What Happened to Expository Preaching?

That needs to be attacked a couple of different ways.

The word "refuted" probably would be much more appropriate.

First, let's deal with your use of Romans 14:23. You seem to be drawing a distinction between "acts" and "faith," so that faith is not an act itself, but something that sanctifies our acts. Is this so? If so, then why would accepting God's gift by faith be an act?

OK. The verse says "that which is not of faith is sin." Is it not abundantly clear that there is in fact a separation or distinction between "acts" and "faith?" Does it make any sense at all to say "that faith which is not of faith is sin?" Of course not. The context clearly demonstrates, vis a vis the discussion over eating particular foods (is this not an "act?"), that faith is in fact something that sanctifies an act. Whatever [act] does not proceed from faith is sin.

Secondly, Christ says that no man has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends. Love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and the centerpiece of the two greatest commandments. That being the case, it is evident that even unbelievers carry out this greatest act of love. Therefore, the unregenerate can not only do good, but can do the greatest good! So much for Total Depravity!

Yes! Those Nazi officers who faced hanging rather than speak against or condemn their fellow Nazis were boldly doing the greatest good!!

Sorry, Buggman, but it's not that cut and dry. Show me where the faith in God was in such and action and I'll grant you that there was some true righteousness in such acts.

So why isn't this acceptable to God? Not because the unbeliever never does any good act, but because they are made unclean by their evil acts alongside the good one. The only way they can be made clean in God's sight is by the blood of Christ, as I'm sure we agree.

We do agree, but in a vastly different scope.

Now, if an unbeliever can commit the greatest act of love by dying to save another, by what logic or Scripture can we suppose them to be incapable of choosing to respond to God's initiative in offering (without coercion) His gift of salvation? And make no mistake, we do believe that it is by God's initiative, not only at the Cross itself, but in drawing us to Himself individually, courting us as a man courts the woman he loves.

But there is absolutely no answer to the question of why one person chooses over another. Even assuming the errant position that unregenerate man can do any truly righteous deed, there is not a hint of answer to the mystery of why one man chooses to respond positively to the drawing of the Father while the other does not. Was there a difference in the effor of God to draw him? Was one's life experiences more conducive to a positive response? Was one more humble?

"Righteous good" is not simply a good deed, it is a good deed that is not tainted by an evil deed. We can choose to do good deeds. What we are incapable of as fallen beings is choosing to do good deeds with good intentions at every single juncture throughout our entire lives, so that no sin ever stains us and makes us unclean in God's eyes. Thus, we need a Savior, not because we are 100% evil, but because we are not 100% good. 51/49%, 90/10%, or even 99/1% doesn't cut it.

So why is it that we are capable of doing good, just not capable of doing good all the time? What is it that prevents us from being good sometimes that does not prevent us from being good all the time?

"Dead" means unconcious, unmoving, and utterly inactive only in the minds of athiests and Calvinists, it seems.

Is that so? My grandfather is dead. He is unconcious, unmoving, and utterly inactive. I would assume that since you are neither an atheist nor a Calvinist that your dead relatives are otherwise conscious, moving and active.

On the contrary, death in the Bible means separation, not unconciousness and inactivity. The day Adam and Eve sinned, they did die: Their spirits were separated from God's Holy Spirit. Yet they remained able to understand both good and evil (Gen. 3:22). Likewise, when we die bodily, our spirits and souls separate from the body, but the soul remains concious and able to act and communicate (Lk. 16).

Well, it's convenient that you jump from blanket statements to differentiating between the body and the soul, but that doesn't exactly help. It's not a matter of understanding good and evil, it's a matter of man being unconscious, unmoving and unresponsive to the righteous demands of a Holy God. Unregenerate man understands, at least at a fundamental conscious level, that he is doing bad, but he does not acknowledge, gravitate towards, or respond positively to He who created him.

The question among us remains, can a "dead" man choose to accept God's gift? I would answer yes, provided God draws him. The follow-up question is whether a person can choose to resist God's draw. The answer is again clearly yes, per the oft-referenced (by me, anyway) Matt. 23:37 and Acts 7:51. Thus God is justified in condemning those who refuse His draw, rather than a monster for torturing they who only did as He predestined them to do in the first place.

First of all, the glaring exegetical problem you have with those two passages is that it does not say that God is drawing them. It merely expresses His disappointment in their response to the command of God. You have to presume a universal call in order to make your argument. We'll let the fallacious predestination argument go for the moment.

Romans 8:29 and 1 Peter 1:2. God's predestination (election) is based on His foreknowledge, not "His good will," as Calvin would have it. He knows who will resist His draw, and who will surrender to His embrace, and thus we were written in the Lamb's book of life before the foundation of the earth (Rev. 13:8).

LOL! I always love it when non-Calvinists make an action the object of foreknowledge when it is clearly the people themselves that are the object of foreknowledge. Equally amuzing is the inevitable logistical gymnastics that explain why an omniscient and omnipotent God cannot bring about any situation in which a particular individual whom He created, faculties and all, would believe in Him. Forgive me, because I know you and I personally have not been over this ground, but I have been through this enough times (on both sides, mind you) that it literally makes me laugh!

So let's turn this around and let me ask some questions: 1) If God is absolutely sovereign and predestines everything, then He predestined us to fall as a race and sin as individuals. How then can it be said that God does not tempt us, that He is not the author of sin, and that He is justified in condemning those who do His will in rejecting Him?

First of all, you assume that by "predestine" it necessarily means that God actively works within the will of man to bring all things about. If you accept God's omniscience (that He knows perfectly beforehand what would happen given any particulary circumstances) and His omnipotence (that He is able to prevent from coming to pass any particular action, whether by manipulation of the circumstances or simply by not creating or allowing those circumstances to come into being), then you have NO CHOICE but to accept that God DID in fact predestine EVERYTHING, INCLUDING Adam's fall.

The argument that you are making (based on the way you have framed it) is that if God knows beforehand that a particular sin will occur, and He chooses of His own sovereign will to allow it to happen, then He "is tempting us," or is "the author of sin" and as such is not justified in "condemning those who do His will in rejecting Him." There is no other alternative (other than to deny His omniscience or omnipotence).

So, either God perfectly foreknew that Adam would sin and, despite having the ability to prevent it, choose to allow it to happen (and subsequently brought a curse upon him for doing so)...-OR- He did not foreknow it, was unable to stop it, or unjustly cursed him.

Oh, and I didn't quote Rom 9...but nice disclaimer ;)

2) If grace is irresistable, how do you explain away Acts 7:51?

Who says that the grace of regeneration unto faith was that which was resisted in that verse? The nation of Israel was the recipient of numerous blessings, yet they were not all Israel who were called Israel (just as today many who are among the visible church receive the blessings poured out upon the church even though they are not truly believers and part of the catholic church).

3) If God simply predestines everything according to "His good pleasure," per John Calvin, how do you explain His lament over Jerusalem, "How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" (Mt. 23:37)?

Apples and oranges, Buggman.

4) Going back to my quicksand illustration, did either of the two men save themselves by their own efforts? Who would get the credit for saving the one who grabbed the branch?

Let me ask you this. Were the same two men sinking in quicksand, and a nearby tree which had rotted inside suddenly fall over and its branches lean within reach of the two men, whose efforts would save them as they grabbed the branch and pull themselves to safety?

See, the key and crucial point in your original analogy was the dynamic of the hatred of the men for the individual responsible for "extending the branch." In both cases (their enemy extending the branch and the branch being extended by other circumstances) the initiative, and ultimately the effort, lies within the man who reaches out to grasp the branch. The dynamic of hatrid/enmity merely introduces the issue of man's depravity and original sin.

The answer is in the question. As you said, they "pull themselves to safety."

Have a safe and blessed New Year, Buggman. I will continue our conversation as time allows this weekend.

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