Understanding God’s election
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Oh it is a problem, because that faith is not a gift, salvation is the gift, according to the Greek grammar.
Do you know what "carnal means"
Do you know what is the "natural man"
You believe the natural side of man was formulated by God to have no ability to respond positively to God's offer of salvation.
Where is that in scripture? Where is that LINK?
There are many descriptions of the carnal side of man's nature but that leap is not there, and I am still waiting for that clearly taught all throughout scripture, aside from a few out of context proof texts.
All the proof texts in context have clearly been shown to not make that LINK.
You wrongly assume and read into the text that that means the non-believer cannot respond affirmatively to the power, life giving truth of the message of the Gospel.
It is an assumption on your part and not explicitly taught anywhere.
We're going back into a circle again. I have just posted more than enough Scripture to debunk that belief that God arbitrarily chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Why would I want to go to heaven if God chose to send my spouse to hell? It's a ridiculous belief that is not found in Scripture. I'm sorry, it's not personal. I have seen first hand God take a person bound in sin and set them free. I can tell you story after story. God does not choose people for destruction.
I don't need faith to be a gift to make my argument. If you will simply answer the questions I ask, we can move forward.
I am laying out my argument point by point. So far I have established that the natural man is carnal, that his mind is hostile towards God, and that in this estate he CANNOT be subject to the law of God.
Now: how does someone in this estate obey the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?
It takes faith to accept the gift.
One has to beleive in the good faith offer that the debt has been paid.
Before the deposit of the God' Spirit is made one has to accept the debt has been paid.
Calvinists always mess up the ordo salutis.
Don't fall for it.
Yes, I know, chasing my own tail. But the verses I have shared no one has yet disputed. Cranberry disappeared as did another that said the verses were in error. smh
No, I'm on a linear path. I'm moving from point A to B. You are drawing a circle because you don't answer my questions.
I'm quoting scripture. You are the one who introduced assumptions when you introduced the traditionalist position, which are the teachings of men.
How does a carnal man who CANNOT be subject to the law of God obey the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?
So before salvation, God is working on the mind of the individual to convince him of his need of a Savior and repentance?
I state used the word "traditional" as a juxtaposition to the clearly anti-biblical Calvinist teachings.
Where does scripture state that the non-believer is unable to exercise faith in Christ Jesus (who has been completely incapacitated by small "g" god) upon hearing/reading the life-giving message of the Gospel?
So the question is not how does but where does it state he cannot and was born that way?
Where is that connection?
Waiting.
Ok fair enough. Plus logically speaking if the phrase "whole world" is used in the distributive sense, then it must mean each and every person in both groups. But now I will set out to prove from the passage itself that this isn't the case. John, a Jew, did not use the phrase "whole world" in that sense.
In this opening post, I'm going to copy what I wrote previously on another thread back in March of last year with a few added edits. This introductory post will reveal the ancient Jewish mindset that prevailed in the first century.
Before diving into a few Johannine passages, I think it would be good to lay a little bit of ground work to justify a hermeneutical principle I faithfully use when exegeting scripture. One of my objectives is that I not only want to know what any given speaker is saying, but I also want to know how his original audience would have understood him. Far too often we tend to approach the scriptures in the bubble of our our modern culture -- by what we've been taught, how we've been raised, by the dominate political-social narrative of the day, etc.. And in so doing, we unwittingly misinterpret the scriptures that we're seeking to understand. Instead, we should be seeking to understand biblical passages the same way any given writer's original audience would have. We have to put ourselves into their shoes; and not them into ours!
For example, when John penned Jn 3:16, how would his original audience (primarily Jews) have understood the term "world"? Would the original audience of Jews have understood the Gr. term "kosmos" in the wide or narrow sense, i.e. universal or limited sense, respectively? Of course, in many cases the immediate context answers this important question, which does happen to be the case with this particular text, by the way. (We'll explore this later in a separate post.) But in other cases, it might not. So, it would be incumbent upon any honest interpreter to try to find out what the Old Covenant people of God thought about the rest of the nations in the world. Acts 10-11, among other passages, provide us with some very useful insights to this question, especially Peter's vision of the sheet from heaven. Also, the Jews harbored this sentiment of separation even against Samaritans (Lk 9:51-56)
The typical first century Jew believed there were only two kinds of people in this world: The chosen covenant nation of God and the other nations -- all of which were pagan, profane, unclean, uncircumcised, impure, unprivileged and without YHWH!. The Jews had the proverbial "us" and "them" attitude. In a real sense, they were justified in having this attitude because the Law of Moses itself set up the "dividing wall" between Jews and Gentiles. The mere fact that God required his chosen servant Israel to be holy as he was holy, spoke volumes of His attitude toward the pagan nations, as well. God himself had very discriminating tastes when it came to how He treated his chosen people and how he treated the neighboring pagan nations that surrounded Israel and were not in covenant relationship with Him. Did not God use Israel to drive out the seven pagan nations who occupied their God-given Land inheritance? Was not much pagan blood spilled when God evicted those nations from his land? And didn't God forbid intermarriage between Jews and the pagans? Also, the Law did not treat the Gentiles as equal with the Jews, especially in the area of temple worship. Nor were the Jews permitted to enter into political treaties with Gentile nations, etc. Of course, the elite Jewish leaders over time were fully disposed to making their own traditions and adding it to God's law; and those traditions built that "dividing wall" between Jews and Gentiles even higher than what God intended. The wall became so high, that the Jews did not consider themselves to be part of the pagan world! How could they!? How could they associate and identify with the unclean, uncircumcised, immoral, impure, pagan, idolatrous, God-hating nations? The Jews, for the most part, thought of themselves as God's "holy" people -- a "royal priesthood" -- separate from the world. The "world" to their mind consisted of only the other nations ("them", the Gentiles), and I will prove this from scripture later -- from a text wherein John makes a distinction between Jews and the "whole world".
In the next post, Mr. Bain, I will unpack 1Jn 2:2 itself, which will in fact support what is said above.
I appreciate the conversation, but if you can't accept what scripture teachers, I can't help you.
I have clearly shown from scripture in Romans 8 that the natural man is carnal, hostile in his mind towards God, and that he cannot in this estate be subject to the law of God.
What you haven't done is answer how someone in this estate can obey the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Unless you can, you are the one who is working upon assumptions.
No sir, I did answer. I said the Holy Spirit draws sinners. If man isn't capable of understanding, then why would a loving God punish them to hell? If they cannot believe why would God send them to hell? Why would He tell them to repent? If I have a child with a learning disability, do I beat them?! Of course not. The verses I shared prove that God does not choose people to destroy.
This doesn't answer my question. How does God drawing an individual change what is true of him?
In Romans 8, the scripture reveals that the natural man is carnal, and goes on to show what this entails. It states that he is hostile towards God in his mind, and CANNOT be subject to the law of God.
What do you believe it means to have hostility in the mind towards God and cannot be subject to the law of God?
Romans 8 is written to believer and is not about the unregenerate but to those who have been regenerated, it is about the "carnal" mind in the believer.
It pains me so say this but you make a significant error in your hermeneutics
What Romans 8:7 does NOT say is that "Because the unsaved is at enmity against God.
For the unsaved is neither subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be".
That's not what it says. What it does read is that the CARNAL MIND is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
This plan of salvation is ridiculous.
God creates man's fallen nature to be such that he cannot respond affirmatively to the Gospel and not only that they are punished for how they were created.
But not only that, let us go even a step further and state "god' did it all this way for his own glory!