Featured Ephesians 1 Verses 1-5

No need to "try" and prove you wrong.
Your posts prove you wrong so I just have to watch as everyone reads the error and offer correction which you dismiss.
In every thread most everyone offers you good verses that you cannot grasp.
I see you liked RM in an off topic post complaining about the emojis.
He complains often because when we had all of the emojis his post would get the thumbs down, the red x, or the poop emoji as people expressed what the thought of his posts.
Like in this thread as you post several errors,do you expect people to give you a thumbs up??? An agree?? A winner? The closest thing that describes your posts is the funny one.
The posts are so far out...it appears funny to everyone....not serious as you suggest.

 

Certainly we are not free to think or act outside of the restrictions of reality. We are slaves to sin, but that does not mean we cannot imagine choosing the righteousness of Christ. The lady of whom Christ said "your faith as saved you" was a slave to sin.
Calvinism redefines being dead in sin and being a slave to sin to mean being unable to choose life, but scripture says we are able to choose life.

Yes, I thank God, too, that He did not leave us enslaved to sin but freed us by means of the Lamb of God.

 

I do not believe people are unable to respond in faith and chose life. I don’t believe people are able unless God first enables them to overcome the sin that controls them.

Without God first enabling the person to respond, they will not chose life.

The woman responded to the special revelation of the presence of God. We respond to God Holy Spirit intervening in our lives.

peace to you

 

Posts 3,40,43,59 demonstrate you using mocking emojis and insults in this thread alone.

Let’s add hypocrisy to biblical ineptitude.

peace to you

 

Your concept of "enabling grace" is in my opinion a Calvinist fiction not found anywhere in scripture. So lets agree to disagree.

 

Grace is “unmerited favor”. Do you agree? Many passages support enabling grace, that is God’s intervention in a person’s life that brings them to salvation.

Most “anti-Calvinist” acknowledge God Holy Spirit must “draw”, “convict” or other such language in order for a person to believe the gospel. I call that enabling grace and it is clearly taught in scripture so it certainly isn’t “Calvinist fiction”.

Usually the disagreement is over the scope of Holy Spirit involvement. Many claim that unless Holy Spirit works on everyone in the same way, it isn’t “fair” or that if people are always responding to Holy Spirit intervention with faith unto salvation, that makes us robots and such.

I suspect that is where our disagreement is.

peace to you

 

1) Grace is unmerited favor - not at issue
2) Holy Spirit must draw individuals to Christ - not at issue
3) Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin - not at issue.
4) Your view (what you call enabling grace) is not the supernatural alteration, quickening, of Calvinism's fiction. I call your "enabling grace" God's revelatory grace and certainly people see God in part because His divine attributes have been made known to them.
5) God's choice of individuals, conditioned upon crediting their faith as righteousness, is more than fair as we deserve eternal punishment.
6) Yes, the claim God instills faith rather than credits our faith is another Calvinist fiction.

 

So we agree at some points and disagree on others.

I won’t slander you by claiming your beliefs
are fiction. I will now agree to disagree.

Thanks for the conversation

peace to you

 

The fiction is you think spiritually dead humans have faith, which God then examines and determines if he will give credit or not give credit.

 

Once again the fiction of the gift of faith is hoisted. Utter nonsense. More than a dozen times scripture teaches God bestows blessings including salvation through or by way of faith. Calvinism rewrites all these verses to say "not through faith, rather saved then given faith." It is an absurd fiction.

 

This post may have been more appropriate under the other topic but given the flow of the discussion I am posting it here.

In Saved by Grace's first post "Christ the God-man" he posts a video by Alistar Begg. Begg makes one assertion that destroys his own Armenian doctrine. To paraphrase, "That which is not God, cannot reveal God." I agree 100% and must say that by extension we must conclude that which is not of God (Jn 3:3) cannot see, hear, recognize, believe, nor understand God.

John 1:11 says, "He came unto his own and his own received him not." This verse shows carnal man's total inability to GRASP the truth and in support of the above paragraph, prevents man from in any way being a part of his own salvation.

To contend that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had to look into the future to know who would believe is to make the God of the Universe no more than a fortune teller. It has already been shown by many of the brethren that without predestination there can be no prophesy. For God to look into the future, it must have already been established. We must also ask who decided/predestined/created the future for God to look into. For the future to be independent of God, robs him of his role as creator, the alpha and the omega.

Luke 14:28-"For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down FIRST (before the foundation), and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it. vs 29) lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him. vs 30) Saying this man began to build and was not able to finish."

The above verses are the promise of the perpetuity of the body of Christ as evidenced in Matt 16:18. He predestined, to the last saint, who would make up his kingdom. In doing so he guaranteed that his people would never be ashamed nor confounded.

 

Once again the fiction of spiritually dead people generating their own faith so that God either gives them credit or doesn't is foisted on us.
Our righteousness is found in Christ alone. Like Abraham, our faith is a gift to us, given by the gracious choice of God in salvation. That holy faith is our justification before God, the righteous judge.
If faith is of ourself, then it is not holy, nor is it righteous. Instead, it is like a filthy rag.
So, readers, determine if it is your personal, man-created, faith that God credits or a God-given, righteous, faith that God credits.
Van supports the first possibility. Almost everyone else supports the latter. Van is on a small island. The rest are holding to traditional Christian theology.

 

Did anyone say the lost "generate their own faith?" Nope - so misrepresentation on display.
Did anyone say our born anew righteousness is not found in Christ alone? Nope - so obfuscation on display
Scripture does say God credits our faith as righteousness, thus making it righteous. So the claim otherwise is unbiblical nonsense.
Did anyone say our faith is "man-created?" Nope so more misrepresentation of display

This is all they have folks, personal attacks, misrepresentation, and false charges. Time for "coming to our senses" and returning to our Father's word, we are saved by grace through or by way of our credited faith. Christ died as a ransom for all, those to be saved and those never to be saved.

 

God chose His Redeemer before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) and therefore corporately chose those who the Redeemer would redeem. However no individual was chosen for salvation before the foundation of the world because all those individually chose by God first existed as "not a people" and as having "not obtained mercy." 1 Peter 2:9-10. Thus individuals could not have been chosen before creation.

Total Spiritual Inability has been shown to be unbiblical nonsense numerous times. If the lost are in a "hardened state" why did God need to harden them in Romans 11?

John 6:37 - Everyone God gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away."
Note the tense, God gives, not God has given before creation. So this verse supports individual election during the lifetime of the believer.

 

Do you believe the spiritualy dead are mindless zombies? There is no kind of knowledge without some kind of faith. Epistemology.

 

They are spiritually dead. Incapable of knowing God's grace by their own efforts.
Ephesians 2:4 tells us that God MUST make a person spiritually alive. Without God doing this, all you have is tares trying to mimic the wheat; goats trying to mimic the sheep; people whom Jesus tells them, "I never knew you."

 

I'm pretty sure on this topic you are not capable of serious Bible Discussion. As has been pointed out, you appear to approach Scripture with blinders on and only to look for arguments and regularly boast about your Greek knowledge. A dose of humility would go a long way.