Good try. But you are thinking far too small. When we know God as it is our privilege to know God ... there will be NO sin in our life. That is what is available to us. When we sin ... it is because we have refused to know God as we could know Him. This includes sins that we have no understanding or knowledge of. It includes willful and nonwillful sin. In this manner ... all sins are willful. Let's not put any limits on God. As Ellen White says ... There is no excuse for sin.

Saying over and over that our sins are not willful ... does not make it so. All of us have the opportunity to know God and to serve Him as we should. It is a fact that we willfully refuse obedience that is offered to us by God.

Romans 3:21/1 John 1:8 says perfection, this side of eternity, isn't going to happen. Why do you place so much emphasis on perfection, John? I feel you are making it a requirement for heaven.

What I am saying is can we offer to non-Christians freedom from their sins with Christ?

Can the alcoholic be healed through Jesus? Can the porn freak give the habit up through Christ?

Can we offer a non-believer more than forgiveness of sins through our Saviour, or is that it?

What all does grace include?

Sometimes I wonder if we limit the power of the Gospel by our trying to avoid being legalistic.

Just a thought.

You can recommend Jesus for drugs, porn, etc. But unlike justification by faith, Christian living is hard. The yielding of the nature and it's passionate desires to God requires a struggle, of which I fail in certain areas again and again. So the problem is not God, it's my surrender.

On the other hand we can't look at our failures...our lost struggles and say because we are not measuring up that we are lost. That's the problem I have with traditional Adventism because it teaches just that. The correct view is to have the assurance of salvation and realize that when we fail (and EGW says we will often weep at the feet of Christ) we aren't lost.

Rob

It is useless talking to someone who can't tell the difference between premeditated murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Gerry

If failures aren't lost and have the assurance of salvation, I'd like to see evidence from Scripture. What I see in Scripture is that victors/overcomers, those who endure/hold fast to the end have that assrance, not failures.

Gerry

How true. Praise God. The One who was not a failure .... is our Saviour and Redeemer. He succeeded that I might fail. He is my substitute.

Bible reference, please?

Gerry

Did Jesus Christ succeed in order that you and I might fail? Could you explain what you mean? It sounds as if you are saying that God plans for us to fail.

Ellen White says very clearly that Jesus succeeded in order that we might also obey God, not in order for us to fail. (See Sons and Daughters of God, p. 24, for instance.) We can be an overcomer just as Christ was an overcomer.

The Bible says the same thing. Jesus didn't fulfill the law so that we don't need to obey God's law. Read Romans 8: 1-4: God sent His Son as a human being in order that we might fail? NO-- but God sent the Son "in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after flesh but after the Spirit."

How does our failure glorify God? Does failure demonstrate, or witness to, the power of Christ in us?

Sounds like glorifying losers isn't it?

While the Bible begins with a failure, it ends in victory!!!

Gerry