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."
FK-These are all deeds (or mindsets that necessarily result in deeds) which can be measured by God.
STF - I would expect this response from the devil who would not want man to sacrifice and bear a cross out of love for others!
FK-Here I just paraphrased what you said. Your addition is to list two more deeds that can be measured by God under a point system. I think satan loves the idea of a point system because he knows full well that man cannot live up to it no matter how many men insist on it.
The list I gave you that you call a "point system" requires love and sacrifice and taking up a cross,all which the devil wants denied and man to feel as you said ,FK...."not able to live up to it"
In other words... Why bother even trying according to reformed theology!
I pray you see the error in what you're preaching.
Here is more from Blessed Saint Cyril....
"Terrible in good truth is the judgment, and terrible the things announced. The kingdom of heaven is set before us, and everlasting fire is prepared. How then, some one will say, are we to escape the fire? And how to enter into the kingdom? I was an hungered, He says, and ye gave Me meat. Learn hence the way; there is here no need of allegory, but to fulfil what is said. I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. These things if thou do, thou shall reign together with Him; but if thou do them not, thou shalt be condemned. At once then begin to do these works, and abide in the faith; lest, like the foolish virgins, tarrying to buy oil, thou be shut out." Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 15:26 (A.D. 350).
FK: No, that’s too narrow. You could say that man is free to sin to the extent it does not thwart God’s will. I would agree to that, whether committed by the saved or lost. For example, if God has a specific plan for me to accomplish His will tomorrow, then no one is “free” to murder me as I type this.***
Mark: It is not too narrow. If we are free to sin, then we are free to sin. I think that you’re mixing up sin in general with specific actions upon an individual.
Wow, so if God had a specific plan for my neighbor to do a great thing tomorrow, then I would be perfectly free to thwart that plan by killing him today. Amazing. I didn't realize that your side thought of man's autonomy as being absolute. I guess our God is lucky that man lets Him do anything at all. :)
I don't see what there is to mix up. God's will has to be factored into the parameters of general sin because that's how it works in reality. You can either trump God's will (your side) or you can't (my side).
I thought that the Reformed view was that nobody could ask God to come into his heart because all men were made evil and unable to do so until the Holy Spirit made the change. Therefore something doesn’t fit.
We are both correct, there is no contradiction. I just didn't list EVERY step. First God ordains, then He changes the heart, and then we reach "that point".
Either you can ask Christ to come into your heart with a free will (and the corollary to that is that you can decline to ask with the same free will), or that something is wrong with the Reformed view.
Then we disagree on what "free will" means. I do not think it ever includes the freedom to defeat God in His will, but your side seems to require it. When God changes a heart it is definitionally true that His will is for that person to come. That person always will come with what I call a free will. So the difference between our sides is whether "free" means free to defeat God or not.
***How can one purchase a gift freely given? You can’t. Grace is the Way; we must still walk it.
I’ve seen very few free graces in Catholicism. ***
Why don’t we head on out to the Catechism to see what it says about Grace?
Grace.
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an “adopted son” he can henceforth call God “Father,” in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God’s gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.
2001 The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, “since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:”50
Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.51
2002 God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of “eternal life” respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:
If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed “very good” since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning “favor,” “gratuitous gift,” “benefit.”53 Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54
2004 Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church:
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55
2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the Lord’s words “Thus you will know them by their fruits”57 - reflection on God’s blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.’”58
There is a difference between sanctifying grace and charisms. Sanctifying grace is extended to all; charisms are given by the Holy Spirit to whom He will.
***If we are talking about saving grace, I would describe it as that grace which guarantees entry into Heaven.***
Since it is possible to reject God, I would say that it is guarantees us to be able to walk the Way.
***And as I asked in another post recently, if you became aware that God was trying to change your heart as Reformers describe, you would reject that, right? You wouldn’t want to be frogmarched like that, right?***
Lucifer made the choice that he made; countless humans make the same choice. Without the Grace of God infused in me in Baptism, I would not be able to accept Him. But I can choose to reject Him by embracing sin.
***We say over and over again that there are always consequences for sin and man is responsible for his own sin, yet we still get this. I suppose the only responsibility there is in the universe for you all is the responsibility to determine one’s own destiny and salvation, to be autonomous and be able to thwart God’s will. ***
You say that there are consequences, yet you don’t really list any. Jesus spent most of the Gospels instructing us how to act; to tell us that if we do not obey him that we will lose our salvation, and yet he tells us in 1 Thess, in 2 Peter and in John 8:31-32 that He wills us all to be saved, yet He tells the Jews that it is possible to lose their salvation.
All are called. The consequences of sin are death. What are the consequences of the Reformed?
***By definition, you absolutely DO place a duty on God when you blame God (on our behalf) for authoring sin.***
I don’t claim that God authored sin. Calvin did.
***Again, ONLY YOUR SIDE says anyone believes that nothing we do matters. I have given detailed responses more than once explaining why we do not think that. Apparently they are not getting through.***
If you wouldn’t mind, would you please post them again? They most certainly have not gotten through to me.
*** If we are free to sin, then we are free to sin. I think that you’re mixing up sin in general with specific actions upon an individual.
Wow, so if God had a specific plan for my neighbor to do a great thing tomorrow, then I would be perfectly free to thwart that plan by killing him today. Amazing. I didn’t realize that your side thought of man’s autonomy as being absolute. ***
Now, now. There is a big difference between sin - the commission or omission of something that is against God, and God’s intervention. If God absolutely has determined something to occur, then yes, it occurs. But I don’t think that God is the puppet master that the Reformed think He is. God is secure in His Creation and doesn’t need to micromanage it. I don’t see Christ as a neurotic.
***Then we disagree on what “free will” means. I do not think it ever includes the freedom to defeat God in His will, but your side seems to require it. When God changes a heart it is definitionally true that His will is for that person to come. That person always will come with what I call a free will. ***
When God changes the program, the result is free will?
Then what we do is not our will but God's will. And if it is not our will then it is not our responsibility.
No, it is both. For example:
Phil 2:13 : ... for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
God's will is always preeminent, but man also has a will. That fact is what makes us responsible for our own sin.
FK: We place no duty upon God to protect man from his own sin nature.
No, God has no duty to protect, as long as you admit that in the Reformed theology God created man with the specific intent to be evil and that, by the will of this Reformed "God" man is evil by design and not by choice.
If you're asking if I think that God ordained the Fall, then "Yes", I think He did. That man is evil is both by design and by his own choice SINCE God has no duty to protect. God also had no duty to create man without the capability of sin. He chose to create as He did, knowing that men would choose to sin.
No, because a man who believes that God ordains good as well as evil will be unable to discern what is from God and what is from Satan.
The Godly man has the indwelling Holy Spirit:
John 14:26 : But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
In addition, we have God's Holy word itself to help us discern. Between those two, I'd say the Christian is in very solid shape regarding your concern. :)
Gladly. Bye.
Well, if you don't like that answer, then either Jesus was not fully human, or at best Mary was only a surrogate mother. Does the Church consider Mary only a surrogate? Plus, if Mary was only a surrogate then prophecy is broken since Jesus did not come from the Davidic line. "Son of David" would be a complete lie.
Throwing in genetics is pointless. God doesn't have to follow genetic laws, but it also takes a leap of faith to believe all this really happened. Rather it is obvious that these stories simply reflect the common beliefs of the time.
Then what do YOU think really happened?
Once you have gone this far the next step is to say the same about the devil-that the devil is evil because God designed him that way?
This would make God the cause of the devil because the devil would not exist and be evil without God being the cause. God is the first cause of everything that comes into being and if God designed evil He would have evil in His essence
Are you sure you want to preach this to others?
Perhaps Aquinas can help you see your error?
That Evil is not a Nature or Essence
Evil is nothing else than a privation of that which a thing is naturally apt to have and ought to have. But a privation is not an essence, but a negation in a substance.
5. Every essence is natural to some thing. If the essence ranks as a substance, it is the very nature of the thing. If it ranks as an accident, it must be caused by the principles of some substance, and thus will be natural to that substance, though perhaps not natural to some other substance. But what is in itself evil cannot be natural to anything: for the essence of evil is privation of that which is naturally apt to be in a thing and is due to it. Evil then, being a privation of what is natural, cannot be natural to anything. Hence whatever is naturally in a thing is good, and the want of it an evil. No essence then is in itself evil.
6. Whatever has any essence is either itself a form or has a form, for by form everything is assorted in some genus or species. But form, as such, has a character of goodness, being the principle of action and the end which every maker intends, and the actuality whereby every subject of form is perfected. Whatever therefore has any essence, as such, is good.
7. Being is divided into actuality and potentiality. Actuality, as such, is good, because everything is perfected by that whereby it actually is. Potentiality too is something good: for potentiality tends to actuality, and is proportionate to actuality, not contrary to it; and is of the same genus with actuality; and privation does not attach to it except accidentally. Everything therefore that is, in whatsoever way it is, in so far as it is a being, is good.
8. All being, howsoever it be, is from God .But God is perfect goodness Since then evil cannot be the effect of goodness, it is impossible for any being, as being, to be evil.**
Hence it is said: God saw all things that he had made, and they were very good (Gen. i, 31): He made all things good in his own time (Eccles. iii, 11): Every creature of God is good (1 Tim. iv, 4).
Note**-The great contradictor of this fundamental doctrine, -- not to mention Schopenhauer, -- is Buddha and Buddhism, which makes all conscious thought as such, an evil, and the grand aim of life to be rid of it. Manicheism and Platonism complete the circle, by making matter evil. Between evil mind and evil matter, we may close our philosophy books.
I agree as well,Dear sister,but we don't know if it includes ourselves until our death and judgement before Our Blessed Lord.
We can only hope and be loving towards others and be obedient humble servants.
None of us are worthy.
I wish you a Blessed evening
So Mark, then you associate yourself with Kosta's analysis that has the Bible contradicting itself all over the place? Remember, Kosta was simply responding to Irish's open-ended question "what do you all think of this?". Irish did not propound a Reformed POV in his post. So, Kosta was not attacking Reformed theology specifically, as I read it, he was going after the Bible itself, IMO.
I PRESUME that God's Holy word is His true and correct revelation to His children, and that it does not lie. I PRESUME that God is good for His promises. Have I sinned?
This leads to man thinking he does not have to give up his sinful life and there is no need for mortification and penance. This is exactly what the devil wants you to think!
It leads to no such thing UNLESS you PRESUME that God doles out defective new hearts, replacing junk with junk. If you believe that then you have a case. However, I don't think God operates that way, and He says He doesn't. A true new heart from God prevents this kind of thinking and the devil loses.
Ezek 36:26-27 : 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Our side trusts that God actually means this, and also that He's pretty good at it. :)
Yes, indeed! Good find on the quote. :)
This is where the Bible and the reformed perspective come together perfectly in a definite and real and true confidence, not in ourselves (or you would be right to worry) but in Christ's work on the cross alone.
Christ said He died to pay for the sins of all those who believe in Him as Lord and Savior.
I believe, therefore I have a reasonable certainty that I have been included among His family since faith is the evidence of God's regeneration. If we believe, we have been so blessed.
The truth is proven by our perseverance. All who have been graced with true faith will persevere and be saved.
That's just the way God ordered His universe. Thank God salvation is all of mercy and not debt as Paul tells us in Romans 4.
There really are so many verses of assurance in Scripture it's difficult to choose...
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." -- John 3:36"My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." -- Psalm 73:26
It's just not as grey as Rome tells you it is. Like Paul, some of us know whom we have believed...and why.
Amen, dear Dr. E. We don’t have to wait and wonder until we’re dead to know we are eternally saved. What joy it gives us to know that He’s already done the work.
Jesus says "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter." [Mat 7:21]
Clearly the emphasis here is on doing when it comes to entering the kingdom of heaven. We do agree that entering the kingdom of heaven is the same thing as salvation, I hope.
And this goes hand in hand with the Beatitudes, Dr. E.
Then what was Christ for?
Christ came to save us from the the chains of death; something we couldn't do on our own.
Men's ability to live righteously comes from God.
Of course it does. That's the point of what I wrote above. God made us able to live righteous lives, to say no to sin.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." -- Phil. 2:13
Then we have no will of our own and what we do is no different than what my computer does. That's the sad part about Paul's teaching.
I am not "going after" the Bible. I simply wrote what's in the Bible. Unlike some, I don't pick and choose what I will read and believe. I spill it all out. I can't help if different authors say different things.
We call that hope,not absolute certainty. It seems this is what you're also saying.
Dr E-””There really are so many verses of assurance in Scripture it's difficult to choose...””
There are also many verses that say we must always be on guard or we can lose our salvation. such as...
“41 And Peter said to him: Lord, dost thou speak this parable to us, or likewise to all? 42 And the Lord said: Who (thinkest thou) is the faithful and wise steward, whom his lord setteth over his family, to give them their measure of wheat in due season? 43 Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing. 44 Verily I say to you, he will set him over all that he possesseth. 45 But if that servant shall say in his heart: My lord is long a coming; and shall begin to strike the menservants and maidservants, and to eat and to drink and be drunk:
46 The lord of that servant will come in the day that he hopeth not, and at the hour that he knoweth not, and shall separate him, and shall appoint him his portion with unbelievers. 47 And that servant who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not himself, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48 But he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.”
Luke 12;41-48
In other words...we can start out as a faithful and then fall away and be assigned to a place with the unfaithful.
Good Night!
I wish you both a Blessed evening!
...... And hence must be gathered a general doctrine; because God doth no less show his providence in governing the whole world, than in ordaining and appointing the death of Christ. Therefore, it belongeth to God not only to know before things to come, but of his own will to determine what he will have done. This second thing did Peter declare when he said, that he was delivered by the certain and determinate counsel of God.
AMEN! It bears repeating. Thanks for posting Calvin's wise words along with your own (wise words). :)
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