And hopefully, you saw that's what I was saying in that post. That's what makes salvation the gracious and merciful thing that it is. Even though you do the trusting, you can't do it without God's merciful and gracious intervention.
Salvation certainly is a gracious and merciful gift and without God's merciful and gracious intervention, none of us would come to believe or continue to believe.
I believe that.
I think I said that as early as just yesterday, except I include the scenario where the word becomes more firmly rooted and established as the believer grows up. But certainly, the depth to which the word is rooted in your heart determines your perseverance. 4th type of soil is where Jesus speaks of the perseverance of the word in the soil. Until you, or I, or any believer gets there the potential for the word becoming uprooted in unbelief remains. God has mercy on whom he will have mercy.
I'm not seeing the word "uprooted" in the parable of the soils, but we do see seed that fell by the wayside, seed that fell on rocky soil, seed that fell on thorny soil and finally, seed that fell on
"good soil" produced fruit and persevered. ONLY the 4th soil produced fruit. Do you believe that faith without works is dead? If the 2nd and 3rd soil represents saved people, then where is the fruit?
We agree that Christ does the sustaining by providing the exact conditions for you to continue your believing.....if you want to continue to believe. And that is where we diverge. You say the true believer will always continue to believe no matter what.
If someone does not continue to believe, then they are not true believers. In John 8:31, Jesus stated - “If you
continue in My word, then you are
truly disciples of Mine. Unlike people who set out to be disciples of Christ, then later become offended by His words, turn and walk with Him no more. With such people, Jesus knew from the beginning that they did not truly believe. (John 6:60-66)
I say if that were true there would be 1) no passionate exhortations in scripture for believers to keep believing, and 2) no examples in our Bibles of the Galatians and Corinthians turning away from the gospel Paul preached to them, and the potential of the Hebrews turning away.
Of course there are exhortations in the Bible to continue in the faith, as there are imposters with a spurious faith. The Galatians were getting sidetracked by legalistic teachers, but was there any evidence that seeking to be justified by the law was their final answer? Paul had confidence in them to adopt no other view [contrary to his on the matter]; but the one who is disturbing them, whoever he is, will have to bear the penalty. In Corinthians, those who fail to hold fast to the word/the gospel that Paul preached demonstrated that they
believed in vain and to "believe in vain" is to
believe without cause or without effect, to no purpose.
If truly saved, born again Christians who are God's elect could lose their salvation, then God's promise of preserving His saints forever and Jesus' sheep receiving eternal life/never perishing or being snatched from His hand and whom He justified, He also glorified (and Paul uses the past tense for a future event to stress it's certainty) along with believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit until the redemption of the purchased possession would all be unreliable promises.