God orders man to participate in Salvation

Sinners.

 

The natural result of regeneration is to come to Christ Jesus in repentance and faith.

 

You and the Bible are correct. God does require human responsibility and repentance.

John Wesley said in the 1760's something like this. If God decrees the saved and the lost, technically there is no need for regeneration. When God decrees something it happens.

Without belief in Jesus their is no salvation/regeneration. [John 14:6] If regeneration was first we would more likely worship the 'experience of regeneration' rather than the Lord of this world and universe. He remains the only way the truth and the life. We praise the Redeemer on the center Cross and not the concepts of Reformation theology.

 

Yelsew,


You said:

This is a misrepresentation of our position. I do not think you meant to misrepresent us, but you did.

We do not say that we have no part in our salvation. Quite the contrary, we say that we must choose God.

HOWEVER, we also say that our ability to choose God is non-existent before the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. It is the HS that breaks the chains of slavery to sin; removes the stone heart and replaces it with a flesh heart (which ever metaphore you prefer). At that point we are enabled to choose.

Before the HS, we could not choose. After the HS, we can and do choose God. In other words, we have been given eyes to see and ears to hear.

Please take this into consideration in your representations of us in future posts.

Blessings!

Archangel

 

Huh? What if regeneration is part of what God decreed? Your logic (and I use the term very loosely) is like saying that if God decrees that we eat food, there must not be any need to cook it.

 

As Calvinism clearly teaches.

What does John 14:6 have to do with this?

the concepts of reformation theology do praise the redeemer on teh cross. In that, we are alike. But the experience of regeneration is what brings about the life by which we respond to God.

 

[Mark 1:15] `The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.'

[Luke 13:5] They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did.'


Yelsew. I took these two verses which you quoted. Be it known to thee that the Greek New Testament of Christ informs us that the verbs in the last clause of Mark 1:15 are both present active imperatives, not aorists:

"Be ye repeatedly repenting and keep on believing in the Gospel!"

Now I ask you, how does this theological fact of the verbal aspect being linear relate to your view of regeneration??? To me it seems in your view repenting and believing the Gospel precede the new birth. Then with this verse in mind I ask you, Yelsew, how long or how many times must a sinner repent, and for how long a time must he believe in the Gospel before regeneration occurs??

Likewise Luke 13:5, the main verb for "to repent" is also here present active, subjunctive, not aorist:

"Except ye keep on repenting ye shall all likewise bring perdition to yourselves"

How does this truth relate to your view of regeneration?? How long were the Jews addressed by Lord Christ obligated to keep on repenting until regeneration might occur? Awaiting an answer with interest.

Harald

 

Sounds like a headline to me:

"God orders Man to participate in salvation"

Fortunately, the Man obeyed, or we'd be in deep doo-doo.

 

Yelsew I would like to add another verse to your case:

Acts 17:30
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead."

How does God judge all men everywhere for not obeying this command when according to Calvinist he hasn't granted the abilty of repentance to all men?

Can you judge someone for something they are not capable of fulfilling?

 

This perceived problem led to the concept of purgatory. The idea was that if you died while some sins were not confessed, you had to go to purgatory to work them off before you could get to heaven.

 

Yelsew,

You have asked an interesting and potent question. In effect you said before the day of Pentecost how did John the Baptist's believers repent before God, if the Spirit was not yet on the scene during New Testament times. Your post is dated March 29 at 10:20 p.m.

Let me guess. The sinners activated their free will to believe in Jesus' forerunner, {not John Calvin} but John the Baptist. {how fitting}

 

I must say Yelsew you are a peculiar fellow. I rarely see lads who are so dead serious about free-willism and human ability. I like you in spite of your heretically faulty notions and wrong interpretations. Now, as for the people to who Lord Jesus preached commanding them to be repenting and believing in the Gospel, namely Jesus the Lord, as you did rightly state, granted. It seems to me Mark in the verse under discussion gives the onus of Christ's preaching in Galilee. He did not in that verse state that Christ preached these things to all Galileans indiscriminately. The information of the text is that Christ commanded men using a plural imperative, it does not say how many or how few he commanded. It seems to me that He commanded such who the Spirit of His had regenerated, not dead men, dead in trespasses and sins. His commands were so called Gospel commands, pertaining to the preaching of the Gospel of the kingdom. Paul says in Galatians that no law exists which is able to make alive, this also applies to all and any commands and prohibitions of the word of God. Thus these commands which He preached were not given to Galileans in order to regeneration, but on account of regeneration already having occured in the hearts (by the Spirit's sovereign and instantaneous operation) of such to whom the incarnate God had good pleasure. These commands to regenerated individuals drew forth Spirit-wrough faith into fruitful exercise by the Spirit's attending power in repeated repentance toward God and repeated trusting in and feasting upon Christ the Bread of Life by a true and lively faith.

An unregenerate man is soulish, not having spirit, Jude 19. How can you then say free will resides in the spirit, and that exercise of free will results in the new birth, which birth according to the NT conveys to the person of the sinner a new spirit and a heart of flesh? You have a major contradiction and logical fallacy at your hands, Yelsew. God is not the God of disorder, but of concord, 1Cor. 14:33. Theological and doctrinal contradictions against the whole counsel of God's written word are the hallmarks of a heretic. I sincerely wish that the sovereign and merciful Lord pity you and convert you from the error of your way if it be His good will. Not that He convert you to "5 point Calvinism" or any other ism, but to the knowing Himself as a Just God and a Saviour, whom to know is eternal life, according as it is written, John 17:3.

Harald

 

Sounds an awful lot like you're saying the guy isn't saved, Harald.