My point being that if it is possible to be perfect, then why the need for Jesus' sacrifice? God would have just said "work harder so, you'll get there....eventually".
Why have rules if he's only going to send his only begotten to die for our sins anyway? Besides, who determines what's perfect? God? Am I to trust every asshat that comes along that claims his knowledge of His word to be superior? Why dont we start with people better people to each other and leave the supreme beings out of it?
it's possible to be perfect. Jesus proved that. God doesn't say "work harder" because he loves us and sent his son to die in our place.
How do you define "perfect faith?" How can one person's faith be different in quality from another's? What do you mean by that? And in what way did Jesus have faith?
You have a funny way of defining "clearly." What a great cop-out (God, not you). "First you believe--THEN it makes sense." Wrong--you're advocating a commonly held view among SOME OF THOSE who consider themselves disciples of Jesus Christ. Perhaps I should have been more specific--I was raised in the Church AND I BELIEVED. As did most of the people I went to church with, including my own parents--both of whom are still devout believers to this day. My mother is a lay minister; she gives sermons at different churches quite frequently. I doubt she would ever presume to grasp the precise meaning of scripture the way you are doing.
Jesus also changed water to wine and walked on water, but somehow H2O doesn't respond to me in the same way. I don't think perfection as Christians define it is attainable. Christian doctrine is based primarily on St. Paul, and St. Paul was clear on the subject. So, both Greeks and Jews are all sinners according to St Paul. But how about the rest of us? I guess we are too. It's our destiny.
Peter walked on water. how? he was following Jesus. if perfection was not attainable, death would have kept its hold on Jesus. what does this have to do with the original question?
I thought that Jesus was/is divine. Although he lived as a human, he was more than human. He was also God. Is that not what you believe?
exactly. but why? i'll take that question, ASF, thank you. it's because he took his eyes off Jesus and became concerned with the storm.
i believe that Jesus was human. i also believe that he was God. but the fact that he was God did not mean that the human part of him could not experience death. Jesus, the man, died. the part of him that was God raised the dead man from the grave. when i said that death could not maintain its hold on Jesus, what i was referring to is that death only can hold those who have sinned. eternal life is promised to those who have not sinned. when someone receives the gospel of Jesus, his sinless life becomes the de facto life of the (former) sinner. as Paul said, "To live is Christ..."
But...he sank. He proved that he couldn't do it, and he was Saint Peter. If anybody should have been able to do it I would think it would have been him. The question is, do you think you can do it?
I'm genuinely having trouble understanding what you're saying. You said that a human can live a perfect life, because Jesus did so. You also said that Jesus' faith was perfect. This doesn't make sense to me, because Jesus wasn't human in the strictest sense. Sure, He lived in the flesh and He died, I get that. But just because perfection was attainable by Him, does that mean that it's attainable by regular humans? You know, those who aren't God? And can Jesus' faith really be considered "faith?" Given that he was God, it wasn't an act of faith for Jesus to believe in God or to want to obey all the commandments. It was His very nature to do so, not a choice. He knew of His own existence as a fact, not as matter of faith. So I don't understand how it can be said that Jesus had faith. EDIT - Also, I think I may have asked you this before but I forget what you answered. You said that only perfect (sinless) people can enter heaven, unless their sins are redeemed through faith in Jesus. So what do you believe happened to all those who lived before Christ's time? Did they just die and not get any form of eternal life?
God at least has knowledge of his creations. So, under the above interpretation, God has to be totally evil. Since that is not the way the character is written, it has to be incorrect. He provides an incredibly complex description of the kind of dudes he wants to hang with forever, and he has to at least think that it is theoretically possible for it to be fully followed.