am i wrong to infer from how you repeat this, that you believe only people who have intrinsically have 'a good and noble heart' before hearing the gospel are saved?
You infer wrong. I did not say that.
Even not so good and noble soil can be believing, saved soil.
Jesus called it believing soil in the Parable of the Sower.
(But surely it does not exclude the person who didn't really believe).
The good and noble heart is the one that Jesus says perseveres in the word and does not fall away.
that you consider 'a good and noble heart' to be a quality that all truly saved people have?
Good heavens, no, lol!
Look around you.
Look in the mirror, perhaps!
(I'm talking to me, too, you know).
no one without a 'good and noble heart' can be saved?
Yes, a person with a less than 'good and noble heart' can be saved.
But they will surely be the ones who struggle more, and are less prepared to persevere in the word and continue in the salvation they have received.
is anyone with 'a good and noble heart' unsaved, at the end of things?
I don't know.
I just know Jesus referred to that soil as the one who persevered in the word in fruitfulness.
That's why I say only that kind of person can begin to make any kind of claim to not being able to fall away and lose their salvation.
So that pretty much excludes 95% of us from claiming osas status.
how does a person come to have a 'good and noble heart' -- is this something a person is born with, out of their own control?
I suppose someone could be born again right off the bat that way.
But more likely, it depends on what preparatory things happened before they were saved that determines if they are born again into a good and noble heart.
I know people who had quit smoking the day they were born again.
I know people who said it took a long time to quit after they were born again.
I realized after much thought that what a person endures prior to their conversion makes it so they could stop sinning on the day they were saved. Some have to go through those things after they are born again.
God is the husbandman. He knows how to bring any one plot of ground to the fruition it is capable of producing.
The soil can't do it by itself.
But at the same time, the soil has to have an inherent potential to be fruitful.
God is the one who brings any plot of soil to the status of 'good and noble'.....assuming it has that potential to begin with.
And that work often begins before conversion.