Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
January 25, 2008
ESV Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
In recent days I have spent time in Lima and Sullana Peru and Mexico City and I have discovered that people by nature are the same. Man has a heart that is inclined to selfishness and idolatry. Sin abounds in the remotest parts of the land because the heart is desperately wicked. Thousands bow before statues of Mary and pray to her hoping for answers. I have seen these people stare hopelessly at Mary icons, Jesus icons, and a host of dead saints who will do nothing for them. I have talked with people who pray to the pope and say that they love him. I talked with one lady who said that she knew that Jesus was the Savior, but she loved the pope. Thousands bow before Santa Muerte (holy death angel) in hopes that she will do whatever they ask her. I have seen people bring money, burning cigarettes, beer, whiskey, chocolate, plants, and flowers to Santa Muerte in hopes of her answers. I have seen these people bowing on their knees on the concrete in the middle of public places to worship their idol. Millions of people come into the Basilica in Mexico City and pay their money, confess their sins, and stare hopelessly at relics in hope that their sins will be pardoned. In America countless thousands are chained to baseball games, football games, material possessions, and whatever else their heart of idols can produce to worship.
My heart has broken in these last weeks because the God of heaven is not honored as he ought to be honored. People worship the things that are created rather than worshiping the Creator. God has been gracious to all mankind and yet mankind has hardened their hearts against a loving God. God brings the rain on the just and unjust. God brings the beautiful sunrises and sunsets upon the just and unjust. God gives good gifts unto all and above all things he has given his Son that those who would believe in him would be saved. However, man has taken the good things of God and perverted them unto idols and turned their attention away from God. I get a feel for Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem or Paul as he beseeched for God to save Israel. When you accept the reality of the truth of the glory of God is breaks your heart that people would turn away from the great and awesome God of heaven to serve lesser things. Moses was outraged by the golden calf, the prophets passionately preached against idolatry, Jesus was angered that the temple was changed in an idolatrous business, and Paul preached to the idolaters of Mars Hill by telling them of the unknown God.
I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks. I wondered how our church here in the states should respond to all of the idolatry in the world. What are the options? First, I suppose we could sit around and hope that people chose to get their life together and stop being idolaters. However, I do not know how that could ever happen apart from them hearing the truth. Second, I suppose we could spend a lifetime studying cultural issues and customs in hope that we could somehow learn to relate to the people of other countries. However, the bible is quite clear that all men are the same. Men are dead in sin, shaped in iniquity, and by nature are the enemies of God. Thirdly, we could pay other people or other agencies to go and do a work for us while we remain comfortably in the states. However, there is no way to insure that there will be doctrinal accuracy or integrity. If we only pay other people to take the gospel we will miss out on all of the benefits of being obedient to the mission of God. Lastly, we could seek where God would have us to do a lasting work and then invest our lives there for the glory of God. The gospel has the power to raise the dead in any culture and we must be willing to take the gospel wherever God would have us take it. It is for sure that our church cannot go to every country and reach every people group, so we must determine where God would have us work and seek to be obedient wherever that is.
It seems that some doors are opening in the Spanish speaking countries below us and perhaps God is beginning to reveal where we are to work. There are some options for work to be partnered with in Peru and there could be a couple of options in Mexico. The need is greater than I can express upon this paper for a biblical gospel to be proclaimed in Peru and Mexico. Oh, that God would glorify his great name in Peru and Mexico by using a small little church in a town that does not exist to proclaim his great gospel amongst a people who desperately need the truth.
I give thanks to the LORD for allowing me the privilege of going to these countries and broadening my horizons. The things that I have seen will be forever engraved upon my heart. I will long remember the pastors that I spent time with in Peru and I will never forget Adolfo who translated for me in Mexico. I will relish the time that I spent with Paul Washer and the others. When I think of church I will forever remember being on top of that mountain in Sullana at that church which had no electricity and no roof. I am convinced that heaven was looking down on that little church on top of that mountain and very few people on earth even know that it exist. Oh, God I pray that the things of this world will continue to grow dim and that God’s people will be caught up in his glorious presence.
Because of the truth: Pastor: J. Randall Easter II Timothy 2:19 "Our God is in heaven and does whatever He pleases."(Ps. 115:3) "He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will."(Eph. 1:5) Those who have been saved have been saved for His glory and they are being made holy for this is the will of God. Are you being made holy? Spurgeon says, "If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you to hell."
It is not contradictory. It is true by experiential perception. If I am of the elect then God ordained me to come to Christ from the foundations of the world. And when that point came I asked Christ into my heart with a free will. No one forced me to pray the prayer. I experienced no force of any kind. For me it was absolutely real. What was unknown to me at the time was how much God was behind it. That does not subtract from my experience though. It was real to me. That is how both can be true at the same time.
Those who demand that man is autonomous and sovereign will disagree and say it doesn't count unless man moves wholly separately from God, but that's ridiculous. To them reality is DEFINED by man's autonomy. What a man knows and experiences only matters to the extent it is APART from God. This is not Biblical thinking, and clearly does not glorify God. It only builds man up at God's expense.
They rely on imagery like someone in chapel did at a Calvinist college I attended who said, "We clearly see free will and we clearly see God's predestination. Up close they are like railroad tracks that seem forever separate. But when we look off into the distance of eternity, we see they do come together." Man, that's just painful to see someone try to use that kind of intellectual emollient to soothe the dissonance caused by simultaneously holding mutually contradicting views of reality and human nature and then punting everything onto God:
Actually, I don't see that as a half-bad analogy at all. :) The rails represent God's and our perspectives and experiences. They are different, but both are real from the respective points of view. In glory they will eventually become one. Not in essence of course, but there will no longer be any difference between experienced realities.
We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but, at the same time, incomprehensible judgment" (Calvin, Inst. Book iii, chap. 21, sec. 7).
All this means is that we cannot know how or why God chooses some as His elect, and passes over others. We just know THAT He does it. If anyone agrees that God is sovereign, then what is wrong with that?
But in a completely determined universe, we cannot know anything, especially since every thought, and each chemical antecedent to those thoughts, lies in an unbroken chain of cause and effect ......
No, we can know what is given to us in God's revelation, we just can't know all there is to know. It is God's revelation that gives us the Calvinistic view.
But everything else, the freedom of will that true moral action requires, self-sacrifice, love, and even rebellion and the concept of punishment, is real, rather than just apparent.
Yes, it is real, depending on what one wants to consider as real.
That too. :)
Aren't you establishing here a relative (solipsistic) reality? What is real to me (oh, that me-me-me generation!) is real.
A little earlier in your post you state: "No one forced me to pray the prayer. I experienced no force of any kind. For me it was absolutely real. What was unknown to me at the time was how much God was behind it."
But, again, I ask you how do you "know" how much God is behind it, or if He is even behind it and what you "know" is "real" is not a product of one's imagination and, yes, even insanity?
Then you say: "Those who demand that man is autonomous and sovereign will disagree and say it doesn't count unless man moves wholly separately from God, but that's ridiculous. To them reality is DEFINED by man's autonomy..." but somehow you fail to see that you are defining your reality by the same thing you are criticizing.
We can only believe that God is real, that God exists, that God is good, that God resurrected, that believers are 'saved.' That's why it is called faith (hope), and not knowledge. Your side is committing the same error for which Gnosticism was rejected by Christianity: they claimed special "knowledge" and confused it with faith (hope). It is pure solipsism; what is real is that which is "real" to me.
It is not contradictory. It is true by experiential perception. If I am of the elect then God ordained me to come to Christ from the foundations of the world. And when that point came I asked Christ into my heart with a free will
So, you were pre-programmed to make a "free" will choice. My computer did the same thing this morning. So, you are essentially no different than a blade of grass, except that God endowed us with a delusion that we have free will? That's pure Calvinism, I have got to hand it to you. Nice religion.
“The devil and wicked men are so held in on every side with the hand of God, that they cannot conceive, or contrive, or execute any mischief, any farther than God himself doth not permit only, but command. Nor are they only held in fetters, but compelled also, as with a bridle, to perform obedience to those commands.”Calvin is inconsistent in that sometimes he appears to want to back away from what he said above by talking about God "permitting"* something to happen; however, in a deterministic universe such as he posited, there can be no free will, no obedience, no disobedience, not even the concept of truth or the ability to judge whether something is true or not. Even one's seeming perceptions of being able to choose are the effect of the initial cause--God. Since everything has been determined by God, to quote Waddington, I believe, "Whatever is, is right."
(Calv. Inst., b. 1, c. 17, s. 11.)
*"From what has been laid down, it follows that Austin, Luther, Bucer, the scholastic divines, and other learned writers are not to be blamed for asserting that, 'God may, in some cases, be said to will the being and commission of sin.' For, were this contrary to his determining will of permission, either he could not be omnipotent, or sin could have no place in the world" (Calvin, Inst. Book iii, chap. 21, sec. 7, p. 53).
2 Tim 1:12 : That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.
FK’s personal interpretation of the Scripture “”Paul seems to think we can know. And notice that Paul didn't need another per on to declare whether he was saved or lost. Paul knew it because of the personal relationship he had with God, one on one. It is the same with believers today.””
1 Cor 6:19-20 ]Paul does not say that by just believing we have secured our salvation.He is telling them to honor God,this requires perseverance.
Tim 1:12 Speaks of suffering for faith. This requires perseverance.
Having crosses and suffering in your life is the lesson here. If you don't have them you're obviously not leading the Christian life you think you are.
Scripture say we can fall away.
11 And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. 12 And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. 13 Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are chosen. Matthew 22:11-14
Jesus says many are called but few are chosen. This man, who was destined to grace, was at God's banquet, but was cast out.
"And this is the will of my Father that sent me: that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day."
-John 6:40
Everyone who sees the Son and believes means the person “continues” to believe. By continuing to believe, the person will persevere and will be raised up. Belief also includes obedience, which is more than an intellectual belief in God.
FK-””Then on what basis do you say we will be judged for Heaven or hell? I don't think I have ever heard an answer from an Apostolic that doesn't amount to a point system.””
Dear Brother,We are judged by our love for one another,our perseverance through trials,willingness to suffer for the good of others,our humility etc..
This requires dying to oneself,something we are not preprogrmmed to do
Dying to oneself has to be a free decision.
I wish you a Blessed day
God gave Adam a law and he broke it. Because of that sin was inherited by all men following. The Bible says there was sin in the world before God gave the Law to the Jews, and that all have have sinned. God also tells us that no man has an excuse. So, it doesn't appear that sin works quite as you suggest.
So does every Tom, Dick and Harriette. Not [that] there can be any chance of self delusion, or even outright insanity, right?
The Bible clearly tells us that there are some who delude themselves. They are the ones who will say "Lord, Lord". However, I am unfamiliar with the rule that says THIS MEANS that no one can be sure of his relationship with Christ. Honesty is what it takes, and Christians are capable of that.
FK: And notice that Paul didn't need another person to declare whether he was saved or lost.
That was the appeal of Paul's gnostic approach: no one can prove you wrong!
Paul knew that it was never God's plan to have the salvation of another declared or determined by self-aggrandizing men. Instead, He wanted personal one-on-one relationships with His children.
FK: The truly changed heart will not seek to sin in the way the Adamic heart did.
And since there is no one who doesn't sin, there just aren't any truly changed hearts, and there are no truly "saved" (justified) people.
I said "in the same way", not that sin is eliminated. A remnant of the old nature remains.
FK: Therefore, the saved cannot be lost.
Of course not. They will be in heaven. No one can snatch them from there! Trouble is, none of us is in heaven yet and some confuse heaven with earth.
In that case you must assert that ALL of the uses of the concept of the word "saved" in the Bible ONLY refer to the future. Is that your view? The text certainly says very differently. For example:
John 6:37-40 : 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."
So, I can only surmise that your view is the Father doesn't give anyone to Christ until after they are dead? And, that no one comes to Christ until after they are already in Heaven? It just doesn't make any sense.
Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing.
Aren't you establishing here a relative (solipsistic) reality?
I am just saying that our experience and POV is not the same as God's. Fortunately, He has chosen to share some of His POV with us in scripture. When I said the sinner's prayer I wasn't thinking of the totality of why this was happening because I didn't know it. God obviously did.
But, again, I ask you how do you "know" how much God is behind it, or if He is even behind it and what you "know" is "real" is not a product of one's imagination and, yes, even insanity?
I know how much God is behind it because the Bible tells us how much He is behind it. To me the Bible is fully authoritative as God's revelation to His children. Christ died on the cross to justify us, God changed our hearts and God gave us faith. I know that my relationship with God is not my imagination or insanity because the Bible instructs us to honestly take stock of that very relationship. Therefore, that activity is possible, and I engage in it. The Holy Spirit guides us in our faiths and confirms them for us. He is the seal of the relationship and we can know that the seal is there. Otherwise, Paul would not say "do you not know... " all the time.
Then you say: "Those who demand that man is autonomous and sovereign will disagree and say it doesn't count unless man moves wholly separately from God, but that's ridiculous. To them reality is DEFINED by man's autonomy..." but somehow you fail to see that you are defining your reality by the same thing you are criticizing.
The way I read your statement is that I am claiming to be autonomous in stating that I am not autonomous. Does that sum it up? If so, then I disagree because now that I am more mature in the faith I understand that the Bible teaches that we are not autonomous. I didn't make up that rule, I just follow what the Bible says and intellectually agree with it. When I said the sinner's prayer I simply didn't know that only God was fully autonomous.
We can only believe that God is real, that God exists, that God is good, that God resurrected, that believers are 'saved.' That's why it is called faith (hope), and not knowledge.
Let's see if it is a matter of semantics. Would you say you know your wife loves you or do you merely believe it? If you know it, then I say we can know that God loves us. It is a personal relationship. I experience God's love for me in my life just as much if not more than the love from my own wife and I KNOW she loves me. If you say that you cannot know about your own wife, then for you no one can have any knowledge about any loving relationship. I don't think you'd have many takers on that opinion. :)
So, you were pre-programmed to make a "free" will choice. My computer did the same thing this morning. So, you are essentially no different than a blade of grass, except that God endowed us with a delusion that we have free will? That's pure Calvinism, I have got to hand it to you. Nice religion.
God ordained what I would do because He actually CARED what I would do, and He knew that the decision could not be left solely in my hands because I would blow it. In addition, as I see it, the Reformed faith is not a religion, instead it is a personal relationship with God. We leave it to others to practice their "religions", and wish them the best of luck in using all their talents, abilities, and rituals, etc., to come to God, and then stay there.
1 Cor 6:19-20 ]Paul does not say that by just believing we have secured our salvation.He is telling them to honor God,this requires perseverance.
Tim 1:12 Speaks of suffering for faith. This requires perseverance.
Wow! Talk about personal interpretations and ignoring the obvious. :) Those take the cake. Just ignore the text and insert what one wants. OK. I have certainly seen this before. In the first Paul asks them if they KNOW, because they SHOULD know. In the second Paul says flat out "I KNOW". But since that doesn't match the theology of men, it must be thrown out.
I give you the scripture itself and you give me the Church's interpretation of it. Assuming you are getting these lists from some website, I do not blame them at all for not putting up the actual scripture to allow the reader to compare. That would be disastrous. :)
Scripture says we can fall away. [Re: Matthew 22:11-14] Jesus says many are called but few are chosen. This man, who was destined to grace, was at God's banquet, but was cast out.
God obviously made an outward calling to all of the Jews, yet we all know that only a few of them were chosen to be saved. Where do you get that this man was destined to grace? It doesn't say that. He may have THOUGHT he was chosen, but that was a false belief, just as many have false faith. There are many who go to church who are not saved, but think they are, just as this man.
[Quoted by STF:] "And this is the will of my Father that sent me: that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day." -John 6:40
Everyone who sees the Son and believes means the person “continues” to believe. By continuing to believe, the person will persevere and will be raised up. Belief also includes obedience, which is more than an intellectual belief in God.
I agree with everything you say here, but it is not an argument that one can lose His faith. We disagree on whether God makes any promises about this and whether it is guaranteed to happen by God. Once we become children of God, does He just leave us all alone to earn our way the rest of the way in? Reformers say "NO".
Dear Brother,We are judged by our love for one another,our perseverance through trials,willingness to suffer for the good of others,our humility etc.. This requires dying to oneself,something we are not preprogrmmed to do/
These are all deeds (or mindsets that necessarily result in deeds) which can be measured by God. Does the Church give any indication about how God approaches this? I.e., does every person have his own assigned personal scale against which he will be judged, or is there one scale against which all people will be judged and either meet or not meet requirements? Paul rails against this theology, of course. He says instead of this we are under grace and NOT under Law.
Dying to oneself has to be a free decision.
What in your mind constitutes a "free decision"? If God changed a person's heart such that He would want to come to Him, would that violate the "free decision"? If so, then may I assume that you would not want God to change your heart in that way?
In other words you seem convinced that God has ordained your sin ,and because you believe in God it does not matter what you do because you believe in God?
If this is what you believe, it is the devil's trap,Dear Brother?
I have a missionary friend(who is a very humble holy man) in Madagascar who does exorcisms and converts pagans.He has written me that this type of belief is what the devil uses to gain souls.
Kosta pointed out the beatitude's in posts #5884 to Dr E .
If we cannot grasp them,than our Salvation is in trouble.
Here is a wonderful article on them by Fulton Sheen..
Beatitudes By Fulton Sheen
The Sermon on the Mount is so much at variance with all that our world holds
dear that the world will crucify anyone who tries to live up to its values.
Because Christ preached them, He had to die. Calvary was the price He paid
for the Sermon on the Mount. Only mediocrity survives. Those who call black
black, and white white, are sentenced for intolerance. Only the grays live.
Let Him Who says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” come into the world that
believes in the primacy of the economic; let Him stand in the market place
where some men live for collective profit, or where others say men live for
individual profit, and see what happens. He will be so poor that during
life He will have nowhere to lay His head; a day will come when He will die
without anything of economic worth. In His last hour He will be so
impoverished that they will strip Him of His garments and even give Him a
stranger's grave for His burial, as He had a stranger's stable for His birth.
Let Him come into the world which proclaims the gospel of the strong, which
advocates hating our enemies, which condemns Christian virtues as the “soft”
virtues, and say to that world, “Blessed are the patient,” and He will one
day feel the scourges of the strong barbarians laid across His back; He
will be struck on the cheek by a mocking fist during one of His trials; He
will see men take a sickle and cut the grass from a hill on Calvary, and
then use a hammer to pinion Him to a Cross to test the patience of One Who
endures the worst that evil has to offer, that having exhausted itself it
might eventually turn to Love.
Let him come into our world which ridicules the idea of sin as morbidity,
considers reparation for past guilt as a guilt complex and preach to that
world, “Blessed are they who mourn” for their sins; and He will be
blindfolded and mocked as a fool. They will take His Body and scourge it,
until His bones can be numbered; they will crown His head with thorns, until
He begins to weep not salt tears but crimson beads of blood, as they laugh
at the weakness of Him Who will not come down from the Cross.
Let Him come into the world which denies Absolute Truth, which says that
right and wrong are only questions of point of view, that we must be broad-
minded about virtue and vice, and let Him say to them, “Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst after holiness,” that is, after the Absolute, after
the Truth which “I am”; and they will in their broad-mindedness give the
mob the choice of Him or Barabbas; they will crucify Him with thieves,
and try to make the world believe that God is no different from a batch
of robbers who are His bedfellows in death.
Let him come into a world which says that “my neighbor is hell,” that all
which is opposite me is nothing, that the ego alone matters, that my will
is supreme law, that what I decide is good, that I must forget others and
think only of myself, and say to them, “Blessed are the merciful.” He will
find that He will receive no mercy; they will open five streams of blood out
of His Body; they will pour vinegar and gall into His thirsting mouth;
and, even after His death, be so merciless as to plunge a spear into His
Sacred Heart.
Let Him come into a world which tries to interpret man in terms of sex;
which regards purity as coldness, chastity as frustrated sex, self-
containment as abnormality, and the union of husband and wife until death
as boredom; which says that a marriage endures only so long as the glands
endure, that one may unbind what God binds and unseal what God seals. Say
to them, “Blessed are the pure”; and He will find Himself hanging naked
on a Cross, made a spectacle to men and angels in a last wild crazy
affirmation that purity is abnormal, that the virgins are neurotics, and
that carnality is right.
Let Him come into a world which believes that one must resort to every
manner of chicanery and duplicity in order to conquer the world, carrying
doves of peace with stomachs full of bombs, say to them, “Blessed are the
peacemakers,” or “Blessed are they who eradicate sin that there may be
peace”; and He will find Himself surrounded by men engaged in the silliest
of all wars- a war against the Son of God; making violence with steel and
wood, pinions and gall and then setting a watch over His grave that He who
lost the battle might not win the day.
Let Him come into a world that believes that our whole life should be
geared to flattering and influencing people for the sake of utility and
popularity, and say to them: “Blessed are you when men hate, persecute,
and revile you”; and He will find Himself without a friend in the world,
an outcast on a hill, with mobs shouting His death, and His flesh hanging
from Him like purple rags.
The Beatitudes cannot be taken alone: they are not ideals; they are hard
facts and realities inseparable from the Cross of Calvary. What He taught
was self-crucifixion: to love those who hate us; to pluck out eyes and cut
off arms in order to prevent sinning; to be clean on the inside when the
passions clamor for satisfaction on the outside; to forgive those who
would put us to death; to overcome evil with good; to bless those who
curse us; to stop mouthing freedom until we have justice, truth and love
of God in our hearts as the condition of freedom; to live in the world and
still keep oneself unpolluted from it; to deny ourselves sometimes
legitimate pleasures in order the better to crucify our egotism-all this
is to sentence the old man in us to death.
No,FK, you give your own interpretations that do not line up with the Saints and early Fathers of the Church who you trusted to give you Bible cannon.
FK-””Once we become children of God, does He just leave us all alone to earn our way the rest of the way in? Reformers say “NO”.””
Catholic's agree that He does not leave us alone,but He leans on our hearts without force to grow deeper in our love for Him
We can “return to the vomit” freely on our own and allow more demons to lead us astray if we are not watchful
God Night,Dear Brother.
I wish you peace of mind!
Actually, that passage says that sin entered the world through one man (Adam) and death through sin and that death came to all men because all men had sinned.
My NIV says this for example:
Rom 5:15-19 : 15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
I just don't see any reasonable reading of this other than Adam's sin had real repercussions for the rest of humanity. The distinction of Adam's sin was WAY MORE than that it was simply the first. Do you believe in the concept of original sin as being bigger than that it was simply first?
The whole "it's a genetic condition passed down through the male" is a more or less parascriptural gloss. It was taken to an extreme about 30 years ago by the Institute for Creation Research. Henry Morris reasoned 1. since the sin nature was passed along through the father necessitating a virgin birth, 2, since the Lamb of God had to be completely perfect in every way, and 3. since Mary herself, as part of the human race, took part in the corrupted physical nature of fallen flesh and couldn't be the physical antecedent of the perfect physical nature of Jesus any more than Joseph could, the physical, human body of Jesus, therefore, had to be an ex nihilo creation of a human embryo within Mary.
But #1 cancels out #3. If the sin nature is passed down through the male, as I believe, then Mary's sin nature would be irrelevant to Christ, just as my wife's sin nature is irrelevant to our children. So I say that Jesus had Mary's DNA flowing all through Him. He was fully human and did not have the sin nature.
FK-These are all deeds (or mindsets that necessarily result in deeds) which can be measured by God.
I would expect this response from the devil who would not want man to sacrifice and bear a cross out of love for others!
Well, a command or a law is one and the same thing. So, then, why do you disagree with aruanan when he says that God commanded Adam to sin. If Adam was destined to sin by God's design, it was obviously not Adam's choice, but God's. God made sure Adam's choice was as God wished (that Adam sin) and not as Adam wished. In other words, in the Reformed theology, God is the source of sin. If God did not wish any sin, there would be no sin.
Your theory then—that all God has to do is leave us to our depraved nature for us to sin—is not Reformed theory, but Forest Keeper's creation. For, if that is true, then who if not God gave us our "dead" nature? If God is behind everything, then He is behind sin too.
In other words if God didn't predestine us to have sin-loving nature, we would not be desiring sin. No matter how you turn it around, God is the author of that too. Which is what the Orthodox and Catholics on these treads have recognized long time ago about the Reformed, which is that, with this kind of theology of Calvin, the Reformed are on the fringes of Christianity, if not completely outside of it, like the LDS or the JW.
Well, it says here clearly that "one act of righteousness was justification that brings life to all men." That is exactly the Apostolic view. God made it possible for all men to come to Him, as He desires all men to be saved. The only reason this doesn't happen with all men is because God gave man freedom to choose.
Really? And what exactly did Jesus see the Father doing?
****Which is what the Orthodox and Catholics on these treads have recognized long time ago about the Reformed, which is that, with this kind of theology of Calvin, the Reformed are on the fringes of Christianity, if not completely outside of it, like the LDS or the JW.****
Rather, we are on the fringes of Catholicity. We believe in Jesus as our savior, but we do not believe in the Catholic church.
Catholics are on the fringe of Christianity.
Should have pinged you also. Sorry.
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