Becoming a disciple is not a prerequisite for salvation, period.
I agree, it's all about repentence and accepting Christ as your savior. From there you are saved.
As for your question, "is it possible to become saved then still consider yourself saved if you are not a disciple?" - Our salvation is not dependant on becoming a disciple. Therefore we can't lose our salvation on the sole criterion we are not following Christ's teachings.
I believe you have a non-sequitar here and I don't believe there are any scriptures to back up what you're saying.
A scenario. Let's say you are accepted into a sports team. Why are you accepted in? Because of your skills in that sport. You're one of the best. But what if you refuse to obey the rules that have been set of players to follow. What if you cheat a lot, play dirty and what if you bring the game into disrepute. Will you be kept on just because you are a great player? No. Likewise I don't think you can claim that just because you are saved by an act of faith means that act of faith is going to keep you in good steed with the creator from then on.
What you seem to be suggesting is that once saved, always saved, no matter what you do afterwards. The only way to become unsaved is if you renounce Christ. Is that what you are suggesting?
I believe that you can lose your salvation by not following the rules. i.e not being a disciple of Christ. ie the pew sitter, or the seeds in the parable who did not take a firm root or were amongst the thorns.
We can go back to discussing individual scriptures if you like. I'll even discuss the Paul ones so that you cannot attempt to claim moral victories by accusing me of copping out.
But I'd prefer to keep it just to a few at a time so I don't have to spend so long on a post.
One can consider them self saved, of course. But the NT spends plenty of time providing internal checks for a believer to know whether or not they have the type of faith that saves. As well as external checks so Christians can identify real believers.
See you talk about these internal checks and I agree that they are there. But it would suggest to me that if a Christian sees they cannot put a check next to a box, then their salvation is not assured.
OnceConvinced wrote:No doubt for you, you are confident in your salvation as I once was. Pray that you'll never lose your faith like I did.
Goose wrote: Let's put it this way. I'm so far past the doubting stage I'm beyond hope for de-conversion. I've been through the fires and emerged much stronger. There is simply no way I'd be foolish enough to renounce because of hardship, pain, suffering or the type of weak arguments I see regularly trotted out on this forum.
OnceConvinced wrote:I guess you have a much stronger faith than what Paul did, huh?
I Corinthians 10:11-12
Therefore, let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall."
I Corinthians 9:27
"But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified."
OK, now I'm quoting Paul. But still they are good scriptures.
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Goose wrote:Yes, ironic, huh. Paul is of no use when he works against you, but then his writings are "good scriptures" when you need him. But don't worry, you're not alone. You aren't the only sceptic I've met that employs such inconsistent methods.
None of the scriptures you quoted worked against me. In fact I saw them as enhancing my own argument. There were plenty of scriptures quoted that we were still debating. I did not have the time to deal with a whole heap more. So I chose to deal with the ones that were Christ's teachings rather than Pauls. I did not want to get bogged down discussing meanings of hundreds of scriptures, which is why I was reluctant to bring in any more at that point. Paul's were the obvious ones to omit as to me Jesus's ones carry more weight. Don't they carry more weight for you?
OnceConvinced wrote: The first one addressed people who think there is no way they could fall from faith.
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Goose wrote:No. It addresses a fall to temptation not a fall from faith.
1Corinthians 10:12-13 Therefore, the person who thinks he is standing securely should watch out that he does not fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is unusual for human beings. But God is faithful, and he will not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength. Instead, along with the temptation he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to endure it.
No, I think it relates very much to your salvation. The entire chapter seems to be warning that sin is so dangerous that you could find yourself falling from God's grace. This pretty much enhances my argument that if you are not following Christ's teachings (being a disciple), then you are in danger of falling from grace.
OnceConvinced wrote: And the second one shows that it takes more than belief to retain your salvation and that even Paul realised he could lose it.
Goose wrote:How you get all that from 1 Corinthians 9:27 is beyond me.
By taking it in context and reading the entire chapter?
OnceConvinced wrote:I know where you're coming from though.
No, I don't think you do.
Believe me, I do. I was right there where you are now.
OnceConvinced wrote:There was never any doubt in my mind (thus my name OnceConvinced)...
Never a doubt? I doubt that.
You perogative of course, but no, never, ever. I even had Christians incredulous when I made that comment. I in turn was incredulous at their lack of faith in God. Doubts did come, obviously later on, which is why I am an ex-Christian now. But that wasn't untill in my 30s (having become a Christian at the age of 7)
Hardships never dented my faith. Neither did pain or suffering. I've had no real bad experience in the church (apart from a couple of camps I went to as a kid) My firsts doubts started to rise when I started to discover that the words written in the bible could not be trusted. That they weren't all they were cracked up to be and it had been a long time since I had seen God do anything in my life. It was not an easy realisation to come to and I was in denial for a long time, refusing to accept I had been deluded. Even now it is still a hard thing to accept that I was deluded for over 30 years of my life.
OnceConvinced wrote:...and it was inconcievable to me that I could ever become an ex-Christian.
If it was inconceivable at the time you were a Christian then you were obviously trying to conceive if you could become an ex-Christian. Which means you entertained the idea. One wonders why you were entertaining the idea of becoming an ex-Christian while you were a Christian.
This is very weird logic and contradictory to the meaning of the word itself. For something to be inconceivable means that it's something that cannot be concieved. In otherwords, something that would simply never come to mind.
Dictionary meaning for my use of the word:
1 impossible to imagine or think of:
The idea that they might not win was inconceivable to them.
It would be inconceivable for her to change her mind.
Leaving Christianity was a thought I could never entertain. If was a statement of faith for me. "I could never leave the faith. I could never be so foolish". Exactly the stance that you are taking in this thread. I take it that you have seriously considered leaving the faith many times? For me I never got to any stage where I though "I wonder if I should become an ex-Christian". For me it was one day a couple of years ago, when I realised that I could not longer consider myself a Christian.
I think you are trying too hard to place the blame of my deconversion on me. In your mind there must be something i did wrong. For all Christians (including myself when I was one), when discussing people leaving the faith it always had to come down to that person not following something of Jesus's teachings. (an issue of discipleship).
OnceConvinced wrote:I guess I shouldn't have taken off my God glasses, huh?
We all wear glasses, OC. It's called a worldview. You changed your theistic/Christian glasses for the glasses of an agnostic/sceptic. I tried the agnostic/sceptic glasses for a time in my life and I found I kept bumping into the walls and furniture and stuff. Life is much clearer to me with my theistic/Christian glasses on.
I think you and I see "glasses" a little differently. The glasses I had on as a Christian were the ones that allowed me to only see things as the bible would have us see things. God created the earth, he inspired the writings of the bible, sin sends us to hell, we must be saved if we want to go to Heaven, anything that contradicts the bible's teachings must be wrong. Anything in the bible that seems to contradict itself can't be a contradiction.
No, I didn't change my glasses. I took the ones I had off, saw that things were completely different without them on and chose to look at things critically from then on, not just accepting everything I was told or what I read based on a preconcieved notion of God's existance. A sceptic/agnostic is a very neutral position to take. I don't see it as putting on glasses at all. If you consider yourself an atheist, then no doubt you put on glasses that refuse to let you acknowledge God at all. I however have not done that, and I am definitely not bumping into any furniture and walls. Things are most definitely a lot clearer now, even though I still find it hard to accept that I was living in a delusion for many years.
But still they are good scriptures. The first one addressed people who think there is no way they could fall from faith. And the second one shows that it takes more than belief to retain your salvation and that even Paul realised he could lose it. 
