He would never have believed if God had not made him willing to believe.
Did God make you willing to believe?
Did he take away your unwillingness?
Where does it say that in the text?
Did God make you willing to believe? Did he take away your unwillingness?
Where is that addressed in scripture???
The historical orthodox view of this is that men are spiritually dead in their transgressions and sins. They are no more responsive to the gospel than a dead dog on the side of the road will rise to its feet and yelp for a freshly cooked steak. Faith is a GIFT (Eph 2 :8,9) and NOT of ourselves precisely because it is the natural response of a man who has been MADE ALIVE (the theological term is regenerated, or what Jesus called being "born again") Just as the NATURAL response of the unregenerate is to remain in unbelief, so the NATURAL response of the regenerate man is to gladly embrace Christ.
Two points:
1) Modern protestantism is actually more Roman Catholic than it realizes, in that it makes faith a work we "do" and then states that regeneration "follows" (logically, if not temporally) faith. This is unbiblical, and a modified version of Pelaginanism, which is condemned by the church of Rome and then embraced about a thousand years later.
2) Salvation is a TOTALLY FREE GIFT. The biblical picture is that man contributes NOTHING (no, not his "faith", or his "decision for Christ, or any other unbiblical and historically unfounded buncombe). We are dead in sin, God sovereignly gives life to us and then we "freely" respond, but as we "freely" rejected when dead in sin.
It is all about GRACE. Salvation is God's work from front to back, and end to end.