Saved from what ?

Originally posted by jaywill
Given some areas of modern research it could be that homosexuality is a symptom of arrested pschycological development.

😵

Full salvation in Christ is of two main parts. There is a judicial aspect and an organic aspect. One is saved from and the other is saved into or saved in the realm of.

Here is a basis for this understanding:

"For if we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled" (Rom. 5:10)

The believers former state was as enemies of God. The sinner and God had a relationship of enmity towards one another. No enemy of God can prosper forever. So first RECONCILIATION through the death of Christ causes the sinner and God to be made AT ONE - or ATONEMENT - atonement. The former enemies are brought together. This is the judicial aspect of salvation.

The organic aspect is seen in the next part of the verse as something "much more".

" ... much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled"

After the judicial reconciliation brings the former enemies together then the saved sinner is put into the sphere and realm of Christ as divine life. She is much more saved in the realm of this divine life. This life spreads and grows within the believer. It organically delivers the believer from the power of the sinning nature. The life of Christ is a realm within one can live. We are to be saved "in His life". This means Christ living in us through the Holy Spirit saves us from the inside out. This a salvation from tendencies, habits, shortcomings, foolishness, emptiness, vanity, transgressing. We are saved in the whole sphere of the indwelling Person of Jesus who comes to live in the believer's heart. We enter into the process of salvation in His life.

And this is "much more" to sanctify the believer and make the believer a man or woman mingled with God, blended with God, incorporated with God, and compounded with God to express God and be built up into God's habitation in spirit:

"In whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; In whom you also are being builded together into a dwelling place (habitation) of God in spirit" (Eph. 2:21,22)


So this "much more" salvation is not individual but collective and corporate. The saving advances along with the building up together in love with other members of God's houshold into a living dwelling place of God in spirit. For this is God's eternal purpose - to build up a living God / human dwelling place where God and man mutually co-inhere one another.

In short the saved are saved to be a duplication of Jesus Christ the God - man and mingling of divinity and humanity. We are saved to be a reproduction of the God-man Jesus as a collective habitation and city.

The Bible concludes with a symbolic representation of this city, this dwelling place of God in man - the New Jerusalem.

Originally posted by jaywill
I would say [b]obsession with sex in any case to the point of idolatry is inspired by Satan.

I think that this is a matter of how far the desire is taken. Particlarly what I see God prohibiting is the act of same sexed people trying to enjoy the sex act together. It seems to me that in the Old Testament the line is drawn there.

Given some area ...[text shortened]... irit imparts the resurrection life which recovers and sets man apart for God's eternal purpose.[/b]

You don't think one man could penetrate another lovingly, without obsession? For example, in the context of a committed and tender relationship? I KNOW people of whom this it true. I find it odd any informed person could doubt their existence.

By the way, what evidence have you that the prohibitions of Leviticus are meant to apply to 20th-century people, as opposed to a band of relatively ignorant tribal Jews?

I recall another verse in Leviticus: "Thou shalt suffer a witch to live." I know a practising witch. Am I wrong not to kill her?

Which verses should I extent without qualification to the present? Those condemning witchery or homosexuality?

You ignorance of modern psychology is abysmal. There is no convincing evidence that homosexuality is the result of psychological dysfunction or abnornal child-rearing. I recommend the following book as an antidote to your prejudice.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Gay-Psychobiology-Sex-Orientation/dp/0720612233

Thanks for reminding me that Jesus is Saviour, in your high-flown literary way. Oddly enough, considered purely metaphorically, I think there is something in what you say. Being moral is a tough job; peccadillos can morph into defects. However, considered literally, as a set of metaphysical postulates, it is a sublime example of warped imagination.

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
You don't think one man could penetrate another lovingly, without obsession? For example, in the context of a committed and tender relationship? I KNOW people of whom this it true. I find it odd any informed person could doubt their existence.

By the way, what evidence have you that the prohibitions of Leviticus are meant to apply to 20th-century peo iterally, as a set of metaphysical postulates, it is a sublime example of warped imagination.

The temptation in a debate like this is to become "sin centered". That is to center all our attention on a particular sin. This is self defeating because freedom from sin is not in gross introspection but in looking away to Jesus.

The more one pulls and tugs on a tight ball of yarn the tighter it becomes. This is the problem with singling out any particular sin and wrangling over it.

So you want to focus in like a laser on homosexuality. I would not do this. I would encourage people to look away from their failures to Jesus.

I am not suggesting that we become followers of the Levitical laws. I am only suggesting that we consider the morality of that law. The new testament is to walk in the realm of the indwelling Christ - "Walk by the Spirit and you shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16)

This is not a charge to grit your teeth and stone witches according to the Old Testament. Nor is it a call to focus your introspective mind on your homosexual desires and grapple with them. It is Paul's exhortation to walk step by step in oneness with the Holy Spirit. Then spontaneously we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

"Walk by the Spirit and you shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh".

You may offer many eloquent defenses of men having intercourse with men and women with women. You may offer also many rationals why penetrating animals in sexual intercourse could be a noble and loving act on humans' part.

I would rather not focus on a particular sin but focus on what spontaneously comes out of walking by the Spirit.

Incidently, there are members of my family who are in the gay lifestyle. I lost a brother to HIV complications who was in the gay lifestyle. So don't quickly assume that I am detached from such persuasions and don't know such people.

You ignorance of modern psychology is abysmal. There is no convincing evidence that homosexuality is the result of psychological dysfunction or abnornal child-rearing. I recommend the following book as an antidote to your prejudice.


I am not an expert on psychology. I agree. I do have my own personal experience to relate to. Sorry.

You may be more abreast of modern opinions than I on the subject. But I did read about arrested psychological development being a possible cause of homosexual behavior.

I can recall a period of adolescence when I was infatuated with some particular members of my own sex. But I passed through that. I didn't stay there.

You may say my experience means nothing. But I would not agree. I cautiously take it as somewhat typical.

But at any rate walking by the Spirit, walking in the sphere and realm of the Holy Spirit is the Christian's responsibility. The Old Testament is there to sensatize the conscience. But the power to live in the realm of righteousness is in the divine nature and that is in the Holy Spirit:

" ... He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruptiion that is in the world by lust" (2 Peter 1:4)

We escape by partaking of the divine nature. We escape the corruption of the lust filled world by believing the precious promises of God and partaking of the divine nature dispensed into man through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

Scholars often are forced to justify what they feel helpless to avoid. Some scholarship is just caving in to the flood of encreased immorality. Since we cannot stop the flood we are driven to go along with it and justify it. This is embracing the avalanch. There is no stopping its trend so we justify it to make a rightful place for it in society.

The kingdom of God cannot be built on lack of self control nor on the idolatry of sexual perversions and excesses.