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>>Rejecting the Spirit drawing the hearer is the only un-forgivable sin because it is rejecting the ONLY means God has provided for Salvation.<<

That's not what Jesus said.

Mark 3:28 "Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin "--

Matthew 12:31 "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. 32 "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

Blasphemy is NOT simply refusing to heed the call. I'm not sure why you would change the words of Jesus to somehow fit this conversation.

>>To assert that God forces us to be saved or not saved does violence to the Great Grace of God in Christ's sacrificing Himself for us.<<

Proverbs 16:4 The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil.

Romans 9:10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—

All that typing you did but God still says it's His call.

I was brought up in a God fearing family. Who gets credit for that? It was God who determined that I would be born to God fearing parents rather than Muslims or atheists.

Like I said. Are you going to take the credit and the glory for having chosen Christ or is that credit and glory due God alone?

You chose Christ but another refused the message. Does that make you smarter than he is? Are you wiser than he is?

\ My phrase is always: "but for the grace of God there go I". God gets the credit and the glory. Never man lest he should boast.

All that typing and some still don't see with spiritual eyes. God Created the Unicerse and all therein (John 1). He is the Sovereign over ALL He has created, including satan. He is Sovereign over me as well. He has given to me the astonishing gift of the responsibility to choose His Life in me or choose not to have His Life in me. I imagine that really ticks off satan. That God would offer His Life to indwell lowly humans who decide, in the small sovereignty God has given to them over their choices, to accept such a glorious, unfathomable Gift! So satan works all the time, unceasingly, to get humans to ignore or disregard, or scoff at, or not believe that God is offering this unfathomable Gift to them.

At any moment in time upon any point in His Creation, God has the final call. Always. From the Bible and the Creation we may know that God IS and that He promises. God is Love. He said so. Can love be forced?

Blasphemy is NOT simply refusing to heed the call. I'm not sure why you would change the words of Jesus to somehow fit this conversation.

A couple of thoughts. First, in all good charity I know this line of thought very well, as many I grew up with, including myself at one point, used it routinely in arguments with Calvinists. I do not think there is any willful intent to misrepresent the words of Jesus, and I know you didn't say that. I'm just leaning on the point to make it clear.

But yes, the problem with it is that it connects dots that don't belong together. Jesus in John 6 is declaring that all that the Father gives Him will come to Him. There is no accommodation in the Greek for ideas like they "might come if they feel like it," or "have the possibility of coming." That presumes everyone is equally drawn. But that's just not how He says it:

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
(John 6:37)

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
(John 6:44-45)

Go back and read it in context, MHGinTN. Pay special attention to the symmetry. There is no sense of conditionality. Yes, I know this must be balanced with all the other passages which touch on this subject, but this is a critical passage because Jesus is doing more than just talking about being drawn to Him in some general way. He is setting up a contrast for the express purpose of explaining how this works. The crowd was insisting on a materialistic understanding of His Bread of Life metaphor. They were spiritually dead, flat out incapable of reaching the lesson of the metaphor, which was that to have eternal life they must believe in Him. This passage is incomprehensible without seeing that contrast. Some believe. Why do they believe? Because they were given to Jesus by God the Father. How does God bring this about? He draws them to believe in Jesus. They are the "taught of God" ones. That's the good news.

What's the bad news? Those who didn't believe (the ones rejecting His metaphor) didn't believe because nobody can come to Jesus unless the Father has drawn them. They do not believe because they are not the sheep. So that destroys the idea that everyone is drawn equally, such that the only difference is who responds and who doesn't. CB is right. That is a distortion of Jesus' teaching. I know it is very common. As I said, I grew up believing it. But it's not right.

BTW, I don't think this is at all easy for us "puny humans" to wrestle with. Try as we might, I don't think any of us fully grasps what it means for God to be sovereign. All our pitiful little analogies break under scrutiny. About the only one that is slightly better (at least it works for me) is resurrection. What freedom does a corpse have? Like Lazarus, it just lays there in the tomb, rotting, no matter how nice you dress it up. Then Jesus speaks into the dead darkness, and the corpse suddenly inhales, and starts to breath. It opens it's eyes, gets up, and walks out of the tomb, just what Jesus said to do. Impossible while dead, inevitable if truly alive. No one forced Lazarus to live against his will. But he did not choose to start breathing again either. Once alive, he simply acted as living persons naturally do. As it is in the nature of the spiritually dead to ignore and resist God, it is in the nature of the spiritually alive to seek and love God. Life is from God. How else could it be? This is not a force against the will. It is prior to that. It is two different kinds of being. And it is the creative act of God that makes the difference. We call it grace.

Peace,

SR