[Qinael]

Hi,

Of course, if you don't wish to accept this assertion on behalf of all of the apostles, that is fine. Peter was very plainly told by Christ that he was not yet converted right before he was told he would deny Him thrice, so Peter's case is a closed one from a Biblical standpoint, and his is the one that is most often cited to water down the effect of the passages from 1 John and other sources I cited earlier.

Whether one wishes to place the conversion of the apostles before Pentecost is relatively irrelevant to the matter of Christians not committing known sin, unless one would wish to make the Scriptures contradict themselves by saying that the testimony of these same men that "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin" is somehow false, because these same men sinned after they were converted (A statement of their condition that the Bible never makes). We must, of course, hold direct statements from the Scripture in a higher light than guesses and inferences about the way it probably was, or when it probably happened.

If the Scriptures say that "Whosoever is born of God sinneth not; whosever sinneth hath not seen Him neither known Him." (1 John 3:6), then we must conclude that any who are in sin are not, by definition, born of God - no matter how faithfully they are following Him, they do not have Him formed within.

Similarly, yes, one could theoretically interpret my personal conclusion to mean that a person must wait til the latter rain to be converted. This would be of course a very faulty conclusion for several reasons, so it is fortunate that no one has attempted to make it.

Something I notice is that you seem to have equated the terms "converted" and "saved," which is not always an accurate way to view things. Men are judged according to the light that they have - for those who lived before the days of Christ for example, who did not have a perfect example before them, we find occasions of them sinning, such as Moses at the rock, and surely other examples which you have in mind.

While these men certainly did "the best they knew", they were not partakers of the new covenant, and Paul makes this abundantly clear. Were the laws of God written in their hearts, they would and could not have broken them. Since Christ came to the earth and gave a perfect example of how humanity may overcome, there has not been this same level of ignorance.

As you said, being enabled to keep God's commandments is a part of the salvation experience. For the born again Christian, this enabling is not in vain, and this is the essence of what the Scriptures are saying in the cases I have cited thus far; a Christian is a new man with a divine nature and the fruit of the Spirit, including love. As love fulfills the law, a man with this love, this new heart, has the law written ON his heart, and cannot willfully transgress the law of God in word, thought, or deed. If one does so, it shows that they have not yet become partakers of this covenant.

When it comes down to the crux of the issue, no man is our example - Christ is our example, and the Scriptures make it abundantly clear what a person born of God does and does not do when it comes to obedience to the Father. All other theories and considerations vanish in light of the very plain declarations of the Word about what is, and is not.