Featured Salvation: A Gift or a Reward?

So if you decide to show up at your birthday party, are all your gifts now rewards?

 

Yes, I agree that salvation is 100% a gift. A gift is something one can choose to accept or reject.

Maybe we should start a topic that exposes the truth of Calvinism. We could call it "Salvation: A Gift or an Attribute?". In Calvinism one has no choice on receiving the gift. It is something that is simply assigned to random people as an attribute.

 

Your illustration is entirely wrong. God gives out an invitation to everyone, but no one wants to come. Then God grabs His elect by the hand and drags them to the party. 'Then the Master said to the servant, "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in!"' (Luke 14:23).

Steve

 

How can it be a gift if you are forced to take it?

 

It can't be.

 

Why would the predestined need to be compelled? isnt that contradictory to DoG?

if person has to be compelled, dont they have to make a choice to respond? if not, then why is compulison needed?

 

But if you reject it, you have no gift.

 

No. That is entirely in line with the DoG. That's why they call it 'irresistible grace.' If it wasn't irresistible then the elect would resist it.

If someone is compelled, he doesn't have a choice qed.

Steve

 

And if you reject salvation you have no salvation. A gift is both given and received freely else it is not a gift. Romans 6:23 destroys the irresistible grace.

 

Are you saying God withholds mercy from some for a reason which is related to why He shows mercy to others, or is there no reason for the distinction except that God does as He wants to? Is refusing to show mercy something He delights in?

 

You don't have the gift, but it still remains a gift.

 

Do you know why, then, that God decides to only hand out gifts to a few instead of to everyone?

 

You are correct. "You", the person who rejected it, don't have the gift. The gift still exists though.

 

You can try to compell me to believe your unholy drivel, but I do have a choice to reject. In fact, i am 'compelled" to reject it

John

 

So do most non-Cals.

No, that would be the cults.

I don't know of anyone on the board that believes that way.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Faith is necessary for salvation. However faith is not a work. Faith is not cooperation with God.

Who is cooperating?

It is evidence of our salvation, and for that reason we know that it is not a gift that comes before salvation, neither is their Scripture to support such a notion.

You are only half right. God did choose us. I won't argue that. But we also chose God. He gave us that ability. He did not create us as zombies or automatons.

Everyone of us acknowledge that salvation is a gift, the gift of God.
We all agree that salvation is not of works.
We all agree that salvation is "all of God."
Where we part is that God in his sovereignty has made us different than the animal kingdom in granting us a mind to reason, and will to choose. We choose to do right and choose to do wrong. We aren't forced. We choose to accept Christ or to refuse Christ. We aren't forced.

Who are you referring to here. Not me. Not anyone I know. There are no cults here. I don't know who you are addressing. There is no cooperation in salvation. Let's be clear about that!

 

Yes, do you have scriptural evidence for saying God delights to abandon those people to the eternal punishment of His wrathful judgment because they simply did not get His impartial mercy shown to others?