lobopride said:
Zobel said:
That is not what the scripture says. It says you'll be judged by Christ for what you have done.
I guess we can agree to disagree on this one. The whole topic has been about salvation. Our status in Christ will not be judged, but our works for him will be.
https://www.gotquestions.org/judgment.html
There are two separate judgments. Believers are judged at the Judgment Seat of Christ (Romans 14:10-12). Every believer will give an account of himself, and the Lord will judge the decisions he madeincluding those concerning issues of conscience. This judgment does not determine salvation, which is by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), but rather is the time when believers must give an account of their lives in service to Christ. Our position in Christ is the "foundation" spoken of in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. That which we build upon the foundation can be the "gold, silver, and precious stones" of good works in Christ's name, obedience and fruitfulnessdedicated spiritual service to glorify God and build the church. Or what we build on the foundation may be the "wood, hay and stubble" of worthless, frivolous, shallow activity with no spiritual value. The Judgment Seat of Christ will reveal this.
The gold, silver, and precious stones in the lives of believers will survive God's refining fire (v. 13), and believers will be rewarded based on those good workshow faithfully we served Christ (1 Corinthians 9:4-27), how well we obeyed the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), how victorious we were over sin (Romans 6:1-4), how well we controlled our tongues (James 3:1-9), etc. We will have to give an account for our actions, whether they were truly indicative of our position in Christ. The fire of God's judgment will completely burn up the "wood, hay and stubble" of the words we spoke and things we did which had no eternal value. "So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12 ).
The second judgment is that of unbelievers who will be judged at the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). This judgment does not determine salvation, either. Everyone at the Great White Throne is an unbeliever who has rejected Christ in life and is therefore already doomed to the lake of fire. Revelation 20:12 says that unbelievers will be "judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." Those who have rejected Christ as Lord and Savior will be judged based on their works alone, and because the Bible tells us that "by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified" (Galatians 2:16), they will be condemned. No amount of good works and the keeping of God's laws can be sufficient to atone for sin. All their thoughts, words and actions will be judged against God's perfect standard and found wanting. There will be no reward for them, only eternal condemnation and punishment.
To be fair, you should always end a statement like this with "... and this is my purely subjective opinion of what I personally believe because my religious tradition requires that I believe in Sola Scriptura and there is no objective, divinely guided authority I can point to in support of my personal opinion because that same Bible does not interpret itself and does not come with a divinely ordained table of contents and therefore since Sola Scriptura absolutely and inevitably necessitates that the decision for what is and is not authentic dogma and doctrine must, therefore by its own definition come down to what each individual believer subjectively discerns from his/her reading of what he/she personally believes constitutes the canon of the Bible."
It strikes me that what makes this possible is an arrogation of divine authority that looks and feels a lot like the sin of our first parents who disobeyed God's command to abstain from eating or even touching the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could eat and touch and enjoy everything else in the garden, but they were not to take unto themselves what is reserved exclusively to God. Isn't this what is happening when sola scriptura is put into practice? An individual purports to exercise the authority to determine what is and is not authentic Christian dogma/doctrine independent from an objective and divinely guarded authority (i.e., separate from God).
And how, you might ask, does anyone avoid this sin of arrogation? Only by approaching the determination of dogma/doctrine under the aegis of a divinely established authority. And how does one do that? In a word, apostolicity. "As the Father has
sent me, even so I
send you" (John 20:21). The Greek word here for send is a form of
apostelloa familiar-sounding term.
Apostolos is the noun form of the same word. Its connotation is not sending in the sense of sending a letter. It has a specific meaning of "one
sent with the authority of the one who
sent him." Think "power of attorney" or "delegation of authority." Thus, according to Jesus, his New Covenant ministers were not just "sent" in a generic sense; rather, they were "sent" by and with the authority of Christ
. Understanding this idea has ramifications regarding the infallibility of the Church, its juridical authority, and more. Think about it: if Christ's ministers are "sent" with the authority of Christ, infallibility necessarily follows. Jesus did not teach mere opinions of what he thought Scripture might mean. He spoke the infallible word of God, and so must his ministers!
Jesus limited this infallible authority he gave to the apostles in both Matthew 16:18-19, when he communicated it to St. Peter and his successors, and in Matthew 18:15-18, when he communicated a similar authority to all the apostles and their successors in union with Peter and his successors. He limited it to "whatever you bind" or "loose" (singular) when speaking to Peter and his successors. And he limited it to "whatever you bind" or "loose" (plural) when speaking to all the apostles. Christ gave Peter the keys and the authority to bind and loose in harmony with heaven. He also gave the apostles his divine authority in John 20:19-23 when he sends them out and gives them an authority reserved exclusively to God - the power to forgive sin and to retain sin.
Apostolic succession has as one of its central purposes infallible certitude regarding Christ's promise to remain with the Church until the end of time: "Lo, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20).
This promise was given in the context of the sending of the apostles to the ends of the Earth, the implication being that the apostolic gift would continue until the end in their successors, the bishops.
The Matthew 16 point is obviously a point of disagreement, even between Catholics and Orthodox, but even so, both churches still point to a divinely established authority that persists even to this day that is unique from but described in the Bible, which is the undivided Catholic Church established by the divinely protected authority given to it by Christ who built HIS church on the confession of Peter and against which he promised the gates of hell would not prevail.
I fully acknowledge that much of what my previous paragraph states is disputed. But, the basis for a claim of divinely guided authority is there and is established by tradition and scripture. Catholics and Orthodox disagree about aspects of this and this underlies our unfortunate separation, but I think both camps would still agree that there is an objective basis for claiming a divinely guided authority in the visible church, even if we disagree about the specifics of that divinely guided authority.
