Posted on 04/16/2005 8:22:52 AM PDT by thePilgrim
Ping to a few friends on both sides of the fence.
In the service of the Lord,
Christian.
Yes, even more puzzling is when Jesus asks the crowd to stop stoning the adulturess or calls the bad tax-collector man down to talk to Him. He asks them to change their behavior and be nicer people, hmm?
Some say it was plagiarized from Sophia Stewart and thus, the great and awful differences between the first and the subsequent follow-ups.
Be that as it may, this article and the first "Matrix" and all of Scripture speak to the dead heart of man only being reborn by the hand of God.
These verses from Ezekiel show where God illustrates that the Law cannot save us. Even when our hearts have been turned from sin to righteousness, without the Savior we still fall short of the glory of God.
"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." -- Ezekiel 36:-28.
So even with good intentions, we still reside asleep in the Matrix. Even with a heart of flesh given by God, unless we are regenerated in Christ, our good works fail us because we've been shown so clearly that none can keep the Law perfectly but Christ.
"The good news is that in the gospel God reveals the same righteousness and faith for us that God demands from us. What we had to have, but could not create or achieve or fulfill, God grants us freely, namely, the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21) and the faith of Christ."
Amen.
That's what this article is addressing. Man can experience a general, temporal happiness on earth. Just like Cypher who wanted to return to the Matrix in order to experience the earthly pleasures of a good steak.
But just like Adam, none of us can obey Him perfectly, and thus all fall short of the glory of God. Left to our own devices, we will always fail and we will always deserve damnation for that failure.
Only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ are we saved. Christ paid the price for our sins, every one of them, according to His plan for His creation ordained by Him from before the foundation of the world.
He alone ends the Matrix.
I think that everything that God does is true and I also know that Grace in that we must walk in constant Love. My flesh is doomed to die but my spirit will live on for ever because of what Christ did for me. My thoughts on sin; God saved me the worst of sinners so I must show that same mercy toward others and pray for the harvest so that He will send laborers in to the field. I only know what He shows me and I can't go beyond.....
***Thoughts?***
I'll see if I can get to something tonight in between a whirlwind of "time off" activity during the weekend because, well, I think the Isaiah verse you cite has particular relevance to the theme of this thread.
In the service of the Lord,
Christian.
Another verse for the mix...
Matthew 7:11
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"
Christ affirms that we are evil. It is a blanket statement.
He also affirms that we are able to do good.
Seems like the two ideas need to be held in tension and are not contradictory.
***God saved me the worst of sinners so I must show that same mercy toward others ***
Amen to that my friend!
***He asks them to change their behavior and be nicer people, hmm?****
Yes, but you know, in both these cases the people could change their behavior because they had met Jesus. I think that is the key.
An encounter with Jesus will make the right kind of hear want to be good.
***Man can experience a general, temporal happiness on earth. Just like Cypher who wanted to return to the Matrix in order to experience the earthly pleasures of a good steak.***
To me that would be more representitive of the carnal man - definitley not something God would praise and quite different from the selfless actions of the widow.
*** Left to our own devices, we will always fail and we will always deserve damnation for that failure.***
I assume you mean in the global sense, because Jesus did not see the widow's action as a failure or something that demanded damnation.
There's the contradiction, some theologies represent every act of pre-regenerate man as something utterly vile and repulsive to God. I don's see that in the Bible. Think of the pre-regenerate Cornelius...
"At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, "Cornelius." And he stared at him in terror and said, "What is it, Lord?" And he said to him, "Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God."
"...Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God."
Now that will mess with some folk's theology.
Common grace.
"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." -- Matthew 5:45
All the world benefits from God's generous bounty, and all the world is instructed to sing His praises.
But saving grace, faith in Jesus Christ who took upon Himself the sins of the elect, was ordained by God from before the foundation of the world. None of the sheep whom Christ came to gather will be lost.
"Niceness" does not save.
I think too many Christians often buy into the lie that "niceness" trumps taking a stand for righteousness (biblical truth).
Exactly, K2B.
If it did, we wouldn't need a Savior. Just an etiquette book and breath mints. 8~)
*** All the world benefits from God's generous bounty, and all the world is instructed to sing His praises.***
Though I agree with much of what you've said (except the limited atonement part) I still don't see how statements of man's total depravity such as:
"This means that his nature is so thoroughly corrupted by sin that it is incapable of producing anything good. There is nothing which the sinner can do which is pleasing in the sight of God. "
http://www.prca.org/fivepoints/chapter1.html
... can be reconciled with the Biblical account of the widow, the centurion or Cornelius. All these people did things which received the approval of God prior to a conversion.
(One of the things I appreciate most about the Bible is that it winds up breaking most systematic theologies at some point or another. As sophisticated as our theology may become, we're still looking through a glass darkly.)
***Common grace***
Wouldn't common grace make us all commonly good?
I don't think common grace can account for...
"...Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God."
Do you?
I think the bottom line is that those people of virtue did those acts out of faith, not in order to be virtuous. The filthy rags has to do with self-righteousness not the righteousness recieved by faith in Christ.
How do we account for the apparent "good" that comes from those who have not been regenerated and, thus, have no faith?
Good question because the meaning of total depravity is often misunderstood. It should first be pointed out what "total depravity" does not mean. The doctrine does not refer to man being as evil a creature as he can be. All fallen, unregenerate human beings are endowed with many of God's common graces. God has blessed all men with a conscience and the capacity to promote virtue and civil righteousness. It is abundantly clear that many beautiful aspects of the world we live in have been brought forth by those which are unredeemed by God's regenerative grace. God has gifted natural men and women with the skill to create beautiful music, make profound works of art, to invent intricate machines and do countless things that are productive, excellent and praiseworthy. Even John Calvin said,
"Those men whom Scripture calls "natural men" were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good." (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 274-275).
It would be natural to ask, then, if man is totally depraved, how is it that he can bring forth so many good things? This question is indeed valid but misunderstands what is meant when we talk about man as being rendered depraved by the fall.
So what is meant, then, by the total depravity and spiritual inability of the natural man? It means that man's many good works, even though in accord with God's commands, are not well pleasing to God when weighed against His ultimate criteria and standard of perfection. The love of God and His law is not the unbelievers' deepest animating motive and principle (nor is it his motive at all), so it does not earn him the right to redemptive blessings from a holy God. The Scripture clearly implies this when it states "...without faith it is impossible to please Him." (Hebrews 11:6a, NASB) and "whatever is not from faith is sin." (Romans 14:23) So if man "is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his "virtue" is evil in the sight of God." (John Piper) His purpose for doing good works are not from a heart that loves God. But regeneration has enabled us, for the first time, to be pleasing to God on the basis of Christ's work and, from this, the work of the Holy Spirit in renewing our affections for God, giving us understanding of, and a delight in, spiritual things and turning our heart of stone to a heart of flesh.
Total depravity only means man is lost (Luke 19:10) and that he is impotent to recover himself from his ruined estate (John 6:44, 65, Eph 2:1, 2:5; Rom 3:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4-6). Fallen man does not desire God, he loves darkness and hates the light (John 3:19,20) so he will not come into Christ at all except he be reborn by the Holy Spirit (John 3:6, John 6:37, 39, 44, 63-66).
sola gratia
John Hendryx
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