Salvation is a Free Gift.
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Nobody can contribute anything of value to a gift that is infinite...such as eternal life. And it is a gift BECAUSE IT HAS TO BE. There is no other contingency or possibility.
Jehovah Jireh....God will provide. HIMSELF. A plan for the sacrifice and Himself AS a sacrifice.
However......*****CHOICE*****.....free will, uncompelled choice is the thing that YHVH never removed from the souls of men. Or angels, fallen or unfallen.
Indeed, the initial conditions in the garden PROVE this to be the case. And is so thereafter. An indisputable fact the Bible declares over and over and over again. Choosing to serve God. Accepting the gift Jesus provided. RECEIVING YOUR AQUITTAL. Picking up your axe head! And then rendering service to Him as this is fitting.
God will eventually SEPARATE light from darkness, good from evil, saved from the unsaved.
Those who of their own free will CHOOSE darkness remain.....eternally dead. They EXIST, but exist in death (SEPARATION) eternally.
You must realize......God's definition of DEATH.....is to be separated from Him. Adam and the woman ate the fruit and DIED fulfilling Gods warning "Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Did they stop existing when they ate the fruit? No. Did they keel over immediately. NO.
BUT.....they were kicked out of the garden and lost their former perfect fellowship with God.
By Gods definition.....they died.
BTW....it may be that Adam ate the fruit at 70 years old and lived ANOTHER 930 years......1000 years total.....ONE DAY.
BTW BTW.....all of this DESTROYS annihilationism (oh yes it does @Magenta ). It proves that souls God created exist eternally. Either IN FELLOWSHIP (reconciled to God thru Jesus Christ).......or SEPARATED from God NOW.....and eternally in the lake of fire.
Jesus said He came down to do someone else's Will.
He shows He chose to as in volunteered to do this.
brb
Yes, the person of the Holy Spirit, whose job, one of, it is to draw the unsaved to Christ. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, then draws us to Christ.
John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
John 15:26 But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
John 16:13-14 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me...
The promise of the Spirit is what was prophesied by Joel, what Jesus told the disciples to wait for in Jerusalem, and what occurred on the day of Pentecost. To a lesser extent you see it occurring throughout the book of Acts, and is still possible today. This is the seal being spoken of.@Cameron143 I'm on my phone so cannot post directly from my device but this is the verse I was referring to about being sealed upon belief... I sourced it from a previous post I made to you in this thread
Ephesians 1:13-14
It's worth noting that seals are put on the outside of letters and authenticate what is inside.
A dead person cannot make a choice and so they do not have free will - they are oblivious to choice, and until becoming saved,
all are spiritually dead in trespasses and sin. We are all at the mercy of Christ for spiritual life. No one
can give it to themselves. He does not give it to everyone.
[Eph 2:1 KJV]
1 And you [hath he quickened], who were dead in trespasses and sins;
[Col 2:13 KJV]
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
I have fat fingers and inaccurate placement of them on keyboard keys, and a reluctance to use the preview button.
That does not address the question though because the seal Which guarantees our inheritance is put on at the time of belief and not before according to that verse.
You don't have to preview when you have up to 5 minutes after posting to proofread and edit.
You can't have a seal of something until the reality of what is being sealed has occurred. The seal isn't the reality. It evidences the reality.
The reality being portrayed in that verse is that the seal guaranteeing our inheritance as sons of God is put on at the time of belief and not before. However, Jesus says that His sheep hear His voice and also that those who hear will live, so that does kind of answer my question... anyone who hears, lives.
yes it is, Thank you Father and Son as Won (One) for us in belief to be won with them as One
Amen!!!!!!!
The seal is given to the believer at salvation. But the work of salvation occurred previously and is being made known to the individual. In other words, the work the Spirit has done inwardly is made known outwardly.
Think about when you see a rainbow. It is a sign that God will not destroy the earth with water. But God decided not to do this before He gave the sign. Likewise, when someone experiences the baptism of the Spirit, it affirms to them an inward work has already transpired. The seal isn't a saving act. It merely authenticates that salvation has occurred.
Yes the seal is real and experiential, but a seal doesn't perform salvation; it authenticates it.
God does the confirming, we do the witnessing
Peter witnessed it, as many others also witnessed it too. As over 500 people saw Jesus as risen before the Pentecost happened That is the Spiritual end of it, not the physical. I give you Physical analogies to bring home Spiritual. realities. If one cannot understand the Physical, how will one ever understand the Spiritual? Only by God, my Father can anyone fathom the truth over the physical errors going on here in this world going on still.
God knows it all, sees it all, therefore I stand in repentance to only trust God and no one else, hope y'all see this too as we each share, hopefully only in care one to the other
John 3:8
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.