Attribute of God's Love

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ ..."

This is simply untrue, and allegations like this make it difficult to be civil.

Perhaps you can explain what "to the praise of his glory" meant in the original Greek. Enlighten me. Please.

Indeed.

 

Mike,
I do not want to misrepresent you, so could you please explain to me what seems to be a contradiction in your position.

You said :

Then you say:

If the Father does not save and the Son "is" the Father, then the Son does "not" save because He is the Father!

Can you please explain this to me?

 

Ray,

If you are saying that you believe man can do whatever he wants, then no one will deny that. But if you are saying that sinners can do anything, is more than the scriptures will afford.
There are many things that the Bible says a sinner can't do and that is come to Jesus (John 6:44) because He would have to accept the things of the Spirit which a sinner will not do because he does not want to (1 Cor. 2:14).

In Christ

 

Then to be fair, we must conclude Arminians can not give an honest assessement of Five Point Calvinists.

I'll remember this the next time you post about John Calvin, Augustine, et.al.

 

Would you go for Total Unability?

It's all or none Ray, taking any one away God is no longer a Sovereign God.

That is a strong statement. Something tells me you gonna have to eat them words one of these days.

Did you get my lastest e-mail on those OT Scriptures?

 

Ray,

Electing is the VERY REASON why He is NOT a respector of persons! He chooses by His sovereignty not by who man is OR WHAT HE CHOOSES! Ironically, your theology says " God, I choose you so you HAVE to choose me.. THAT'S putting God in the position of being a respector.

Acts 13:48 48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ORDAINED to eternal life believed.

 

Meaning, as many as believed received eternal life as a free gift of God through their belief. It does not mean that they and they alone were elected or ordained to believe, it means that they out of all who heard the word of God believed, thus it was ordained that they should receive eternal life! JESUS SAID SO! Jesus said "whosoever believeth...shall have eternal life." Jesus ordained eternal life to the believer! He did not, anywhere, ordain any individuals to believe!

John 17 in Jesus' prayer he speaks of those that God gave to him, who are the by description, Apostles of Jesus Christ. Then later in the prayer, verse 20, Jesus includes in his prayer those who would believe the teachings of the elect apostles. These are words out of the mouth of God!

Those in Acts are those who believed the teachings of the Elect Apostles.

 

Which directly contradicts Acts 13:48.

Acts 13:48: When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

Yes, that is correct, but why did they believe? Who, appointed them to eternal life? According to the Bible, it was the Lord, not the Apostles. The Apostles did not appoint them to believe. The LORD appointed them to believe.

Who opened Lydia's heart?

Acts 16:14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

Why did Peter and ten of the twelve believe in Jesus?

John 6:65 And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."

"No one" is SINGULAR, "him" is also SINGULAR. Jesus is very clearly speaking about individuals. Not one individual can come to Jesus unless the Father grants it to that individual person.

 

Ray, citing the image of God in man does a sum total of zero to bolster your position. God can not sin, because it is contrary to His nature, His very character. The image of God is, by definition, to have compatibalist free agency NOT libertine free will. Likewise, man can not will toward His own salvation, because, as a result of the fall, his character prohibits him from doing so. Your model gives man something that God Himself does not have, namely, libertine free will in the sense that man can do things contrary to his intrinsic character. If man is created in God's image, then that is true, because that is true of God's character.

Scripture DOES teach that man DID have libertine free will prior to the fall, because God gave him a free moral choice borne from true innocence. True innocence, by nature, e.g. by definition of its character of not having obeyed or disobeyed at all and not bearing any marks from any ancestors that had died spiritually already, would necessarily have libertine free will. Libertine free will is consistent with the character of innocence.

God is not innocent. Innocent is a judicial term resulting from being justified OR it is a state of not knowing sin of any kind. God does not have libertine free will for that reason. His character is intrinsically righteous, good, holy, just, etc. Therefore He can not sin.

Man is no longer innocent. He fell. "You shall SURELY die." What does God say is man's character? The unregenerate is deceitful and sick (Jer. 17:9), full of evil (Mk 7:21-23), loves darkness rather than light (John 3:19), does not understand, does not seek for God (Rom. 3:10-12), is dead in his trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), is by nature a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3), cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). Clearly, man's will can not exceed those parameters, in the same way that God's character can not exceed its parameters, especially since belief in Christ is a command, thus believing is not a morally neutral thing.

However, once that choice was made, man's character was set, and it was set contrary to the character of God. The implication of Scripture is that, had man eaten of the tree of life instead of the tree of knowledge, he would not have fallen and his character would have been locked and set toward God. Your view is ultimately that of true Pelagianism when taken to its logical end.

Appealing to the image of God only reinforces the concept of compatibalist free will, e.g. that man is free only as far as his nature permits him to be free. "Free will" has NEVER been libertine in the way you mean, which is derived from humanism. The one time it was libertine, it was actually compatibalist, because libertine free will is, actually, the nature of an innocent being, which is what compatibalist free will (e.g. free agency) is! God's own will is compatibalist, so is man's, because He was created in God's image. What is man's character? See above.

If Adam and Eve who were not slaves to sin but chose to sin, what makes you think that the unsaved, who are slaves of sin, are going to choose to not sin by choosing God when the Bible says they cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor 2:14) and are haters of God (Rom. 3:10-12)?

There is no "manipulation" in Reformed Theology. What is done is done by sovereign degree. It was Charles Finney that said "Revival is the result of the rightly constituted means." If you're going to bring up "manipulation," then talk to your Pelagian brother, Charles Finney. He literally wrote the book: you know, that Systematic Theology of his from which we quote profusely back to you to show you his errors, but which you, not to our surprise, refuse to read.

The great irony here is that you personally accept eternal security and in the next breath deny compatibalist free agency and accept libertine free will. It is simply contradictory to say that God preserves saved persons to that they are eternally secure and then say that true choices must be free from ALL outside forces in order to be real choices. If that is true, then God IS being an autocrat, and He IS exerting some sort of influence on man's wills so that they can not apostacize. At least classical Arminians are logically consistent. Without efficacious grace, there is no eternal security. Your own beliefs are internally contradictory.

Your version of God is intensely unloving, because, by your own admittance He values men's freedom of will more than He values their lives. He is powerless to save whomever He wishes and leaves it to chance. That is real fatalism. That is truly unloving. If He truly loved men as you say, then he would intervene to be sure all of them are saved, particular since, according to you Jesus paid for all their sins. That is truly unjust too, because then God pays for all their sins then sends them to hell in a malicious game of double jeopardy. That is truly despicable.

The DEFINITION of favoritism is to base your decisions on some kind of intrinsic attribute or action of an individual over and against those of another. The definition of partiality is to say that election is based on who God knows ahead of time will choose Him and who will not.

 

GeneMBridges,

The image of God has nothing to do with sin! It is all about man having many of the characteristics and attributes of divine God who is spirit, because the true essence of man is that man is spirit!

Just as God has attributes including freewill, Love, Grace, Mercy, Justice, etc. Man has all those same attributes available to use, and most men do use them in one way or another. We are spirit in the Image of God's spirit.

Unlike God, who created us, we used our free will to choose to sin, and thus we are all sinners in that we sin. God does not sin! Therefore we are only in the image of God and not ourselves God.

 

But God does not have libertine free will, because of His character.

Absolutely, and, just like God, the limits of our free will are the limits of our character.

Wes, ONLY AN TRUE INNOCENT has libertine free will. If our will is free, even at birth, then once we sin, we cease to be innocent, and thus know good and evil.

You give man something that God does not have: LIBERTINE free will. There is NOT ONE LINE of Scripture that supports your contentions. If our wills are like God's they are just like His, free ONLY WITHIN THE CONSTRAINTS OF OUR CHARACTER. If you say man has libertine free will, then, by definition, you do not believe man is in God's image the very way you describe it, unless God also has libertine free will, which you deny that He possesses.


We are DEAD in trespasses in sins before regeneration. God is ALIVE.

You are calling God a liar, because He promised Adam and Eve that if they sinned they would SURELY DIE.


If we are born truly innocent and with libertine free will, then why do all human beings sin?

 

NO, the effectual call is a divine annointing of an almighty, amazing, beautiful, loving savour NOT a begging, pleading, wimpy, defeated, God who is controlled by the will of man.

 

GeneMbridges,

You have added to what I said. I have never included "libertine" as an adjective of free will. Why did you?

Libertine is an ancient Roman term! Are you Catholic?

 

WEs...

God ORDAINED men to believe... answer Gene exegetically on the Acts verse... Is it to hard to understand? I thought you believed in "Just reading scripture SIMPLY".. well .. this is as simple as it gets... God "ordained" who would believe...

 

The whole context!

As the author of Acts, Luke is telling us that many believed and in accordance with God's will they are destined for Eternal life. Once again, there is no indication that the names of those who believed had previously been written from the foundation of the world, but that in accordance with God's plan of salvation through faith, they receive everlasting life.

Luke's thought here is not consistant with the plan of God through Jesus that whosoever believeth in him shall have everlasting life. It is "ordained" by God that there will be many who do believe, because He established salvation through faith from before the foundation of the world. God gave mankind the choice through his command that we believe, so that we alone are the ones who establish our fate (John 3:18) which is that we believe and live or not believe and die! That is the way God established it from before the foundation of the world.

God is not paranoid in that he must set aside "an elect" that has no real choice, by 'ordaining' that they believe in order for his plan to work! His plan works because he established salvation through faith which comes from Hearing his word. He knows how he made man with the ability to choose, and he has given them the choice.

God did set aside those who would do his work in building God's church, and we call them Apostles, prophets, etc. He did not ordain that all who are saved are "pre conditioned to be saved".

 

one other thought on "the Acts passage" rc

How is that? by hearing and believing. Was the whole countryside the elect of God too? Or was it only those specified in the biblical illustration that were 'ordained'?