that scenario I guess God is punishing the man by using Satan? To somehow destroy his flesh so that his spirit may be saved.
That's way over my head.
gordon 2
Senior Member
Recall what Paul says about the flesh and the spirit of a Christian in the context of discipline... Do you recall how Job was tested....? He was tested by Satin... Recall how God disciplined Israel. Think of the wrath of God. Think of the judgement in effect of the latter rain times. Think of the sins of the father visited on the sons....
Paul in his own way is saying hand this man to discipline---the way God does it.
It is not over your head, your head might be tired.
And so Paul is passing judgement... as he has every right to. The sentence is God's.
Paul in his own way is saying hand this man to discipline---the way God does it.
It is not over your head, your head might be tired.
And so Paul is passing judgement... as he has every right to. The sentence is God's.
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