...the scriptures tell us that we are born again not by our will but by the Father (John 1:12-13). The scriptures tell us God has a plan that He is inacting (Acts 2:23, Eph 1:10). The scriptures also tell us that man is bound to sin, a automated slave to it (Rom 1)
Amen! Harley, your responses are razor-sharp and perfectly aligned to Scripture.
"O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." -- Jeremiah 10:23
An oldie from the great Italian reformer, but it hardly gets any better...
Again, if faith or works were the cause of election, God could not be said to choose us, but we to choose Him, contrary to the whole tenor of Scripture "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you" (John xv. 16). "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John iv. 10, 19). Election is everywhere asserted to be God's act, and not man's (Mark xiii. 20; Rom. ix. 17; Eph. i. 4; 1 Thess. v.9; 2 Thess. ii. 13). Once more, we are chosen that we might be holy, not because it was foreseen we would be so (Eph. i. 4), therefore to represent holiness as the reason why we were elected is to make the effect antecedent to the cause. The apostle adds (ver. 5), "having predestinated us according to the good pleasure of His will," most evidently implying that God saw nothing extra se, had no motive from without, why He should either choose any at all or this man before another. In a word, the elect were freely loved (Hosea xiv. 4), freely chosen (Rom. xi. 5, 6), and freely redeemed (Isa. iii. 3), they are freely called (2 Tim. i. 9), freely justified (Rom. iii. 24), and shall be freely glorified (Rom. vi. 23). The great Augustine, in his book of Retractations, ingenuously acknowledges his error in having once thought that faith foreseen was a condition of election; he owns that that opinion is equally impious and absurd, and proves that faith is one of the fruits of election, and consequently could not be, in any sense, a cause of it. "I could never have asserted," says he, "that God in choosing men to life had any respect to their faith, had I duly considered that faith itself is His own gift." And, in another treatise of his, he has these words: Since Christ says, 'Ye have not chosen Me,' etc., I would fain ask whether it be Scriptural to say we must have faith before we are elected, and not, rather, that we are elected in order to our having faith?"..."...Those who are ordained unto eternal life were not so ordained on account of any worthiness foreseen in them, or of any good works to be wrought by them, nor yet for their future faith, but purely and solely of free, sovereign grace, and according to the mere pleasure of God. This is evident, among other considerations, from this: that faith, repentance and holiness are no less the free gifts of God than eternal life itself. "Faith is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Eph. ii 8). "Unto you it is given to believe" (Phil. i. 29). "Him hath God exalted with His right hand for to give repentance" (Acts v.31). "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (Acts xi. 18). In like manner holiness is called the sanctification of the Spirit (2 Thess. ii. 13), because the Divine Spirit is the efficient of it in the soul, and, of unholy, makes us holy. Now, if repentance and faith are the gifts, and sanctification is the work of God, then these are not the fruits of man's free-will, nor what he acquires of himself, and so can neither be motives to, nor conditions of his election, which is an act of the Divine mind, antecedent to, and irrespective of all qualities whatever in the persons elected. Besides, the apostle asserts expressly that election is not of works, but of Him that calleth, and that it passed before the persons concerned had done either good or evil (Rom. ix. 11).
Who can read these words and not see the Scriptures in them and His merciful assurance that He will never leave us because our faith comes from Him and not from our own corrupted desires?
Those who call us "God's automatons" should realize what an unearned privilege that title really is. Please, God, continue to guide our every move and thank you for never letting us go. For outside of you we are lost; we cease to breath.
Now, if repentance and faith are the gifts, and sanctification is the work of God, then these are not the fruits of man's free-will
This is the only part that is not Catholic and quite false.
This is a logical non-sequitiur. Faith is a gift but you don't have it? Rependance is a gift but you don't do it?
Faith and repentance are things that I do. They are predicated on the gift of free will or else they are not what is on the gift label.
Ping to the link in 7,161.