Excuses....for “a lack of faith”

So true!

John 12:37-41

John 16:8-11

Grace is more amazing to me now than it was the first day I received it!

 

Precisely... Well said.

I find that there is ultimately a difference between "religion" where people do all sorts of things to reach out to God in their own strength, and a biblical salvific relationship, which can only be God-oriented and God-promulgated.

As I've said before, misunderstanding about God's sovereignty in the act of salvation is often based on lumping "salvation" into one term.

An apt metaphor is naturalistic evolution, where in the mind of the naturalist "evolution" caused all things to come into being, and then to transform into all the life forms we see today. This happens in cell life when, as Darwin posited, the "blob" that is a cell "changes" into some other form based on environmental pressures and survival of the fittest -- a very simplistic and reductionistic means of describing what is actually happening (and why it cannot happen that way!).

Salvation is often seen in this same light. The "blob" that is human changes due to environmental and survival pressures into something else, only that is exactly not how salvation happens!

When the act of salvation is broken down into component parts, the sovereignty of God is seen in its full glory, power, and grace. The election, effectual call, regeneration, justification, adoption, sealing, faith/repentance, sanctification, perseverance, and ultimately, glorification all require God to do what only He can do. We participate -- after our regeneration and justification -- in our faith/repentance, sanctification, and perseverance stages, but all else is purely and only God's action. There is nothing we can do to justify ourselves, regenerate ourselves, elect ourselves, call ourselves, nor can we adopt, seal, or glorify ourselves!

The error of human-centered salvation is a simplistic-reductionistic view of salvation, and with that repeats the sin of Genesis 3, when Eve "chooses" to sin against God by wanting to be able to make God-like choices to be "like God." The choice to accept or deny God is similar at the end of the day.

I see, rather, a God who is sovereign, and who draws whom He will (perhaps everyone, we can't place a number on the elect -- that is God's business!), and then does what He does to cause them to come to salvation in Christ.

By placing the onus of salvation on God, I rest in His power, not on any human wisdom or ability. To trust in human wisdom and ability (to choose God, if that were possible) means that some humans are just too stupid to choose God. I cannot find that concept in the Scriptures. I do find where God says that the simple things will confound the wise...

 

Amen, brother, amen!

Amen and amen!

peace to youraying: