Do ALL Calvinist Say that faith Itself Comes From God, is A Gift Directly?

I basically agree with you. About the so called fall? Did Adam fall or fail or was it the nature of the flesh of which he was created to do so? Is the fact the Lamb was slain prior to his creation proof he was going to sin? Or am I just hindsighting here.

 

Did you read my post on the Angelic conflict and is it relative to this thought of the creation of Adam?

 

Savedbymercy...

There is indeed no one who seeks after God...

Until God, through the Holy Spirit, begins to convict and draw us to Himself.

At that point every person has a choice to make. To choose the non-work of embracing Christ through faith alone, or to turn away.

God bless.

 

alive:

Thats called the NewBirth. The Sancification of the Spirit unto belief of the Truth.

God has made the choice Ps 65:4

4Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

And on top of that, you should repent of what you posted earlier since now you contradict it..

You stated:

Now you are saying :

Can you make up your mind ?

 

percho:

It was the nature of the flesh, he was created to do so.

Rom 8:3

3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

I believe if we are honest, the flesh that eve was made of proved to be weak in keeping God's Law " Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil" And if eve's flesh proved weak, so was adam's since they were made of one..

 

Ezekiel 28: “‘You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
topaz, onyx and jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.

This is said about King of Tyre which is reference to Lucifer. Could Adam been created the same way?

 

Savedbymercy...

Dont need to. There is no contradiction.

One is before conviction/drawing, the other is after conviction/drawing.

AiC

 

The Title of the thread:

Do ALL Calvinist Say that faith Itself Comes From God, is A Gift Directly?

No one has been able to give me an answer from Scripture where God gives spiritual gifts (faith) or the fruit of the Spirit (faith) to the unregenerate/unsaved person. He doesn't. This concept of the Calvinist is totally foreign to Scripture and there is no Scripture that teaches it. Why then try to force the teaching?

 

Everyone agrees we have a choice. It's really a question of our individual ability to make the right choice based on the desires of our heart.

Dave

 

DHK...

I believe it is because they heed the word of Calvin, more highly than the scriptures of God.

AiC

 

I would like to add to your reply here that the conditions which Adam made his "choice" under were not the same for him as they are for us today. He was not yet fallen, so His nature was not corrupted from being separated from God.

But..... having said that, it is my opinion that Adams sin was inevitable because he was not created perfect in essence like God is. God does not live by a separate standard, He is the standard. To not be perfect in all of His attributes would be for Him to cease being God. Man was not created likewise. For God to do so would be to deny Himself.

Dave

 

Jesus is the Author (meaning originator) and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

The only ones who believe are those whom God grants the gift of faith (Phi 1:29), who God chooses to believe truth (2 The 2:13), who God calls, both from the Gentiles and Jews (1 Cor 1:23-24), who God appoints to eternal life (Acts 13:48), those whom the Father draws (John 6:44), etc.

That should be enough.

Dave

 

This is critical...What we inherited from Adam was a seperation from God. All people are born under the federal headship of Adam and inherit this seperation from God. Only God is good. Apart from God we cannot produce anything good. We cannot please God in any way. The natural mind is hostile to God. That's why God must move first.

It is our own sin that we are judged by. Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."

Because of Adam, we inherited our sinful nature. Depravity/spiritual blindness is not a nature but a condition that results from our "sinful nature". Spiritual blindness is judicially inflicted (John 12:40, Matthew 13:13). Spiritual blindness is the result of sin. We are all sinners (as a result of our nature), and as a result we all knew spiritual blindness (Romans 3:10-18, 1 Corinthians 2:14, Romans 8:5-8).

Adam and Eve were not bound to a sinful nature when they made the choice to sin. The conditions were not the same as they are today for us.

It's important to understand that God is constrained by Hids nature. He moved away and seperated Himself from Adam and Eve because He had to do that. I'll talk more on this later.

There are a lot of misconception concerning Adam and Eve these days. Adam and Eve were both clearly capable of doing evil, we know that because they did sin, hence resulting in the fall. But what many people don't understand is that what made that point in time so unique for man in general was that they, both Adam and Eve, were capable of doing good.

As a result of the fall "Man's heart is desperately wicked, only producing evil continually." -- "There is none righteous, no not one..."--"filthy rags."

So, right out of the gate we see that the absence of God results in only evil. God did not make man evil, it's the separation from all that is good that will always result in evil. It's a principle that is established in scripture right from the beginning.

It's no coincidence that everything that God ever created, was created as good (not evil). Satan was not created evil, but perfect, although sin was eventually found in him. Adam and Eve were not created as fallen, although they did eventually fall. Even infants or young children, while sinful in the most technical sense, are called innocent by God due to their ignorance, as God says, "not knowing their right from their left". Meaning that they cannot yet comprehend what God has already sewn into their hearts. Until then, until they can comprehend 'good and evil', they are called innocent by God due to their ignorance. The parallels are there between children and Adam and Eve. Both are innocent due to their ignorance of good and evil. This 'innocent' which God calls children is a judicial innocence and not an innocence due to any merit or action on their behalf.

AIC :thumbs: Calvin attributed God's hardening of man's heart as a negative cause also. I'm only posting this because I agree with it and would like people to look beyond Adam and see to see the principle in scripture. So, even though the context is different, the same principle applies.

"God is very often said to blind and harden the reprobate . . .. There are two methods in which God may so act. [1] When his light is taken away, nothing remains but blindness and darkness: when his Spirit is taken away, our hearts become hard as stones: when his guidance is withdrawn, we immediately turn from the right path: and hence he is properly said to incline, harden, and blind those whom he deprives of the faculty of seeing, obeying, and rightly executing.

The second method . . . is when executing his judgments by Satan as the minister of his anger, God both directs men's counsels, and excites their wills, and regulates their efforts as he pleases. Institutes. (II.4.3)

Now, God is constrained by His nature. This is very important to understand.

God is perfect in all His ways. He does not live by a separate standard and do it perfectly, He is the standard. God is perfect in all His ways. The essence of God's nature is this perfection. He is perfectly Holy as is His Law (The Law is a reflection of God's character and He cannot go against His own nature - Habakkuk 1:13.), perfect righteous, perfect justice, etc.. God cannot compromise Himself, not even one time, without ceasing to be God. So it would be correct to say that God is constrained by His nature.

Look at the lengths that He had to go to provide a way for us while at the same time not compromising Himself.

Did you know that every sin ever committed will be punished by God's perfect justice, which is driven by His perfect Holiness and righteousness? Every sin will have either faced God's judgment on the cross already by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (for believers), or the individual himself will face His perfect judgment at a later time. No sin ever goes unpunished. This is what perfect holiness, and perfect righteousness, driving a perfect justice must do.

God is also bound to the truth, which is Himself, which is His Word. Here's some examples.

God cannot tempt man nor can He be tempted-- James 1:13-14

God cannot lie -- Titus 1:2

God is without injustice, He is righteous and just in all His ways -- (Deuteronomy 32:4)

Thus says the LORD, "What injustice did your fathers find in Me, That they went far from Me And walked after emptiness and became empty? (Jeremiah 2:5)

Why should any living mortal, or any man, Offer complaint in view of his sins? (Lamentations 3:39)

It's important to see God as He really is, as scripture reveals Him.

Only God is good (Luke 18:19). He is the only source of good. Man cannot be good apart from God. Not even a little bit. God calls mans righteousness apart from Him "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). Our flesh can only produce filthy rags. The flesh profits nothing. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above (James 1:17). Without faith, we cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6). Our nature apart from God (Ephesians 2:1-3)... is children of wrath.

We are all quilty before God. The wonder of grace is that He chose to save any of us at all. But there is no question, as scripture makes it abundantly clear, unless God moves in a persons life, the end for that person is sure, the natural mind is hostile towards God, hates Him, and is incapable of being obedient to Him nor does he desire to do so. God must move first for a person to repent, come to faith and be saved, and when He does, He always finishes what He starts.

Dave

 

Except that its not. We cant just "make it up as we go along". We must take into consideration the whole council of God.

In doing that we discover that God is not a puppeteer, and He does not have robots, as Calvin believes.

He created human beings with free will.

And He has decreed that the one who will be saved must choose, by their own free will, to embrace Christ...as opposed to denying Him, as most do.

AiC

 

Jesus is the Author (meaning originator) and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
I put MY FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ, just as the jailer did when Paul commanded him:
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
He did not say: "Believe with God's belief on the Lord Jesus Christ."
He believed and God became the author of the faith that we call the Christian faith, that same faith that Jude commands us to contend for. He is the author of our faith. First we need to believe.

The only ones who believe are those whom God grants the gift of faith (Phi 1:29),
--This is taken out of context, written to believers, and you have left out part of the verse. Let's consider the entire verse.

For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; (Philippians 1:29)
--Paul says: not only you are the one to believe (that is one thing you do; but also you are to suffer. Believing is one thing; suffering is another. He is not simply speaking of salvation. After you believe on the name of Christ expect to suffer for his sake.

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)
--Paul preaches Christ to both Jews and the Gentiles. Those who accept his message will believe. There is nothing about God giving faith here.

But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: (2 Thessalonians 2:13)
--God knows ahead of time who will believe. That has nothing to do with God giving them faith to believe. I don't deny the doctrine of election. It is taught in the Bible, but I don't interpret it the way you do. This does not say that God gave faith to the unregenerate or the unbeliever. You can't get that out of this verse.

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. (Acts 13:48)
--Do you have a problem with God knowing ahead of time with who is going to be saved? Do you have a problem with the doctrine of God's omniscience? Nowhere does it say that God gave them faith. It doesn't say that. Contrary, God allowed them to believe out of their own free will. He only knew the choice that they would make.

In John 6:44 The Holy Spirit draws people to the Father. That is his work. His work is clearly spelled out in John 16. He draws them by convicting them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement. That in no way teaches that God gives them faith. Where do you get this teaching from. It is not in the Bible.

 

Where did that faith come from which God foreseen? The only biblical answer for that is He provided it. That's aside from the fact that foreknew is speaking of people, not enents.

Dave

 

My neighbor kicked his dog. The he swore and cursed God.
According to your logic, God made him kick the dog. God put the words in his mouth and God caused him to curse God. God is the author of his evil.

 

allinall

Why did eve yield to temptation ? Was that not lust of the flesh ? Was her flesh weak as its stated in Rom 8:3a

3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,