Chapter 7: Of God's Covenant
1. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. ( Luke 17:10; Job 35:7,8 )
2. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace, wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe. ( Genesis 2:17; Galatians 3:10; Romans 3:20, 21; Romans 8:3; Mark 16:15, 16; John 3:16; Ezekiel 36:26, 27; John 6:44, 45; Psalms 110:3 )
3. This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament; and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect; and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency. ( Genesis 3:15; Hebrews 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 11:6, 13; Romans 4:1, 2, &c.; Acts 4:12; John 8:56 )
NOTICE verse 15.
is it
not lawful for me to do what I wish
with my.own.?
When the gospel of the Kingdom is preached, it goes out to Many.
Not all welcome it.
Those chosen do.
Explain how the lost, for whom Christ did not die, have no excuse for their falsely being called to a hope that they can never have? That makes no sense. Mark 16:15, Colossians 1:23.
So your saying that the saved have done the works necessary but the unsaved did not do those works. Now that is a strange view of the bible. So what would those works be, it can't be faith as Paul has told us that faith is not a work.
If God has rejected them since before the foundation of the world then how can they be held responsible for not answering a call that God would not let them answer?
So since all those that were not elected do have a real excuse to say that God is unjust. They never had any chance to trust in Christ Jesus for salvation. Yet God tells us that man has no excuse so how do you square that circle.
But according to Calvinism God determines all things so if those people did not want salvation then it is only because God made sure they would not want salvation. That does not sound like that God of the bible does it? Remember He wants all to be saved.
1Ti 2:3
This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
1Ti 2:4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.