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What Does God Want?

R

robert pate

Guest
Religious people believe that God wants works and obedience, so they are busy, busy, busy doing their works and obedience. I knew of a Catholic lady that went to the Catholic church every day to take the sacraments. She was afraid that God would not be pleased if she didn't go every day. Cults are also big into works and obedience. Mormons believe that if you don't do works and obedience you will go to hell. My question is how much works and obedience are required to please a holy God? Should we go to church twice a week? or five times a week? What is required? How often must we pray? Muslims say that they must pray five times a day. How do they know that is what God requires? If you're a Catholic how often should you pray the rosary? No one seems to have an answer to my question.

I think that I know what God wants. God wants perfect works and obedience according to his Holy Law. Here is the problem. No one is able to give God what he wants because no one is able to do perfect works and obedience according to God's law, no, not one, because as Paul said, "There is none righteous, no, not one" Romans 3:10. There is none righteous, because all have been born after Adam, Romans 5:12. Humanity needs a new representative that has been born not after Adam, but after God. God has provided us with such a person, his name is Jesus Christ. "In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" Colossians 2:9. As our substitute and representative he gave God all that he wants. In our name and on our behalf, he has justified the ungodly, Romans 4:5 and reconciled them to God. This is why Paul said to the Colossian's, "You are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power" Colossians 2:10.

Now that we have been justified, sanctified and redeemed and are complete in Christ, how does God want us to live? Does God want us to be religious and do works and obedience like the religious? The answer is yes, but not to please God. God is already pleased with our substitute and representative Jesus Christ. God wants us to do good works and obedience out of love and gratitude for what Jesus has done for us. If you are doing good works and obedience to please God, God is not going to be happy with you, because God is only pleased with his Son Jesus Christ. We are pleasing to God only in Jesus Christ and because of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul said, "The just shall live by faith" Romans 1:17. We live by faith in Christ and his Gospel. We believe that Jesus did it all and that he did it perfectly.

Christians are not required to do works and obedience to be saved. The works and the obedience have ALREADY been done by our substitute and representative Jesus Christ. Because of the doing and the dying of Jesus we now stand in God's Holy Court as justified. God can find no sin in the man that confesses Jesus as his Lord and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead, Romans 10:9. All that have come to Jesus Christ to be saved by him have entered into his rest, Hebrews 4:10. We rest in his righteousness and in his atonement for our sins and have no confidence in the flesh, which is religion. This is how God wants us to live.
 
God wants his people to live by faith, faith in the work and the person of his Son Jesus Christ. Of all the attributes of fallen man faith is the greatest. "Without faith it is impossible to please him" Hebrews 11:6. Works and obedience should be the results faith. The whole 11th chapter of Hebrews is about faith. It is about God's people and their faith. They lived a life of faith in God and his promises, they believed God. Many of them died without ever seeing the promise of a savior, Hebrews 11:39. They looked forward to seeing their promised Messiah and were justified by faith. While we look back to when he was here and are justified by faith.

Faith is far superior to works and obedience. The Pharisees did works and obedience, but they didn't have faith in God, this is why Jesus condemned them. There is a lot of pride in works and obedience, but there is no pride in faith. There is no pride in faith, because the object of our faith is Jesus Christ, we have faith in his works and in his obedience and not in our own works and obedience. Paul said, "I count all things (his works and obedience) as dung, that I might win Christ" Philippians 3:8. Here is a man that travel over 10,000 miles for over 25 years, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people that had never heard about Jesus and he counts it all as dung. Paul was not trusting in his works or his obedience to save him, because he counted it as dung.
 
Bradley D said:
What are Christians to do with their lives?
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Paul said, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" Galatians 2:20.
 
robert pate said:
Paul said, "There is none righteous, no, not one" Romans 3:10.
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The reborn are FREE to choose: Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. and as this indicates, they are free to indulge in the flesh and free to serve in love.

This would indicate that their addicting enslavement to sin [John 8:34 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.] is broken / cured because their loving service is no more called filthy rags, Rev 19:8 And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness acts of the saints...

So important is this living a godly life that to do so speeds up, hastens, the coming day of judgement, 2 Peter 3:11-12, which has been postponed because of the choice of some elect to go astray into sin:
Matt 13:27 The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28 ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. [a reference to verses 36-30]

So the servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’[to bring the judgement upon them?] 29 ‘NO!’ he said, [postpone the judgement because...] ‘if you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest.
 
Ted T said:
The reborn are FREE to choose: Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. and as this indicates, they are free to indulge in the flesh and free to serve in love.

This would indicate that their addicting enslavement to sin [John 8:34 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.] is broken / cured because their loving service is no more called filthy rags, Rev 19:8 And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness acts of the saints...

So important is this living a godly life that to do so speeds up, hastens, the coming day of judgement, 2 Peter 3:11-12, which has been postponed because of the choice of some elect to go astray into sin:
Matt 13:27 The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28 ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. [a reference to verses 36-30]

So the servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’[to bring the judgement upon them?] 29 ‘NO!’ he said, [postpone the judgement because...] ‘if you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest.
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The only way that anyone can be reborn is by faith in Christ and his Gospel, Galatians 3:2. Trying to be saved and reborn any other way will make you a counterfeit.

No one will be saved because of their godly lives, because all have been born after Adam, Romans 5:12. And need to be born again by the Gospel, 1 Peter 1:23.

The good seed are those that have elected to believe in Jesus. The weeds are those that have rejected salvation by grace through faith.
 
robert pate said:
Religious people believe that God wants works and obedience, so they are busy, busy, busy doing their works and obedience. I knew of a Catholic lady that went to the Catholic church every day to take the sacraments. She was afraid that God would not be pleased if she didn't go every day. Cults are also big into works and obedience. Mormons believe that if you don't do works and obedience you will go to hell. My question is how much works and obedience are required to please a holy God? Should we go to church twice a week? or five times a week? What is required? How often must we pray? Muslims say that they must pray five times a day. How do they know that is what God requires? If you're a Catholic how often should you pray the rosary? No one seems to have an answer to my question.

I think that I know what God wants. God wants perfect works and obedience according to his Holy Law. Here is the problem. No one is able to give God what he wants because no one is able to do perfect works and obedience according to God's law, no, not one, because as Paul said, "There is none righteous, no, not one" Romans 3:10. There is none righteous, because all have been born after Adam, Romans 5:12. Humanity needs a new representative that has been born not after Adam, but after God. God has provided us with such a person, his name is Jesus Christ. "In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" Colossians 2:9. As our substitute and representative he gave God all that he wants. In our name and on our behalf, he has justified the ungodly, Romans 4:5 and reconciled them to God. This is why Paul said to the Colossian's, "You are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power" Colossians 2:10.

Now that we have been justified, sanctified and redeemed and are complete in Christ, how does God want us to live? Does God want us to be religious and do works and obedience like the religious? The answer is yes, but not to please God. God is already pleased with our substitute and representative Jesus Christ. God wants us to do good works and obedience out of love and gratitude for what Jesus has done for us. If you are doing good works and obedience to please God, God is not going to be happy with you, because God is only pleased with his Son Jesus Christ. We are pleasing to God only in Jesus Christ and because of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul said, "The just shall live by faith" Romans 1:17. We live by faith in Christ and his Gospel. We believe that Jesus did it all and that he did it perfectly.

Christians are not required to do works and obedience to be saved. The works and the obedience have ALREADY been done by our substitute and representative Jesus Christ. Because of the doing and the dying of Jesus we now stand in God's Holy Court as justified. God can find no sin in the man that confesses Jesus as his Lord and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead, Romans 10:9. All that have come to Jesus Christ to be saved by him have entered into his rest, Hebrews 4:10. We rest in his righteousness and in his atonement for our sins and have no confidence in the flesh, which is religion. This is how God wants us to live.
Click to expand...
God has a will, a plan for creation. He wants us to trust him as a Father and let him lead us to grow up.
 
robert pate said:
Paul said, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" Galatians 2:20.
Click to expand...
Paul was an apostle spreading the word and checking on the groups of Christians. What did the other Christians do by faith?
 
Legroom said:
God has a will, a plan for creation. He wants us to trust him as a Father and let him lead us to grow up.
Click to expand...
True, but you have to enter in another way besides the fake space promoting urantia idiots.
 
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