Posted on 06/13/2011 6:54:18 PM PDT by Gamecock
If you argue for the hateful god...
“If your 4 year old can explain what the word “propitiation” means… you might just be a Calvinist.”
So many of those apply to me, but that one made me laugh. After church yesterday I tried to explain “propitiation” and “substitution” and “mediator” to my five-year-old daughter. I was proud when my eight-year-old chimed in and told her little sister that Jesus Christ is our “great high priest.” Apparently she listened to our sermon more than I realized.
““For God so loved THE WORLD” does not say For God so loved everyone in the world, now does it?”
In the broader context of John, the “World” is the unsaved, darkened masses - those who are not God’s people. That’s who God loved... the “World” that hated Him and didn’t recognize him. To artificially break the “World” as John uses it, into two camps, the loved and the unloved, is to miss the entire shocking point.
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“And those who do will be saved. Those who don’t, well, we know how that will turn out.”
No argument from me.
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“All men or all men whom He chooses?”
It’s hard to miss this: “ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE”
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“If He want all men to be saved, why dis he harden the heart of Pharaoh? “
According to Romans 1, God hardens or “give over” those who have gone so far in sin that they are set in their course. They have had their chance. Their fate, by their own choice, has been sealed in this world. The are, “dead men walking”. God hardens them in their sin to us them as an example to others of His judgment on wickedness.
Show me in the Bible where God turns a righteous man to sin and hardens his heart! And why shouldn’t God do something like that - to show the extent of His sovereignty!?!? Guess what... it isn’t there.
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“If you hold that he wants all to be saved and yet he hardens hearts and creates some to be vessels of wrath, well, you have fractured Scripture. “
Following Paul’s reasoning in Romans, here’s a salient question for you... can a goat become a sheep?
If they can then your theology in fractured.
I believe you are correct.
You can “love” everyone in the sense you “love all people”, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love some people more because they are closer to you, etc.
“Many are called but few are chosen.”
That’s the one that so many forget to keep in mind.
Thanks, sent to the whole session :>)
According to Romans 1, God hardens or “give over” those who have gone so far in sin that they are set in their course. They have had their chance. Their fate, by their own choice, has been sealed in this world. The are, “dead men walking”. God hardens them in their sin to us them as an example to others of His judgment on wickedness.
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We are only called to preach His Word...but God alone chooses whom He will save. I know this makes you angry but you have to understand that God runs the show...not us. I could not even WANT to know Him in and of myself, He had to supply that to. The first scripture God revealed to me when I was saved in 1985 was:
John 15:16
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.
It took me another 20 years to understand this.
Knowing and accepting that God alone is in control is the hardest and the most comforting truth He has taught me thus far. Our sin nature wants so much to believe that somehow we have some part in our salvation, but alas, we do not...lest any man should boast.
Notice the word HERITAGE means past and what it caused:
Malachi 1:2 was written long after Jacob and Esau lived on earth. This is hundreds of years later. I think it means after the fact of natural life. They are naturally died. After death God is talking about their judgement. Esau sounds like he is in hell. So are people in hell still loved? No! I believe if you only are alive and can enjoy life before you die no matter your character GOD still loves you to repent.
Remember the verse He allows the rain or sunshine on the good or the bad which shows his love. I believe this Malachi verse is an after the fact verse. Notice when the apostle JOHN writes God is love he is living in the natural world not the supernatural yet. Like two zones for the eternal soul. The Apostle John is addressing people on earth only "zone". The people who died and went to hell reject his love thus hate is hell? It's like a place because they reject God's love of repentence. Just looking at it from this angle.
“Show me in the Bible where God turns a righteous man to sin and hardens his heart! And why shouldn’t God do something like that - to show the extent of His sovereignty!?!? Guess what... it isn’t there.”
I’d really like to meet some of these righteous people you speak of.
Friend, I used to believe just as you believe. But then God taught me the glorious truth of His grace and it literally changed my life.
I may be wrong, but I bet your understanding of Calvinism is little more than a caricature. Despite a sound theological education from a top institution, for many years I argued against a system I did not understand. I relied on what I had been taught and my own logic and understanding. I shudder when I think of it because it was a flippant and dangerous approach to a matter of such eternal consequence.
I would point you to Romans 3:10-18.
10As it is written, There is NONE righteous, no, not one:
11There is NONE that understandeth, there is NONE that seeketh after God.
12They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is NONE that doeth good, NO, NOT ONE.
13Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15Their feet are swift to shed blood:
16Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17And the way of peace have they not known:
18There is no fear of God before their eyes.
That’s the Apostle Paul’s Divinely-inspired description of the spiritual state of mankind. We’re dead in trespasses and sin. Unregenerate men do not seek after God and they certainly are not righteous. The Bible says even our righteousness, our very best, is as filthy rags in the eyes of the Lord. If God didn’t chose some, no one would be saved and the glory of His grace would never be demonstrated.
God will never harden a righteous man because that would go against His character. Only those born again are truly righteous. Once you are His, He has promised you are His forever. You will persevere in the faith. Christ said: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6:37)
It’s important to understand that believers aren’t righteous on their own accord. There is no amount of work they can do to attain any measure of righteousness, let alone the righteousness required by God. A believer, a true child of God, has Christ’s perfect righteousness imputed to him. Thought the believer is a vile guilty sinner, he will stand in the court of heaven innocent and blameless because he is clothed in the Master’s perfect robes of righteousness.
A final point about the hardening of hearts. As Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
I don’t believe God takes a righteous heart that might one day come to Him and turn it to stone. All He has to do is remove His restraining grace, His hedge of protection, and allow what’s already in that deceitful wicked heart to manifest.
“I’d really like to meet some of these righteous people you speak of.”
“In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah,[a] of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.”
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“I may be wrong, but I bet your understanding of Calvinism is little more than a caricature. Despite a sound theological education from a top institution, for many years I argued against a system I did not understand.”
You are wrong. I am well versed in Reformed theology. Went to a solid PCUSA church for years. It heard from the pulpit that made me realize Reformed theology is full of holes.
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“I relied on what I had been taught and my own logic and understanding. I shudder when I think of it because it was a flippant and dangerous approach to a matter of such eternal consequence.”
What’s there to be afraid of??? What’s the danger???
You will only experience what was predestined for you.
See, you guys don’t really believe this stuff either!
That passage does not teach Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous on their own strength. You’ll not find a passage that teaches that in the entire Book.
Also, of course I believe it. The danger was believing lies and living in accordance with lies. I believe in Divine Sovereignty, but I also believe in human responsibility. Calvinism is not rank fatalism.
How can humans be responsible for their choices without free will? How is Calvinism not completely deterministic.
Goodness, that describes a lot of folks :-P
I envious. I guess I might be a Calvinist.
***It’s hard to miss this: “ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE”***
All people, not all persons. If Jesus dies for all persons he failed miserably.
There are some things many of us can agree on.
Because free will is not neutral. Our "free will" fell in the Garden and we now choose to sin, of our free will. It is not until we have been born again that our free will can choose to come to Christ.
Unless you are a Universalist.
Of course it isn't. If it was, it would be called "Chance".
Our "free will" fell in the Garden and we now choose to sin, of our free will.
No--we now have the ability to choose sin--it's a small, but distinctive difference. Unfortunately, most people choose sin with great enthusiasm. However, it does not preclude our ability to choose not to sin--it just makes it more difficult.
It is not until we have been born again that our free will can choose to come to Christ.
So, we're saved before we choose to come to Christ?
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