Total Depravity
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Because God does just love us all
1 John 2:1-4, 12 amazing grace gift, not of works of us at all. Of God for us all, at that cross of Son willingly done for new life in his risen Life to be given once for all, to those that choose to believe God
Hebrews 10:10
Amazing to me at least, I believe and see it contentedly now after a long walk off a short pier first, under Law to see the truth I need God to lead not me, "I" can't do it, God can and did it for us all to be new in risen Son, thank you, to rest Hebrews 4
Adam was of the natural world. People seem to glaze over this as if it means nothing at all,
yet God knew it meant man would fail. Why did He not stop it? The general consensus seems
to be that God does not want to take hostages, but rather have people who will choose to love Him.
Choice is real but the will is not innately free. You are welcome .
Interesting not innately free, not understanding this not innately free, can you elaborate please?
In the garden man had a good heart and loved God. He was only given one command, -
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Adam had the ability to obey or not obey. He chose the later!
With this choice man lost the ability to please God in any way!
Fast forward to today!
When God draws us to Him (His elect), He does so by giving us a new heart. It is softened and once again has the ability to please God. Then when we hear and believe, we place our trust in the work that He has done for us.
Therefore, when we turn to God it is because we have received a new heart – not because we were forced. Without this circumcision of the heart that would not have been possible.
Now that is grace!
New Heart
Ezekiel 36:26
Authorized (King James) Version
26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
To think of God as being this weak and stupid baffles me, I don't know why one would want a God like this. It's not at all what scripture tells us about Him, but besides that, why on earth would anyone want to have a God like this? It's such a disjointed, random, and pointless God. An "it is what it is" God. Ewww. Again not at all what scripture says He is.
Mostly it seems that people have knee-jerk reactions to the word depravity without finding out
what is really meant by it. But also, quite a few are enamored with their idea that the natural man,
who is a slave to sin (taken captive to the devil's will) and hostile in his mind toward God, is free
in his will to choose to love and believe in God without God doing some work in us first. Some
go so far as to say that God not enabling everyone exactly the same makes God unjust and they
agree with those who say that God is a tyrant who kidnaps people against their will. I have
described what I believe is meant to be conveyed by total depravity here (<= link to post) .
Depravity vs. Grace
What it means to those who preach total depravity is all that counts. and the Westminster Confession of Faith -- Reformed Theology -- says that it means that sinners are totally UNABLE to respond to the Gospel. Which is hogwash. So they created a whole new "gospel" where the so-called "elect" receive the Holy Spirit first, then believe, then they are saved. This is the REVERSE of what the Bible says.
The Bible says that God made you alive in Christ while you were yet dead in your tresspasses and sins. Believers are not dead in their sins, so you have something confused... Also that Westminster confession of faith which you refer to an awful lot is not the only teacher of total depravity, and I think you should know that.
Notice, he does not say, "and calls those things which do not yet appear, because they already are.
It is also incorrect to say that God talks about future things in the past tense. OT Hebrew had no past, present and future tenses. They had completed and uncompleted aspects, sometimes called imperfective and perfective aspect. We cannot correspond the sense of Engish tenses onto how OT writers understood verbs in biblical Hebrew.
You are confusing love forcing someone to do something with love forcing someone to love back. No one is claiming love cannot force actions.
Except perhaps those who claim God is a tyrannical fraudulent kidnapper if and when He moves unilaterally.
And those who agree with such as well, of course. Totally strange that anyone would, but there you have it. They do.
No one has said in this thread , "God is a tyrannical fraudulent kidnapper if and when He moves unilaterally." I'm sure that "God moving unilaterally" was qualified as Him moving unilaterally to plant in a person who hates God foreign feelings of love for God, so that they suddenly cannot help but love God.
First you are sure it didn't happen but then it happened for some reason you guess at claiming as fact. Wow.
Here is some music for you to twist and shout to...
He tells Abraham He has made him the father of many nations, long before it began to take place. That's the completed action, yes? While it is yet incomplete from an human perspective.
Similarly He tells His apostle:
Matthew 16:19
and I will give to thee the keys of the reign of the heavens, and whatever thou mayest bind upon the earth shall be having been bound in the heavens, and whatever thou mayest loose upon the earth shall be having been loosed in the heavens.
He breaks the boundaries of time and space. He does this frequently in our sight, see also:
John 17:11
Now I am no longer in the world
Paul by the Spirit in Romans 4 interprets Abraham being told he is the father of many nations when he hasn't yet born a single child, to be demonstrating that God has power not only over life and death but also that His power transcends time and human will.
God doesn't merely know the future - and He does certainly know it, not just what it "might be" - He also brings it about. He can cause the future to be whatever He wishes it to be: time is constrained by Him; He is not constrained by time.
In Matthew 16 God tells Peter that what Peter will do in the future on earth is already a past, completed action in heaven.
Who is like Him??
He is not like us, in these respects. i think it is very much a mistake to attribute the temporal limitations of humankind to the eternal God Who created time.
God doesn't merely know the future - and He does certainly know it, not just what it "might be" - He also brings it about. He can cause the future to be whatever He wishes it to be: time is constrained by Him; He is not constrained by time.
In Matthew 16 God tells Peter that what Peter will do in the future on earth is already a past, completed action in heaven.
Who is like Him??
He is not like us, in these respects. i think it is very much a mistake to attribute the temporal limitations of humankind to the eternal God Who created time.
We do not depend on grammar to teach us the truth. Otherwise every Christian would need to be an expert grammarian.
The Bible is crystal clear that God sees the end from the beginning, but decrees only some things. Were He to decree everything He would be responsible for sin and evil. But God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.