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Life in Heaven.

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  • Tassman
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    I don't expect you to believe me JimL, or think it makes sense. You are not a Christian. But I do expect you to accept my answer since you ASKED for it. We believe there is a fundamental difference between a sin nature and a glorified nature. I tried to explain it to you above as the sin nature being addicted to sin, like a heroin addict is physically addicted to heroin. He may try to not shoot up, but he body will eventually force him to do it. But once made clean, he can avoid the heroin if he chooses, and having experienced the horrors of being addicted to heroin, he is not likely to shoot up again. Especially if there is no heroin around to tempt him. Now you can try to force a heroin addict to get clean, but if it is not his choice and he likes the heroin, he will just go right back to it. He has to WANT to give it up and change. Even if he can't while addicted to it. His desire will allow him to kick the habit once he is made clean.

    It is the same with sin. Our nature is addicted to sin. We might try to avoid sinning but eventually our nature will cause us to sin again. We have to want to change and give ourselves to God. Only then, when we are glorified can we avoid sin and be free of it. There will be no temptation in heaven, and we will have had the experience of how horrible the addiction to sin was to keep us clean.

    If God were to force us to be clean and sin free and we still loved sin, we would just go right back to it. In fact, I think that is what Hell is. God will give even you an eternal, perfect body JimL, but you will not want to be sin free. You will want to return to sin, and God will let you and you will be put in a place where you can do what you want for eternity, wallowing in your sin and shame, without infecting the rest of us.
    Who determines what this “sin’ is to which you claim we are addicted? And are not those who believe in and await their "glorified" bodies and eternal life equally addicted to this escapist notion. One which, furthermore, cannot be substantiated?

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    A body, glorified or not, is just a body Sparko, it's not who you are, you're the person inside the body, correct. So, again, you're just making all this stuff up, but it isn't making sense.
    I don't expect you to believe me JimL, or think it makes sense. You are not a Christian. But I do expect you to accept my answer since you ASKED for it. We believe there is a fundamental difference between a sin nature and a glorified nature. I tried to explain it to you above as the sin nature being addicted to sin, like a heroin addict is physically addicted to heroin. He may try to not shoot up, but he body will eventually force him to do it. But once made clean, he can avoid the heroin if he chooses, and having experienced the horrors of being addicted to heroin, he is not likely to shoot up again. Especially if there is no heroin around to tempt him. Now you can try to force a heroin addict to get clean, but if it is not his choice and he likes the heroin, he will just go right back to it. He has to WANT to give it up and change. Even if he can't while addicted to it. His desire will allow him to kick the habit once he is made clean.

    It is the same with sin. Our nature is addicted to sin. We might try to avoid sinning but eventually our nature will cause us to sin again. We have to want to change and give ourselves to God. Only then, when we are glorified can we avoid sin and be free of it. There will be no temptation in heaven, and we will have had the experience of how horrible the addiction to sin was to keep us clean.

    If God were to force us to be clean and sin free and we still loved sin, we would just go right back to it. In fact, I think that is what Hell is. God will give even you an eternal, perfect body JimL, but you will not want to be sin free. You will want to return to sin, and God will let you and you will be put in a place where you can do what you want for eternity, wallowing in your sin and shame, without infecting the rest of us.
    Last edited by Sparko; 11-27-2018, 08:00 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Rushing Jaws
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    For those of you with an understanding of Heaven, how will life be different there? Personally I don't see how you can be any less of a sinner in heaven than you are here on earth unless what you call your sin nature is somehow recreated by God. And if in order to not sin, you need be transformed by God into a "non-sinner" then what was the point of this so called earthly crucible?
    The purpose of this earthly life, which will come to an end, is to fit us for eternal life in Christ, which will have no end. That eternal life begins during the course of this life.

    We are on earth, not for our own sakes, but to know, love, and serve God in this world, that we may be with Him forever in the next. By receiving the gift of faith in Him - and “faith is the assurance of things not seen”, not the capacity to believe six impossible things before breakfast - we are to live by this assurance, and exercise it constantly, so that the realities we know dimly by faith may become ever more real to us; so that when the time comes, we may at last enter in to the good things which in this mortal life we have known by faith. And this life is communal - we are not isolated units, but members of a single Body, the Body of Christ which is His Church. We are limbs of Christ, and limbs of one another, all sharing in the same Spirit of Christ Who is the Spirit of the whole Body. I don’t know what the details of Protestant belief are, but those of us who are Catholic or Orthodox place a lot of emphasis on the reality and unity of the life of the Church in Heaven.

    No-one can be said to “understand Heaven”. St Paul puts it best, as so often:

    8Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.…”

    https://biblehub.com/nasb/1_corinthians/13.htm

    I don’t mean to dodge your questions by fobbing you off with Bible quotations. It’s just that the Bible often says, better than one could oneself, what it is one is trying to say.

    Verse 11 is where most (all ?) Christians on earth are now: we know there is a Heaven, but we do not know of it from experience, since “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God”. To inherit the Kingdom, we must be changed, in body and soul. In this world, we cannot speak of Heaven by experience, but only in an inadequate way, that is less than the reality of it. We are like children prattling about what they do not understand adequately, but can nonetheless glimpse as being real, and not an illusion. Perhaps the best we can do in speaking of Heaven, is to purify our ideas of it as much as possible from whatever distorts them. Scripture is of immense help in this, because it has so much to tell us about God & Christ and the Holy Spirit.

    Jonathan Edwardes called Heaven “a world of love”. That is a pretty good brief description.
    Last edited by Rushing Jaws; 11-27-2018, 02:37 AM.

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  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    I have not gotten my glorified body yet.
    A body, glorified or not, is just a body Sparko, it's not who you are, you're the person inside the body, correct. So, again, you're just making all this stuff up, but it isn't making sense.

    Leave a comment:


  • MankyScotsGit
    replied
    Originally posted by sparko View Post
    i have not gotten my glorified body yet.
    truth!!!!

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    But you have submitted yourself to god, right? And the holy spirit, i.e. the 3rd person of the trinity, lives within you, right? And you have also had the experience of sin, right? Yet with all that you are still a sinner, right? So none of these things stop you from sinning, so what is it that you believe will actually do the trick?
    I have not gotten my glorified body yet.

    Leave a comment:


  • MankyScotsGit
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    So none of these things stop you from sinning, so what is it that you believe will actually do the trick?
    The removal of temptation.

    Leave a comment:


  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    a perfect nature that doesn't have an 'addiction to sin', that will not decay or die, that has submitted themselves to God and God's holy spirit lives within, guiding that person.

    1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
    1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
    2 Corinthians 6:16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
    Ezekiel 36:27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
    https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topi...he-Holy-Spirit


    Philippians 3:20-21 ESV But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
    But you have submitted yourself to god, right? And the holy spirit, i.e. the 3rd person of the trinity, lives within you, right? And you have also had the experience of sin, right? Yet with all that you are still a sinner, right? So none of these things stop you from sinning, so what is it that you believe will actually do the trick?

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    Really, well explain what you mean by a glorified nature, and being indwelt by the holy spirit then?
    a perfect nature that doesn't have an 'addiction to sin', that will not decay or die, that has submitted themselves to God and God's holy spirit lives within, guiding that person.

    1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
    1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
    2 Corinthians 6:16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
    Ezekiel 36:27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
    https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topi...he-Holy-Spirit


    Philippians 3:20-21 ESV But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

    Leave a comment:


  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    no Jim, it's all about our nature. If God put a person with a sin nature in heaven, he would just sin. and someone with a sinless nature with no experience of sin, will sin. I think only a formerly sinful person with a glorified nature who has voluntarily submitted themselves to God and is indwelt by the holy spirit can remain sinless.
    Really, well explain what you mean by a glorified nature, and being indwelt by the holy spirit then?

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    If the experience is unaffective, then the experience is superfluous. If in the end both you and your environment need be changed in order that you be sinless, then the experience suffered of your imperfect nature in an imperfect environment is purposeless. All it does is show the difference between how you would act under the conditions in the one situation from that of the other.
    no Jim, it's all about our nature. If God put a person with a sin nature in heaven, he would just sin. and someone with a sinless nature with no experience of sin, will sin. I think only a formerly sinful person with a glorified nature who has voluntarily submitted themselves to God and is indwelt by the holy spirit can remain sinless.

    Leave a comment:


  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    as I have said at least 3 times now. it is about having the experience of sin.
    If the experience is unaffective, then the experience is superfluous. If in the end both you and your environment need be changed in order that you be sinless, then the experience suffered of your imperfect nature in an imperfect environment is purposeless. All it does is show the difference between how you would act under the conditions in the one situation from that of the other.

    Leave a comment:


  • JonathanL
    replied
    Personally I think the main reason we're not immediately made perfect and "whisked away" to God is not because we're supposed to grow and mature in the faith (although that happens as well) as if our time here was some sort of "crucible", but so that we can preach the gospel to the unsaved and maybe a few more people will be saved through our words and actions. IOW, it's not for your own personal gain that you're not immediately made sin-free and taken away the moment you get saved, but for the sake of others.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    Then god could have created us with those glorified bodies in heaven in the first place and allowed us to choose whether to be saved or lost from there. The whole point of the question is what point does the crucible serve if in the end God has to both change us and our environment anyway in order that we become sinnless?
    as I have said at least 3 times now. it is about having the experience of sin.

    Leave a comment:


  • MankyScotsGit
    replied
    Hey Jim, I get ya.

    Perhaps the need for 'this crucible' rather than just having it all play out in Heaven is partly because with God being Holy and sin being incompatible with His presence then the 'drama' had to play out somewhere out of Heaven... I realise that raises other questions about God being everywhere!

    There is a notion within early Gnosticism and the Fall from Heaven that the souls of humanity also fell from Heaven along with the Devil and the other naughty angels. I'm not sure if that's a concept that sits within the, ahem, ultra literal orthodoxy of the type of Christianity you are pursuing on this question.

    Let's throw that out, as it's a question that I've not been able to resolve within my own explore of orthodox Christianity, and it does have pertinence: When are/were human souls created? Were all souls created around about 'the beginning' and hang around awaiting their turn, or are they created individually 'on demand' at some point after conception? And, at what point does the human soul become sinful?

    Leave a comment:

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