Actually, following God under the Old Testament is based on faith and not really on one's own strength.

Hebrews 11.

As for Romans 7, it does not states that following the law is a tall order, but the reason it's the sinful nature that prevents the apostle from following it.

Your earlier point was "Getting to know God under the Old Testament Law requires a tall order. It requires perfection and No one is able to fulfil it perfectly because it hinges on own's strength, thus in the word of Apostle, we do the evil we want not and do not the good we want."

And I just shown you a passage that proves otherwise.

Now I know the law is not based on faith. But this is not the point of discussion right?

ok you are right in this.

i know but some newer bible translation convert it to sat/sit

haha

i alwiz wonder how to recline and makan i only can do it at korean bbq restaurant where u need to sit inside some raised flooring hahaha then i tried reclining while makan

Actually I beg to differ. For Romans 7, it clearly states that Our flesh(sinful self)
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Obviously stating that it is the sinful self that prevents one from following the law.

And continues with Romans 8 where by it's stated Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
Actually grace is too overemphasized in today's context. In the past, homosexuality would normally warrant a death sentence. Right now, some churches are even willing to embrace it. A Christian who is in the spirit should be able to willingly follow the law because the law is good if you look at Romans 7 again and Christians should love what is good

Well, obviously if there is no law, sin is dead because without the law, the sinful self cannot be displayed.

8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.

Look at the full context.
It is because of sinful desires that cause man to break the law.

7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”[a] 8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

Actually if you read this in context, law is supposed to be good but then it condemns as well due to man's sinful nature.

So basically if you are reading in this context, what it says is that you should not try to overcome sin by your own effort(flesh) but through the holy spirit.

3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

If you are coveting, you are still sinning. If you remain in the flesh, you cannot get rid of the temptation to covet but if you are in spirit, you should be able to overcome.

Your assumption is that law is something that is bad is a wrong assumption to begin with. Correct me if i am wrong. Because you associate law with self effort. Law is not self effort. It is the rules that God has set and because man hates God(sin), he does not follow the rules.

Even the passage says explictly that the law is holy and the commandments are holy. So how can you associate something holy with something that is unholy(self effort)

I know where you are coming from. But then if a person continues sinning, it is very likely that the Grace of God isn't in him. I mean let's look it from a logical perspective. What is the difference between a Christians who continues with his sin and a non Christian.

We are obviously under grace and not law but then because we are under grace, we are better equipped now to overcome sin and this is demonstrated by an observation of the law. The difference between a non christian and a christian is that a christian is no longer slave to the flesh and has the holy spirit in him.

Romans provided a reason as to why Man go against law. It is because of their sinful nature(flesh). Now if we are under grace and no longer under the flesh, we should be better equipped to handle sin which is indicated by our works(law) refer to James.

The main focus is obviously on grace but how is grace demonstrated? Obviously a person under grace would be less prone to sinning and thus would be more able to follow the law.

Actually even Christ Himself said that he did not come to abolish the Law but to Fulfil it.

If you sin even under grace, the distance between you and God will increase anyway.

Of course as Christian, we have a better revelation of what the law entails. Jesus even sum up the law as love your neighbour and love God.

Jesus also said that if you love Him you will follow his commandments.

I just do not understand why the need to undermine law because law is based on the truth and as Christians, we should love the truth.

Well, I never ever indicated that we have to carry our salvation.

I never ever say that there is a need to observe the law in order to get saved.

Well, I think the common misunderstanding right now is that you can remain in sin and NOT WORRY about your salvation just because you say the sinner's prayer.

I guess a person does not need to repent in order to be saved.

I guess Jesus words whereby if you love him, obey his commandments means nothing to you.

That is why we are in perilous times.

Anyway
Galatians 5:19-23
Now bthe works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, cdivisions, 21 envy,4 drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that dthose who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But ethe fruit of the Spirit is flove, joy, peace, patience, gkindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 hgentleness, iself-control; jagainst such things there is no law.

You can interpret the above verses anyhow you wish.

Romans 6 talks about the importance of not being in sin and OVERCOMING IT in Christ.

I guess you will overlook this as usual

First of all, I never ever hinted that our salvation is a work based one. So stop it please. I do not want to repeat myself again.

I really do not know why you are even talking about the law of the OT. There is nowhere whereby I ever hinted that strict adherence to the law of the OT is necessary. In fact, many times, I have already hinted that we have a better revelation of the commandments and I think all of us should be mature enough to understand what I mean when I am talking about the commandments of Christ.

I have always hinted that the reason why we follow the commandment of Christ is because we are in Christ and so we would naturally follow his commandments. I do not see how you can come to the idea that I was hinting that we are using our own strength when I was actually claiming that this is a natural process.

Based on what you have said so far, I think you would have no problem accepting that an unrepentant homosexual is actually saved just because he claims alliance to Christ.

The definition of repentance is basically an admittance that you were once in a sinful state and that you do not want to remain in this state.

So it is possible to be an unrepentant Homosexual and a believer at the same time.

Ok.

Church should not disallow homosexuals from listening to the Gospel. But then to accept them as disciples, that is a different story all together.

In fact, I never even said that we should stay away from homosexuals. Of course we should go to them and preach them the Gospel so that they would be saved and the result of them being saved is that they will turn away from Homosexuality.

Seriously, instead of insisting on your views, you really should understand why churches do not allow homosexuals in general not to become members. This is really not about legalism.

I realize that instead of answering the hard questions, you actually divert the issue. This is not really how a Christian should behave.

The law is not just about the 10 commandments. In fact, the bible even said clearly that the law is written in the hearts of everyone and that is why we have a conscience. Seems that even your understanding of law is limited. Obviously an unbeliever may not know the commandments but since the unbeliever has the law written in his heart, he is still breaking the law.

I think I have to ask you the same question that prophetjul ask you once. Can you please act as a Christian and please answer straight to the point instead of implying things that I did not say?

Ok, to be honest I have lost my patience and I really do not want to continue. You can do whatever you want. We let the people who see our exchanges be the judge shall we?

You really did not answer the question and even circumvent the question. To me that is very unchristian but then seeing the kind of Gospel you are believing in, this is not really unexpected.

It's ok. I think you know what the hard questions are but for some reason, you conveniently switch topics to something that may be similar but in actual fact is not relevant to the original discussion.

I think you should realize that I did give you the benefit of the doubt because I considered you as my christian brother and really did not scrutinize your replies hard. When I went back to the discussion that we had again, I realize that in many cases, you conveniently switch the topic and make the conclusions even though it really did not answer the original questions. I trusted your integrity not to do that but then I actually got dissapointed when I reread our previous exchange.

Asking you the hard question would probably mean that you will circumvant the question as what you are prone to doing.

By the way, I dun think I am the only one who has this issue. I am pretty sure prohetjul also have this issue with you.

I really do not want to go back and nitpick on the issues that we were discussing about. I believe if you reread the discussion without biasness, you would understand where I am coming from.

The main question which I was asking was is it possible to be a believer and a non repentant homosexual.

You switched the context to homosexual accepting God.

In fact, I even included the word non repentant and so you should know that it is not an issue about not preaching to homosexual but whether it is possible for a believer to continue to his sinful way.

Changing context like this will not get us anywhere. In fact you have a habit of changing the context everytime we have a discussion.

This is only one of the examples that you change the context in the discussion. You have done that so far in all of the discussion we have so far.

And the thing is that I am not the only one having issues with you even prophetjul who to me is a person who is normally patient have the same issues with you.

I do not want to get into all argument mode here because I do not want to waste too much time in this and also since I am a Christian, I do not want to create further strife in a Christian forum even though I am getting very suspicious of you.

Ok.

I really do not want to get into a long discussion here because of time constraint.

The simple answer is because
1)People love their sins because they belong to the world
2)They do not love God
3)They love themself too much
4)They do not have the truth in them
5)They hate God
6)They are still of the flesh due to the fact that they do not have the holy spirit in them

Now my question back to you is.
If you do not repent, it means that you still love self more then God.
Jesus say that you should die to yourself.
So are you not taking his words seriously?\

Let me ask you another question.
Why is your focus on me and not on the other christian brother who is not preaching a sound gospel? Is it because you know that I was going to call on you?

Of course. But nvm. Let's not focus on Pehkey. Because from the way I look at things, this is what I really expected.

I get upset espacially when the truth get trampled just like that. But you probably love man made philosophy more then the word of God so I guess expectations are different right?

Look, you switch topic again.
But there is really a fatal flaw that you seem to miss out.
God so loved us that He gave his son to DIE for us.

Now it is because of this that we can now recouncil with God and also seek forgiveness from God and repent of our sins.

You actually MISS out the most important component. It is this act of love that enables us to actually be forgiven and seek forgiveness(repent).

Well, I knew it. You just could not answer the question directly. You have to actually change the context to a question about 2 sided love.

And your answer even downplayed Christ death for us.

I really do not wish to waste my time here because debating on theological issues which you are very weak in the first place and that is why the need to circumvant the real issue on hand .

To be honest, you seem to go out of point all of the time but I guess no one except me and Prophetjul actually called on you so you feel that you can just go out of the point all of the time and get away with it.

But you can carry on with your merry ways because I really have no interest in this anymore.

So, the discussion was the a genuine saved believer can still be sinning continuously?

I think I have repeated myself too many times and it's getting tiring.

I have not ever implied that we are justified by works.

I think this has been repeated many times over the course of a short period.

I never ever said that we should boast of our love for God so again you are slandering me. I am saying that it is a natural process for a Christian to hate and repent of their sins and to overcome it with the help of the holy spirit.

This is really the last straw for me. And this is the last post from me about this.

You have revealed your hand throughout this whole exchange and there is no need to continue in this anymore.

If he grows in the divine life, of course. Classic example of in 1 Cor. 6, the Corinthians were saved but so fleshly (were babe).

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be bled astray; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor homosexuals

10 Nor thieves nor the covetous, not drunkards, not revilers, not the rapacious will inherit the kingdom of God.

11 And these things were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

... just continue down

17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

18 Flee fornication. Every sin which a man may do is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

....

They were fleshly yet have the Spirit of God in them (spirit). But their soul are still untransformed.

Only when a Christian receives the holy spirit then he can achive those points.

so it is a testimony to God.

I hope that you understand that it is impossible for someone who is not saved to actually do any of the points from 1 to 7

And I never ever implied that a Christian who has anger problem will not have anger problems after he is saved.
But he will recognize that he has an anger problem, pray to God about it and the holy spirit will help him to overcome it over time.

There should be an observable change over time.

I have already provide the example that is applicable for homosexuals as well.

A "homosexual" may still have homosexual tendancies or thoughts after he is saved, but I do not think he should be acting on those tendancies or thoughts.
And he should pray to God about those tendancies.
I do not think a church should actually accept those who still practise homosexuality as an official member but of course they can provide council.