Categories: uncategorized
Date: 27 April 2005 03:37:15
I spent about an hour talking to a JW this morning. It was interesting. He was stressing the point to me that God calls us to follow His commandments. There are quite a few verses in the Bible that say that God loves us when we do what he says. We are saved by grace, but then our decisions and actions are what keeps us in His good books. Wilfuly sinning moves us out of grace.
Something I didn't know about the JWs is that they do not allow people to attend their church unless they are committed to following the rules. If you do something wrong (wilfully) you are unwelcome. It seems really strange to me, coming from a church that has always espoused (at least in words) that the best church would be one full of the lost, outcast and sinful. The JWs' attitude does explain why they go door-knocking to tell people what they believe - if they didn't, they'd never meet non-believers.
Even the idea of wilful sin is interesting to me. I believe we are saved by grace, of course, and this guy didn't argue with that. But what happens when someone is saved by grace but continues sinning, even if they know it's wrong? Tough one. I'd like to believe that God keeps forgiving them indefinitely until they eventually become convicted enough to stop whateer it is, but is that just because I think that would be nice? Some parts in the Bible definitely say differently.
Hmm. More study needed I think.