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Mary Ramona wrote:

Hi guys!

Just found your web site today. I have been debating on the MSN-Pope thread with a non-Catholic.

He says that Ephesians 1:13, where it says we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, means that no matter what we do after that, we are still saved. I have told him that the prodigal son was saved, then unsaved, then saved again. He always has a way of getting around it.

He's the worst Scripture twister I have ever debated with. There are two other Catholics on the thread, and none of us has been able to fully answer this question.

  • Can you help me?

I gave up on the thread for Lent but I'm trying to study up and find some good answers for him before I go back to discuss the issue again after Easter.

  • Isn't the verse I gave you talking about Baptism?
  • If it is, how do we know that?

He thinks Baptism is just a symbolic rite, so that would be one thing against him.

  • How can he put so much stock in that one verse if it is about Baptism and he believes it's only symbolic?

Please help me with this. Thank you in advance.

I hope I've made myself clear.

Sincerely,

Mary

  { Does the seal of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians mean once we are sealed we can't lose our salvation? }

Mary Ann replied:

Hi Mary,

Putting one's seal on something was a guaranty of the identity of who sent it, or to whom it belonged. A seal on a document testified that this person had written and signed it.

The seal of Baptism is that indelible mark or character which conforms the soul to God in the likeness of Christ by the power of the Spirit.

So being sealed with the Spirit just means we are permanently marked as belonging to God.
That doesn't mean that we can't turn away from God. The Jews in the Old Testament were marked as belonging to God, and they turned away time and again. How worse the fate of a person who is sealed with the Spirit and who turns away from God, than the fate of a person who was never given the Spirit.

The person you are talking to is just making up a new meaning to being sealed. It's because he has to interpret Scripture in a certain way, where every verse has to agree with one or two verses that he thinks are the most important ones, (the ones that Luther treated as a canon within the canon, the ruler for all Scripture).

Hope this helps,

Mary Ann

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