I believe that God’s saving grace is unconditional and everlasting, and that Jesus’ work of redemption is total and complete and everlasting. Once we truly believe and truly receive it, our sins, all of em’...past, present, and future...are covered by the Blood of the Atonement. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it. John 3:16 is the gospel in a nutshell, and it says that we have received everlasting life. That means forever. Period.
To me, it seems that the ‘unforgivable’ status is tied to an ongoing and willful hard-heartedness. It doesn’t so much prevent them from being forgiven, more so it prevents them from doing what’s necessary to seek forgiveness. It seems that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” was committed by Jesus’ adversaries and ‘not’ by those who had professed allegiance to Him. The danger...the ultimate basis for ‘unforgivable’...to me, appears to be a hard-hearted, unbelieving, and unrepentant attitude towards God, by those whose sins had never been covered by the Blood of the Atonement.
You and I are sinners.....even though our sins are covered by the Blood of the Atonement.....we still sin, and we will still die sinners. You and I must still account for our lives though, we will both still stand in judgement before our Creator, and be admonished for our sin.....including our continued sin ‘after’ we accepted God’s saving grace. But, to me, the eternal consequences of our sin...all of em’...will be ‘passed over’ because our sins are covered by the Blood of the Atonement.
It’s OK if our opinions differ on this matter; we may also disagree on some aspects of politics or child rearing or elk hunting. Our difference of opinion on any of these things in no way diminishes any of these things.
We are indeeds sinners as Christians. It is unfortunate that piety movements have tried to erase this truth and have changed the message making another gospel.
Martin Luther, as a Augustinian monk, was a pietist like no other. Any three men on this forum could not have matched him in his works. Even with his severe and self harming piety he was haunted by the very real truth that he did not keep the 10 commandments no matter how hard he tried. He was condemned by the Law not made righteous.
He was studying Romans. I’m sure that he had read it many times. On one occasion the light came on when he read the quote from Genesis. “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness”.
Imputation is a twenty dollar word, a scriptural word, that has been extracted from most church doctrine to the detriment of the church. Luther began to understand what scripture was teaching.
Abraham, father of the faithful, was not righteous. He was “viewed” as righteous. He possessed an alien righteousness based on the promise. The same righteousness that is imputed to ALL who are in Christ.
That being the case, as you said, we are indeed all still sinners. No participant on this thread keeps the law. People go to elaborate means to tell themselves that they do but every man is imperfect in every aspect of the law and breaks the commandments daily. People like to say that they make mistakes. No. It’s sin. Yet, there is no condemnation because of Christ righteousness being imputed to those who believe.
