God Does not Always Give You a Second Chance

[Johny Joe Hold]

It bothers me to read that God forgives sins. It causes people to think they can get away with it. Yes, God might forgive a sin here and there but don't count on it. If He forgave a sin or yours once you can't be sure about the second one. For proof, let's look at the two million sinners He sent to the bottom during Noah's flood. You can be sure a million or so of them were begging for forgiveness as they went under. The Battle of Jericho was another big example of no second chance. My message to sinners is, cut it out.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/why-i-disagree-that-god-is-the-god-of-second-chances.html

[Isabella White]

It bothers me to read that God forgives sins. It causes people to think they can get away with it. Yes, God might forgive a sin here and there but don't count on it. If He forgave a sin or yours once you can't be sure about the second one. For proof, let's look at the two million sinners He sent to the bottom during Noah's flood. You can be sure a million or so of them were begging for forgiveness as they went under. The Battle of Jericho was another big example of no second chance. My message to sinners is, cut it out.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/why-i-disagree-that-god-is-the-god-of-second-chances.html

Amen, dear Brother Mayor Hold! That is the sort of fine-spirited logic that we need to hear. I am sure that all followers of the will agree with that! Oh, yes — if Almighty is so gracious as to forgive sinners once, then they should not expect that they can be forgiven when they are backsliding into their old, sinful ways! Why, since the had to die once, then why should rotten sinners get more than one chance?!

I Peter 3:18 "For also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to , being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:"

[MitzaLizalor]

So why should it be incredulous that in a world of objective moral brokenness God can remove a person’s sins and create redemptive beauty? What’s so strange about it? Perhaps it’s really about a twisted belief that repentance will result in doing less life, whereas His grace actually provides new beginnings and genuine fulfillment. As the distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand Nicholi, wrote about God’s grace, “I know that he always offers forgiveness followed by the opportunity and the resources to start again.” ^[1] Nicholi’s essay unpacked psychologically how Christ provides the inner “resources” that fulfill the beauty God intended.

There seems to be a confusion there, between SOUL and SPIRIT, which are two different words signifying two different things. They are two different words in The New Testament and well-known to the authors, through whose pens God speaks to us today. From the first we get psychiatrist, a word already familiar to Christians representing a profession to avoid but a reference is provided ^[2] anyway, and from the second we get pneumatic, corrupted in literature quite thoroughly ^[3] to distract the gullible and half-baked of whom there is no shortage.

Throughout the piece, the idea that God loves us unconditionally is developed without Scriptural support. There is some reference to Psalms and Epistles, yes, but never endorsing the central theme expressed in the concluding paragraph, as follows:

I disagree, however, that God is the God of “second chances,” because I believe that He is the God of innumerable chances, longsuffering and of great mercy. So even in this chaotic and rebellious world people are welcome to experience the beauty of knowing that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12).

Psalm 103:11-13 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.

East and west are infinitely remote from one another so for one whose transgressions were similarly remote, where would the need for "innumerable chances" arise? David, the source for this lovely Psalm, understood that very well and covers the detail here:

Psalm 103:17-18 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.

Self-willed wretches infinitely returning to their vomit are beyond Redemption, clear enough in the Psalm but for the more obtuse God spells it out plainly in verses omitted from the linked article..

II Peter 2:20 21 22
QED


‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡

1. “Hope in a Secular Age” In Finding God at Harvard, ed. Kelly Monroe (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1996), 111-120.

2. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8890473/Richard-Gallagher-Board-certified-psychiatrist-diagnoses-demonic-possession-Catholic-church-exorcist.html
Dr. Richard Gallagher is a renowned, board-certified psychiatrist from New York who helps diagnose 'demonic possession' for the Catholic Church

3. https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.16168/page/35/mode/1up
"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the Assistant Predestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale.
PDF HERE