But to believe, you need God's free gift of the new birth.
You/we need "grace" to be saved.
Why?
If our flesh were allowed to have its normal say? No one could believe.
For our soul was a slave to the sin nature.
Grace stomps on the influence of the flesh...
And, while holding it down?
Tells our soul (which has been made free of the flesh) to decide what it wants to believe.
That is why all who refused to believe will be held ACCOUNTABLE..
If the unbeliever had no choice made available?
God would have been weird and unjust to condemn what He made turn out to be inevitable..
Some have no sense of justice, and God wants us to learn.
Things like Calvinism bait those walking in human reasoning as to bring them out and expose them,
to make apparent what God wants to deal with in their hearts.
Some see the need for justice and remove themselves from what they were programmed to believe.
Others, trod on and are led to the slaughter of their rewards they could have had and God wanted to give them.
Note, please.
When the Lord evaluates all believers.
Some will be found to have followed false teachings (wood, hay, and straw).
Their works will be incinerated as destroyed! They will be shamed before the Lord.
Yet? They still remain saved from the Lake of Fire.
Saved as a person running from a burning house is saved....
For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be
revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has
been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will
suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
1 Corinthians 3:11-15
The carnal believer will suffer a total loss of Eternal rewards. .
Yet, not lose his salvatuion!
Yet... Jesus will lose none of all the Father gives Him!
And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me,
but raise them up at the last day." John 6:39
grace and peace ............