(March 3, 2021 at 3:14 am)Mercyvessel Wrote:(March 1, 2021 at 1:21 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Nonsense. John 3:16 is a blunt message that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is summarily condemned. It doesn’t matter whether you were a good person or what virtues you had. You can spend your life housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick. You can devote all of your energies to so-called ‘Christian principles’ (even though all of them pre-date Christianity) of mercy, charity and goodness. But none of that matters to God. But simply not believing in the divinity of Christ is enough to preclude you from salvation.
The greatest sin in Christianity is intellectual honesty, and John 3:16 shouts it out loud.
Boru
Your position is undermined by the fact that you/we/any reader or hearer of the Word of GOD (like Saul turned Paul, or better still - the thief on the cross), could have your/our spiritual eyes open before "the end" and come to truly trust in the Lord JESUS as our Substitute for your/our sins; not withstanding one's first reaction.
For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
See Romans 10:8-11
Same argument - what's being said there is 'whoever does not call on the name of the Lord shall be damned'.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson