If we hold fast to an unforgiving spirit, we will not be forgiven by God. If we continue on in that way, then we will not go to heaven, because heaven is the dwelling place of forgiven people. —Popular Minister This statement was made by a prominent preacher/theologian and I pulled it from his website [...]
If we hold fast to an unforgiving spirit, we will not be forgiven by God. If we continue on in that way, then we will not go to heaven, because heaven is the dwelling place of forgiven people. —Popular Minister
This statement was made by a prominent preacher/theologian and I pulled it from his website yesterday. If we believed and acted on it, our salvation and our final destiny would not rest on the finished redemptive work of Jesus Christ, but on the vagaries of our everyday life. Indeed, it conflicts with Romans 10:9 which says that if anyone believes that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and confesses him as “Lord,” he shall be saved. It also conflicts with Jesus’ own statement that a man must be born-again (or from above) in John 3:36 in that, if a man is born-again, does he miss heaven for holding a grudge against someone?
The Word instructs us that it must be “handled aright” (RV) or “rightly divided.” (KJV). Many times we misconstrue the Word and that leads to crazy statements like this one. For example, in Romans 3:10, the Word says,
as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. (RV)
A lot preachers have used that verse indiscriminately to describe everybody and their dog—heathen and Christian alike. Consequently, Christians have walked away from Sunday sermons believing that they continue to stand condemned before God. But that doctrinal stance, as applied to Christians, flatly contradicts 1 John 1:9, which says:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If the Christian may be cleansed from all unrighteousness, how is the Romans verse to be construed? It falls to rightly dividing the Word.
Another example. In Luke 11:1, the disciples approached Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. He, in turn, gave them what we today call the “Lord’s Prayer.” Today, all over the world, preachers tell their congregations to pray the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, some years ago Larry Lea got almost famous when he trumpeted the idea that the Lord’s Prayer wasn’t really supposed to be recited verbatim—it was actually an outline for New Testament believers to use in our prayer life. Later in Jesus’s ministry, though, he told these very same disciples of a new era of prayer. He said,
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled. (John 16.24, RV)
If the disciples were to continue to pray in the manner of the Lord’s Prayer, why did he later change it up? Why would he tell them that they were now supposed to pray in his name when they already had the Lord’s Prayer in their pocket? Again, it falls to rightly dividing the Word.
This popular preacher minister cut-and-pasted “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,” onto New Testament doctrine. He’s made the mistake of taking a prayer that was formulated for Jews under the Law and upending New Testament doctrine with it. Under the Law, men were only forgiven sins when they had forgiven sins. We, as New Testament believers, have a “better” covenant and our rules for exercising forgiveness are vastly different from those who lived under the Law. It would have been unjust for Jesus to require his disciples, living under the Law, to exercise New Testament forgiveness.
In future posts, I will explore the doctrinal bases and mechanics of New Testament forgiveness. It is one of the most wonderful spiritual exercises that we can employ in our Christian walk.
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I don’t understand what Mr. Cronfel is saying, but I wanted to comment on what you wrote. Thank you for writing this!
For so long I was taught to believe that if I didn’t constantly ask for forgiveness for every sin every day or forgiving everyone who ever wronged me, I would lose my salvation and go directly to hell. And what about past things I’d forgotten? I was constantly worried about having my salvation revoked either for sin or unforgiveness. I was like Paul, the things I wanted to do, I didn’t, and the things I didn’t want to do, I did. I felt there was no hope for me.
At this time in my life I was dealing with an abusive family falling apart. My parents were dying (terminal cancer in both at the same time), and all the bottled up emotions from all the years of familial abuse was coming to the surface. (I know now the Holy Spirit was bringing all this out to get it out and dealt with.) The worse my parents got, the more abusive towards me two of my sisters became. I was very angry with one of them in particular. In fact, I hated her for all she’d done to me. I confessed that unforgiveness to my pastor. He told me if I died before I forgave her and stopped hating her, I’d burn in hell, and that I was sinning against the cross for even thinking it. What my pastor told me that day was reinforced by what he said later after one of my friends died. One Sunday just after church service, my friend left the church to go home and died in an accident on the way. The pastor said my friend was lucky that he’d been to the altar to confess his sins just before he died, or he could’ve lost his salvation and been in danger of going to hell.
I struggled with this for a long time, especially when reading Jesus’ words where He says that “no man can pluck them from my hand.” To me, “no man” meant I couldn’t even pluck myself out of His hand. Then I would read, “I will not lose one of these the Father has given me.”, or “the Holy Spirit is the guarantee.” Then I would see that “salvation was an unearned gift so that no man could boast”. After a lot of prayer and study, I finally came to see that what I was reading was the real gospel, and I wasn’t hearing it in church.
Jesus’ death and God’s gift of salvation didn’t rest on what I had or hadn’t done, but was solely the gift of God through Jesus’ death, burial, going into hell to take my punishment, and His resurrection. I finally figured out that my forgiveness through Jesus’ redemptive work freed me. I was completely forgiven! God removed my sin as far as the east to the west and remebered it no more. When that hit me, that became shouting news!!! What an indescribable gift from God of love, grace, and mercy that my words could never adequately articulate!!
Thank you so much for shedding light on this topic! I wish there were more out there like you who are telling the it like it is!!!
(On a side note, since that time, God’s brought me to a place where I was able to forgive my family.)
Dear Verna,
What you wrote is great! As a Calvinist I believed I was forgiven of every sin for salvation from hell but not for cleansing and the promises. I did not understand that the Father was is and will always be loving today. That Jesus died to cleanse me and bless me over satan by virtue of the reurrection. Calvinists don’t believe Jesus was made sin itself and went to hell in the tomb. I knew I was eternally forgiven but not temporally forgiven. I was trying to obtain protection and safety and promises in this life by works. I was trying to forgive other in my flesh and mind but not with my heart because I did not know I had a heart. I only thought my heart was wicked and evil. And so I behaved and spoke wickedly and evilly and inherited wicked and evil. But now that I know the Father spoiled the principalities and powers ans made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in Christ, I can forgive others out of faith in the future. I used to wonder that if all we do is forgive others then we give others a license to sin against us. But know I know that we can forgive others by faith in God and he will bless it. Now I can lovingly forgive for power and blessing not out of fear of torment. Now I know that God is always on my side and only the devil is testing me. When I moved from Calvinism to WOF I went from mercy (not getting the punishment in hell I deserve) to grace (unmerited favor now). But in Calvinism the devil represents God even after penal substitution. Penal substituion is weakness and fear and unforgiveness in this life. Kenneth Hagin says that we need to leave the cross and move up to the throne. He says that a crss religion is a place of weakness and that those who “cling to the cross” (as I used to sing as a Baptist) “are cross with everyone”. They are unforgiving towards everyone because they themselves are still on the cross and stil in thier sins in thier mind.
In Christ Jesus,
Jim Cronfel
Jim, I’m confused about your teaching.
1) I thought it was God who poured out his wrath on Jesus (Satan has nothing to do with it).
2) But I believe that God is going to send the antichrist against Israel (and the world) in the last days; but I think he will let satan do it for him.
Thanks
Peter,
Can you provide us with chapter and verse for your first thought?
Thanks.
Dear Peter K,
From 1994 until about three weeks ago thanks to this blog and and the WOF Church I attend I have been delivered from penal substitution! In penal substitution the Father Himself on the Cross when Jesus cries “My God My God…” has been eternally forsakenin His soul by God the Father. Then Jesus goes to
be with the theif in paradise and His death in the flesh and reurrection from the tomb are superfluous. But Peter showed me the pains in Acts 2:24:
Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
Those are pains of death while Jesus was in the tomb not on the Cross. And When Jesus cried My God My God on the Cross He was not dead! And so the Father did not put Jesus to death when He (or the Holy Spirit) He forsook Him! Jesus truly died in the flesh! Penal Substitution does not fulfill the Sign of Jonah which includes the resurrection from the belly of the tomb and spoiling of satan! Evangelicals are still in bondage to Jesus the satanic pains of Jesus felshy death in the tomb in this life even though they are saved from hell after they die. The Father did pour out His wrath upon Jesus for our worship of satan to deliver us from bondage to satan by Jesus submitting to that bondage and triumphing over it! But penal substituion leaves us in our satanic sins and it does not fulfill a God of love! It fulfills a God that still hates this world. Purification of sins under penal substituion becomes suffering under the world. Purification under the spiritual death of Christ is victory over the world.
In Christ Jesus,
Jim
I canceled the publication of my Calvinist book today. I spent five years writing a book proving that you have to believe in eternal conscious torment (the bad news) to be saved from the standpoint of penal substitution.I have Dr. John Stott , an old time friend of Billy Graham denying the Deity of Christ and preaching total works-righteousness as the conseqence of his annihilationism ( the belief that hell is non-existance). I show wherei he is unrepentant. But the book was writen in support of penal substution which I can no longer support now that I know that Jesus was made sin itself and that I am not a sinner anymore. I still believe that savation depends on the belief in the bad news and so did Kenneth Hagin. But Calvinism and penal substitution is the soveriegnty of satan not God. I removed by book from publication. “Eternal Christianity” by Jim Cronfel. Part of it is still up at google books. Once again, Peter, I can’t thank you enough for your knowlege and work.
In Christ Jesus,
Jim
Dear Peter,
Today I emailed my publisher and canceled publication of my book Eternal Christianity. In it I arugued that one can not be saved unless one believes the bad news. The bad news is eternal conscious torment. Dr. John Stott, who was one of Billy Graham’s best friends is an annihilationist. He denies existance in hell. Based on Calvinist penal substitution I show how he denies sin and is unrepentant and denies penal substitution and Protestant Justification by Faith Alone. But now that you have helped God teach me that Jesus was literally made sin so that I would be literally made the righteousness of God in Him I can no longer be associated with penal substitution. The book took me five years to write. I still believe that one can not be born again denying eternal conscious torment. But now I know that it was in hell and the tomb that Jesus suffered at the hands of satan and the the Father resurrected Him and us over satan to walk in victory in this life. I am no longer a Protestant. I am baptised in the Holy Spirit and understand the true gospel. I pulled this book publication today: http://books.google.com/books?id=OtcEd3kAnV0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=cronfel&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false Thank you for teaching me the truth.
In Christ Jesus,
Jim
Dear Peter,
I just finnished listening to an old Vineyard Church Evangelical Charismatic disc. There is no doctrine of cleansing in Evangelicalism. It is still “sinners saved by grace”. Without the spiritual death of Christ it is all sinfull fearful fleshy human love in light (darkness) of an unloving God. It is satanic bondage. The disc was on giving. On it he went out of his way to say that the Acts Christians were not rewarded for giving in a specific attack by name against the “Prosperity Gospel”. It gave me the willies. It didn’t bother me because it was an attack against my beliefs. They are following a false unwilling God. You have helped God bring me out of darkness into power. The focus of penal substituion is firstly God’s the lake of fire and secondly hell (which is also from God). The focus of salvation the Bible (as you correctly teach) is out of satan’s hell and dominace over satan. But satan has Evangelicalism diverted to a hateful God the Father. Under penal substitution there is no escape from:
Deu 1:27 And ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.
In Evangelicalism there is only wandering in the desert still trying to be saved from the lake of fire. But if you believe that it was satan that tortured Jesus by being spiritually forsaken by God, not directly by a God that punishes, then you have the love and power of the Holy Spirit. You can walk with God and enjoy all His benefits today without fear. Satan has them decieved into thinking that the fear of the LORD is punishment IN SPITE OF FAITH! The true doctrine of the fear of the LORD is punishment against unbelief. But the Good News is that Jesus took our unbelief itself. And the resurrection gave us clean believing hearts to enter the promised land. God is love not sovereignty. You can’t trust sovereignty. Sovereignty does not cast out all fear. It has torment. Without the spiritual death of Christ this verse becomes a cruel human fleshly joke:
1Cr 13:7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
But with the spiritual death of Christ we can believe that it is always God’s will to heal and prosper and deliver.
In Christ Jesus,
Jim Cronfel