So if I accept Jesus as my saviour, can I do whatever I want?

Question

God doesn't look at our actions; he looks at our beliefs, say the masses here on Yahoo! Answers. In other words, there's no reason for moral behaviour so long as you've accepted Jesus?

I've just learnt that slave drivers who believe in Jesus are going to heaven and philanthropists who don't believe in Jesus are going to hell. So it really doesn't matter who we are, what we do and how much we strive to improve the world?

Is this complete amorality really the Christian message?

Answer 1

St. Augustine said about this very issue, "Love. And do as you will."

If you have truly accepted Jesus as your Savior, as the Son of the Living God, repented of your sins and been baptized into the Mystical Body of Christ, then you have done so out of love for Him. And you know that He loves you with an infinite love in return.

If you truly love someone, you do whatever it takes to make the beloved happy because that is where YOUR happiness lies.

If Jesus is your beloved, you do whatever makes Him happy.

What makes you think He'd be happy having you be a consummate scuzzball?

And twisting the Gospel, the Good News, in order to blast Christians and Christianity does nothing but reveal your complete UNwillingness to accept Him.

Find your peace. Find it in service to the poor. Find it in caring for the sick and injured. Find it in feeding hungry children. But you will NEVER find it in hatred and the attempted denigration of Christ and all He stands for.

Answer 2

lol here's the thing about that whole "do whatever I want" theory ... if you truly accepted Christ as your Savior, it changes you. Your heart changes and you no longer wish to do just whatever you want, because obviously the way you were doing it wasn't working, otherwise what did you need saving from? lol

When we say that only God can judge the heart, we mean that. As an illustration of that, consider this: a woman kills a man. You could say it was either murder or self-defense, but that would depend on her intent, correct? And in order to figure out her intent, we look at the circumstances and the results in order to determine whether she was saving herself. That's why we say we see the actions, but God knows the heart.

Don't worry, God can tell those who are really wanting to seek Him and those who are just covering their bases in case there really is a Heaven.

Answer 3

This is a logical flaw inherent in the teachings of the Bible. I say the Bible because if you read the thing, Christ's message was alot like Gandhi's, passive resistance, peace, love... you know all of that kind of stuff. It's everyones interpretation that seems to have messed up his message. On a side note I should point out that I am an Atheist. That doesn't mean that some of the data in the book isn't good.

Answer 4

NO. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will repent from your sins. As Paul is teaching you about how to become a Christian, the follower of Jesus...James goes more to-detail about what is expected of you once you become Christian. God knows our hearts. If you give your whole heart to God, and you ask for His wisdom, you truly want to do good at all times. In that means answer is yes. Luckily we are saved because God can was our sins, and make us clean from sin. You want to do good things, you want to be the best you can be, you want to have a high moral, we want to respect the laws of God and men.

Answer 5

Actually the correct saying is that "Man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart". In other words, we often look at those who appear "good" and think them better than others. But, God knows what is really going on in that person's heart. Knows about their ulterior motives, knows if they are "good" for the right reasons.
It is true that there will be "slave drivers in Heaven" and "philanthropists in Hell". But that's not to say that you can accept Jesus and then do whatever you want. God chastens his Children. The Bible teaches kindness, philanthropy, love for your fellow man, all of that. The point isn't that getting saved gives you a free pass to all the debochery the world (and human nature) has to offer.
When you accept Jesus as your Saviour you do so trusting Him to take you to Heaven when you die (and acknowledging that He is the only way there) knowing that there is no way you could get there on your own.
The point is that NO ONE- no matter how "good" you are in the eyes of your fellow man, is good enough to get to Heaven on your own. God demands perfection to enter into Heaven, as one minute drop of imperfection would render it all imperfect. We cannot be perfect. But accepting Jesus as our Saviour allows Him (and His blood sacrifice) to cover our sins and imperfections and thereby allow us to enter into Heaven.
There definitely will be bad people in Heaven and good people in Hell. But those are by our definitions, not God's. God knows that there is not one of us that is good enough to get into Heaven on our own- and sees only those who have accepted Him, and those who have rejected Him.

Answer 6

Once you've honestly accepted Jesus as your savior, you will want to serve the Lord. Since we are humans, we will at times fall short of what God would have us do. If we are truly repentant of our sins, we will be forgiven. As Christians we do not have carte blanche to do whatever we want. We must try to live our lives as Christ would have us do so.
Striving to be Christ-like. That doesn't mean we deify ourselves.
As Christians it is something we want to do. Our relationship with the Lord is ongoing through prayer. Simply attempting to mock Christianity won't change any Christians beliefs

Answer 7

God looks at both. Not only our beliefs but our actions. What good is believing in something if you do not act upon it? For example, if I say I believe that smoking cigerettes is wrong and can kill and that it shouldn't be done; it means nothing unless I live by it. So if I go out and smoke a pack a day it means nothing to anyone that I tell my beliefs because I don't live by it. I'm a hypocrite. Basically if you say you believe in God and Jesus' messege, you need to live by it.

Answer 8

When you accept Jesus as Savior, you are also accepting him as Lord. That means that the decisions which you make will be made in regards to His teaching in the Bible, His Word, and through the leading of the Holy Spirit, which does not go contrary to His Word. A person who truely accepts Jesus as Savior has come to the point of admitting that they want Him to rule their life.

Answer 9

Denominations: see above

my interpretation: Jesus said love God, love your fellow man.

This whole bit about savior and him coming back from the dead, aint got nothing to do with me.

And what is God? I don't believe there was a God at the start, but I do believe in the interconnectedness of the human species.

Answer 10

Once you accept Jesus into your heart you are saved period the end. But if you just said it and didnt mean it then you're not saved. People who say it and truly mean it want to do the right thing to please God, so they wouldn't go around doing bad things. All people who accept Christ into their hearts go to heaven but there are different rewards once we get there depending on our actions here on Earth. Plus once you know God's love you want to share it with others and you can't go around telling people how great God is if you're murdering or stealing or cheating. God can still punish us on Earth or reward us. He is the author and finisher of our faith.