Cheryl Schatz

continuing with Mark’s questions:

3. You asked:

Why do ‘they’ need to remain in faith ect, for ‘she’ to be saved?

I answered this one already but I am happy to repeat. Those who have been deceived and who are caught in the lie need help in getting out of aberrant doctrine. Those who have been deceived do not often get out on their own. They need at least one person to help them unravel the deception.

Is this hypothetical husband contributing to his wife’s salvation.

He is to bring the truth to her and help her learn from those gifted in teaching God’s Word. He contributes in helping her to be back on track after her deception caused her to “stray” from the truth.

Is her salvation conditional on his remaining in faith aswell.

If he follows the lie, it will be very unlikely that she will have any motivation to work at unlearning the false doctrine and learning the truth.

This is what your exegesis misses and which leads to a drastically contradictory personal salvation that the Bible portrays.

Not so. The issue is deception and how to get out of that snare of the devil. If you had a ministry to the cults as I have, you would be aware of how important it is to one who is trapped in a cult to get them to think outside the box. The cult mentality that is based on a lie is a difficult mindset to break. And a person rarely leaves on their own.

You attempt to solve this tension saying that we need others to direct our teaching ect, but this is not what the verse saids. It saids, ‘if they remain in faith’.

It is no different in saying to one who is in the water, that if they remain in the boat they will not drown. The fact is that there were a number of people in Ephesus who had strayed from the faith (1 Tim. 1:6) and who were unaware that what they were teaching was not true knowledge but was ignorance (1 Tim. 1:7). The solution is education in the truth and Timothy was to help so that God could show mercy to those who were sinning in ignorance and unbelief just as Paul himself had sinned but found mercy from God (1 Tim. 1:13)

to be continued…