Peacemakers
who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
James
3:18
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Let's
All be an instrument of Peace!
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Everywhere
- In any condition
- At any time |
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ARE
YOU SAVED?
A
very interesting question that can be asked from different points of views:
I
think many of us might have already been asked this question by some enthusiast
Christian probably after his/her new religious experience. It doesn’t
matter to the poser of the question whether you have been a follower of
Christ all your life in a different way or style than his/her. If you
have been asked such a question, you know that your enquirer is a Protestant
of one kind or other. From a Protestant of point of view the question
simply means have you received Jesus Christ as your
personal Savior and Lord? Or it can also mean are
you born again? Or simply, "do you have
a born again experience?" From a Catholic point of view, it
has an entirely different meaning and it means:
have you made it to heaven?
Though
the experience of being born again is very important, it does not consist
being saved in a definitive sense as one can jeopardize his or her salvation
with mortal sin. After accepting Jesus as one’s personal Savior
and Lord, at a certain point, if someone begins to live sinful life and
die in that state without repentance, where does that person’s salvation
consist in? Thus salvation is not a once for all experience; it is a continuous
process. Accepting Jesus as the Lord of my life is vital thing but that
one-day decision should not be understood as the final decision of my
life; I have to prove the reality of my decision in my daily walk with
the Lord. Thus Catholics and Protestants have differences in interpreting
the question of salvation. What Protestants call their day of salvation
is basically what a Catholic may refer to as his or her conversion experience
or a new experience of rededicating his/her life to the Lord Jesus. For
a Catholic, his/her day of salvation is, the day of his/her death in the
state of grace. No doubt, the once for all and the objective, or the universal
salvation had already taken place when the Lord Jesus Christ has died
for the sins of the entire world. Yes objectively salvation has been obtained
for us through the vicarious death of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Unless
we as individuals accept that salvation with our own free will and decision,
the Lord does not force it upon us. Here comes then, the importance of
our acceptance of what has already been offered freely to us. We call
this subjective salvation, the salvation of us as individual persons.
That is the salvation of yours and mine.
[CONTINUES
ON PAGE 2]
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