Back to the usual connection, I worked myself to exhaustion in the heat. Ohio went from March to July. We totally skipped early summer and full-on spring. Nothing is normal.
I read a post on eternal security, which I will probably comment on obliquely. I won’t use a full face opposition because the whole matter is not so very clear. I’ll just try to explain how I look at that doctrine, partly because it has some to do with the imputation of righteousness question, I think.
In summing up the imputation of righteousness I would end it from my view as saying it is tri-partite. This is based upon the Lord’s prayer, where it says Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
There is a reality in Heaven. This is what Moses saw when he saw the pattern of the tabernacle,Numbers 8:4,Hebrews 8:5. He saw the reality of it in heaven. Ezekiel saw the new Zion in a heavenly vision (Ezekiel 47).
This reality is to be established in the earth, and in the individual. So both the Kingdom of God and the tabernacle of God are also said to be within, and looked forward to in a new heaven new earth.
If you look at the imputation of righteousness by faith, it begins at the foundation of the world, decided upon within the council of the Godhead: ” Revelation 13:8
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
Is established in the earth at the cross:
Romans 3: 21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. ”
The same righteousness that is imputed to each individual who puts faith in the record of God.
Romans 4:3 “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”
and Romans 4:6
“Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,”
It is a trifold application, in hierarchal order. Whether man assents makes no difference in the fact that Christ died for him, And before Christ entered time and space in history it stood that the council of the Godhead took place. His Gethsemene brought his soul into submission to the established Will of the Father, from the foundation..
This is how I read this.
I take a pragmatic look at the Bible usually. I feel that if God has expressed something , it is our business to find out what that is. There are times His expressions appear contrary or contridiictory. But knowing how contrary and contradictory man is in even the simplest things… my bets lay with the problem being in my understanding and the understanding of men, not in God or His expression.
That is why I term myself a fundamentalist.
and next post I will move on to the eternal security problem. I see it as a problem in how it is usually expressed in the explanations I’ve read……