[paladinan]

:) I see, you're Roman Catholic and I'm Reformed Presbyterian.

:) I was tempted to tease you for a bit, and pretend to be an Eastern Orthodox (who have a passionately strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and a strong belief in her perpetual sinlessness) who was mortally offended by the suggestion that I could possibly be a "Romanist", but I'll relent. Yes, I'm Roman Catholic.

Just for the record... I'm still interested in your answers to the specific questions in my (long) post in comment #174:

1) Is God responsible for man's sin, or is He not?
2) Are you saying that (from God's perspective) we humans do not have free will?
3) How do you go from "God knows all things from eternity" to "God created us without [real] free will", since logic doesn't support that jump?

Just two morsels for thought, if I may. Accordingly, don't feel you have to answer.

I'm grading final exams, at the moment, so I'll have to be briefer than usual... but I'll have a go.

[paladinan]
I say it of the Blessed Virgin, for example, but not for me...

[PieterCasparzen]
I find no Scripture to support salvation working differently for different people; I find numerous verses which emphatically state that people are all the same in God's eyes (e.g., 1 Peter 1,2; Acts 10:34, etc.).

(??) You may have to explain your reasoning to me, on that one. Salvation (which is offered to all--cf. Titus 2:11, 1 Timothy 2:4, etc.) certainly worked differently for Judas Iscariot than it worked for the good thief on the cross! And as for "all the same in God's eyes"--yes, and no. Yes, in the sense that all of us are infinitely loved by Him; no, in the sense that some (by their free cooperation with God's grace) are closer to Him in certain ways (cf. the Apostle John ["whom Jesus loved", as distinct from the others], King David [a man after God's Own Heart"]). "Equal" does not mean "identical"; and my salvation path is not identical to yours; you struggle with certain sins, and I struggle with certain others.

[paladinan]
In one sense, God can "choose" me, but I can still reject Him.

[PieterCasparzen]
I find no example in Scripture where God's will was overpowered by a person.

I'm not surprised... since that's a logical impossibility. But it's not a function of "overpowering" God's Will; God *permits* us to leave Him, if we choose to do so. Love is the free choice to seek the best good of the beloved; it does not remove the freedom of the beloved, or else it ceases to be love. To say that anyone can be "forced" to love someone is to say that a circle can be "forced" to have four right angles; for that to happen, it would cease to be a circle altogether!

In short: it's not a violation of God's Will to do something which God permits (even though it grieves Him)... right?

[PieterCasparzen]

I find no Scripture to support salvation working differently for different people;

You may have to explain your reasoning to me, on that one. Salvation (which is offered to all--cf. Titus 2:11, 1 Timothy 2:4, etc.) certainly worked differently for Judas Iscariot than it worked for the good thief on the cross!

I was unclear, we're talking about two different things. When I used the phrase "salvation working" I was referring to God's Law Word setting forth who is saved and who is not, i.e., how God's Law "works" or how God's Law describes his salvific plan. When you commented on my use of the phrase "salvation working", your response treated the phrase to mean how individual people's salvation or damnation "works out" for people in history on an individual basis.

I'm making a very simple point about God's justice. Perhaps an imperfect but simple analogy:

We have laws in New Jersey. We have judges and courts. That is the legal system.

We have people in NJ. They all have their own stories of their lives. Some found themselves participating in our legal system as defendants.

Do our NJ judges treat every defendant the same UNDER THE LAW, or do our NJ judges favor some defendants over others based on who the defendant is, i.e., an uncle, a nephew, a friend, etc. ? That is the question of justice respecting persons.

God's Law Word reveals the God's salvific plan to us. The judicial fundamentals of the plan: everyone falls short of the glory of God, thus everyone merits damnation. Everyone therefore must rely solely on the merits of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross for salvation.

In the Bible, there is simply no verse that says some relative or friend gets into heaven without appealing to Christ's sacrifice on the cross. There are no payoffs, so special side deals, no winks, no nods. There are no excuses, no "see what I did here", or "but I always did this". Nothing can be traded or offered in exchange for salvation. All those worldly rewards will be utterly useless when one faces judgement.

Yet those who are saved, the true believers in Christ, who appeal only to Christ's atoning sacrifice - the Bible tells us they belong to Christ, they are his, and they will have lived accordingly, no surprise. Yet even so they will NOT insult Christ to make reference to anything but his shed blood and their belief in him as their Lord and Savior as the only hope of their salvation.

It is crystal clear: God does NOT JUDICIALLY favor one person over another in terms of what merits a man his salvation. Simply put, no man merits salvation.

If God showed favoritism judicially his justice would be imperfect, God forbid. No, his law is perfect.

Psalm 19:7 "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."

Wow, I started out trying to just get agreement on a simple point and wound up preaching. Pardon me. I know this takes so much time and we have such a wide gap between us, even so, at least we're civil.