Mormons- If you believe that "As man is God once was, as God is man may be." does that mean you think God was

Question

a sinner? If God was a sinner, would He be qualified to judge the world? Would Christ be a perfect, acceptable sacrifice for sin if was a sinner?

Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Mike B- the Bible says that people who's names are not written in the Book of Life will stand before God Almighty and be judged by their works. As they have sin that is not paid for they will be cast into the lake of fire.

The Bible says that only those who trust Christ will be judged at the Bema seat of Christ- not for salvation but for a loss or gain of rewards.

Mike B- what do you base the mortality of God on? (except as Christ- incarnate)? The Bible says He is Spirit.

References for the above passages: Rev. 20:11-15; 1 Cor 3; Jn. 4:24

Answer 1

God and Jesus were the only perfect ones. Jesus the only perfect non sinner to walk on this earth, and there will not ever be another and there has not been. We are all sinners, and will be,that is why we are to believe and repent and pray daily to ask forgiveness and praise Him for his grace on us.===

Answer 2

No, maybe it's not in the Bible, but I don't feel that it contradicts the Bible, either. Our God is our Heavenly Father, and has always existed. We consider Him as our Father, and the creator of all living. He is also the Father of Jesus--Jesus himself said so. Jesus came to the world as the Savior at the will of the Father to redeem us from sin. I have never considered God to be anything else than the Father of all living. Isn't that the general Christian belief? To understand that God was exalted from a lower existance only teaches us what the potential for all of us in the world to achieve--eternal glory and happiness. That IS Biblical. It is all over the Bible, that is the very goal of the Biblical teaching--that we can attain eternal life filled with eternal peace and happiness. Is there something wrong with that belief? If so, I'd like to know what is so dark and mysterious about that.

Answer 3

This controversial passage is clearly applicable to Christ himself, a God who became mortal for a time and yet was still and is still God. His work made it possible for us to become as he is, in a sense, for we can receive glorious resurrected bodies (Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:40-45), we can become "joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:14-18), we can "put on the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:3-10), and we can become "like him" (1 John 3:2). Indeed, Christ even went so far as to say, "Ye are gods" (John 10:34), in reference to the divine potential of human beings.

It also looks like this passage is about God being a man also, but we don't know anything specific. Before you let this bother you, remember that is about Christ. If Christ were the same being as God the Father, then it would also be true of the Father as well, so non-LDS critics who accept the doctrine of the Trinity shouldn't get so upset.

Does this mean we think God is a sinner? No. It means that He experienced some of the same things we go through. We know this is true of Christ, since He had a mortal body at one time. He still had to go through some of the same trials we have. Granted, it was sinless, but He still had to feel pain, sorrow, love, joy, hurt, anger, patience. Without those emotions, He couldn't have fully grasped what we go through in this life.

Also, we need to think about the atonement here. Christ offered a sacrifice for us, so we could become perfect in the sight of God. That is what the atonement is for. We are able to repent of our sins and become clean and pure before God. Look at Isaiah 1:18- Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
So, repentance is a big thing to bring us so we are perfect in the sight of God.

I think if He were a human at one point (and this is just pure speculation here), it would give Him a better understanding of us, and a greater ability to forgive and to love us, even though we are sinners.

Answer 4

We do believe that through the grace of Christ men can progress to become more like God. We do not teach that God was once a man like us. The latter is an unresolved theological question in Mormonism.

Like many other Christian denominations (specifically the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic branches of Christianity), Mormons do believe in "theosis," the idea that man can progress to become more like God. Historically, this concept was had among the earliest Christians.

Mormons believe in the Bible, which teaches: "To him that overcometh will I [Christ] grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." So we believe that we can become like God through the power of Christ, but not that we will ever be greater than God. We will always worship God the Father and Christ the Son. To use traditional Christian terminology (and not terminology that only Mormons understand), it would probably be more accurate to say that Mormons believe they can become angels in the next life (although that phrasing doesn't exactly capture Mormon belief either, and is explicitly inaccurate if one uses the Mormon definition of "angel"). It is not true that Mormons believe men and women can progress to become equal to God. We will always worship God.

http://www.allaboutmormons.com

Answer 5

Even accepting this premise on face value, there is insufficient data to jump to any conclusion. The only assumptions we can make is that God as the express image of Jesus has a tangible glorified body. Anything beyond that is just speculating.

The lesson for us is not to guess about God, but to do better. Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Answer 6

The serpent in the garden said that eating the fruit would make us as God. The first part is alright - God did become man (but never a sinner). But we can't think we'll be the same as God. We'll be perfected, but not omnipotent.

Answer 7

I remember being a mormon around the age of 6 and asking my sunday school teacher about Jesus getting angrey in the temple, being taught that mormons were to be perfect and look good in public, it was inconsivible that Jesus got angrey in the temple (the money changers) and we spent time trying to find excuses for this behavior. I think mormons would say that God was a sinner, but evolved and is now perfect. I don't know about Jesus.

Answer 8

Separate the Father and the Son. The Son was sinless and will stand as Judge. The state of the Father during His mortality is beyond my need to know and no longer relevant as He is God.

Answer 9

no

I don't think God was ever a sinner.

D

Added:
to add clarity I believe Jesus Christ never sinned.
d

Answer 10

I hope you don’t mind if I use the mainstream KJV instead of the evangelical NIV as follows:

John 5:19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

As you can see, Jesus—who atoned for our sins—followed the example of our Heavenly Father, who atoned for the sins of his spirit brothers and sisters. Latter-day prophets declare, as is obvious from this passage, that our Heavenly Father is special in the sense that He is not only an exalted being but was also a Savior/Messiah/Christ to His own Father’s spirit children, just as Jesus of Nazareth is to us.

Therefore, by definition, our Heavenly Father was never a sinner at any time of His mortal life any more than Jesus of Nazareth was ever a sinner in His mortal, premortal, or postmortal life. They were and are perfect in every manner and certainly are qualified to judge the world and to deserve our unswerving worship.

If you had read any publications by Latter-day Saints instead of reading the recycled trash that is circulated among evangelical circles filled with people who are too afraid to consult source materials, you would have known this basic premise. I therefore invite you again to immerse yourself in lds.org, gospelink.com, and maxwellinstitute.byu.edu if you have a sincere desire to understand our teachings instead of simply baiting Saints online.

Yes, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I have no idea what you infer by quoting that obvious truth. Are you inferring that God has fallen short of the glory of God? That doesn’t make any rational sense and is simply contradictory. I can’t quite figure out its connection with your questions.

Keep in mind that Latter-day Saints stand alone in Christendom in believing that our Heavenly Father is a real being instead of an ether-like vapor that fills the universe, so we interpret the New Testament more literally than any other Christian denomination, including the above quoted passage. As a Protestant and most likely an evangelical, you of course would likely interpret John 5:19 in some purely allegorical manner or simply find it incomprehensible, as the incomprehensible and impersonal cosmic soup that you worship as the Trinity—three unembodied energy forces that are one in substance—would be incapable of any action that Jesus could have “seen” or “emulated” as clearly described by John.

I’ve noticed in recent years that evangelical Christians have begun to pray directly to Jesus instead of praying to the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Holy Ghost as Latter-day Saints and mainstream (what you refer to as liberal) Christians do. I now realize, though, that it is because you have trouble praying to the infinitely expanded clouds of vapor that you imagine the Father to be as defined by post-biblical Trinitarian ideology. I invite you to reread the Bible with a different mindset as an experiment. Let yourself think of our Heavenly Father as a real perfect being with actual form. That will open the scriptures to you and make far more sense than the mental gymnastics that you now have to perform by trying to assume that most of the Bible is symbolic and allegorical instead to justify the Trinitarian theory of God’s incorporeal nature. I invite you to imagine for a moment that our beloved Savior Jesus Christ was actually physically resurrected and is literally on the right hand of God rather than having dissolved into the cosmic soup as your Trinitarian belief forces you to assume as a belief that the Father and the Son are one in substance, filling the universe as a mere spirit energy, as all Protestants and Catholics believe. Actually, only their church creeds make such declarations, and I have found that many Christians believe that the Father and/or the Son are actual beings, very much in contradiction to their churches’ historic stands and much closer to LDS belief in a personal and living God. Remember from my other posts that I was raised as a Protestant and preparing to become a minister when I met LDS missionaries in college, so I am very familiar with the incomprehensibility of the Trinitarian belief of homoousios.