Salvation Doctrine - Preaching an Opposite through Semantic Trickery
"Surrender your life to the Lordship of Christ, repenting of your
sins" is preached in some congregations as salvation doctrine. It is
subjective by measuring how much and in what way that surrender is
done. Does repenting of sins mean the literal and straightforward
giving up of every single sin, seeing how this is in order to be saved
in the first place, or does repenting of sin (singular) mean believing
those four tenets of salvation doctrine Paul learned and then wrote to
the Corinthian congregation in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 and calling on the
name of the Master for salvation by verbally confessing "Master Jesus"
(Romans 10:9, 10, 13), turning away from sin as a single thing toward
the one Master Jesus the Messiah? Just what is meant by "repenting of
your sins"? Are the two concepts compatible or opposites: making
yourself, through a choice of your willpower, to stop all sins and think
that that is surrendering your life to the Lordship of Christ, and
believing salvation doctrine, which belief leads you to call out to
Jesus, both admitting and verbally identifying yourself with Christ as
your Master? They seem like opposites to me: one relies on self
concerning will-worship to not sin as proof of sincerity in admitting
Jesus is Master and the other relies on Christ and the Holy Spirit Who
raised Him and us from death to forever be free of sin even as our
bodies practice sin and our mind (however buried by our body's
will-empowered agreement to sin) serves Christ, like Paul said happened
to him (Romans 7).
Considering the time before Paul wrote his
letters, were those congregations saved as they indulged their sin in
order to get more grace (Romans), or would you say they weren't because
they willfully sinned, even in extreme ways (1 Corinthians)?
Very
openly, do you suggest with "Surrender your life to the Lordship of
Christ, repenting of your sins" that we get saved by doing the
impossible and rejecting sin by our willpower or some other soulish way
or that we are saved by believing Christ died for our sins in accordance
with the Scriptures, was buried, God Resurrected Him on the third day
in accordance with Scripture, then He was seen by many witnesses, and
that believing those things, whoever calls on the Master's name by
verbally confessing "Master Jesus" will be saved?