“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!