Results 1 - 7 of 7
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 69862 | ||
"We have freeedom of choice. If we CHOOSE not to follow God and repent from our sins we will not recieve any redemption" Okay. Now what about the verses I have cited? You have failed to respond to those. We have to take into account the whole counsel of God. I can emphatically state that only those who repent are redeemed. Now please tell me what "redemption" means. "God will not force us to recieve redemption if we choose not to." Never said that He did. "Yes, our salvation IS a co-effort between us and God. God did His part. We must do ours. James chapter 2" James 2 says nothing of the sort. James says that a true faith is one that produces works: "What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?" --James 2:14 The implied answer is "no." But notice that he refers to someone who SAYS he has faith, not someone that genuinely has it. True biblical faith involves repentance and results in God-honoring works. But it is the faith by which we are declared righteous before God (Romans 5:1) and the very faith itself is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9) as are the repentance (Acts 5:31, Acts 11:18, 2 Timothy 2:25) and the works (Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:13). All of these are the RESULT of God's grace and mercy, not the CAUSE of it (Titus 3:3-7). If salvation is a co-effort, then my Savior is not Jesus, but rather my Saviors are Jesus and Joe. Does that sound biblical to you? "Our part" is "God's part" too... --Joe! |
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2 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | David_24597 | 69865 | ||
Joe, are you saying that God will grant us salvation even if we don't want it? If God wants us to be saved and we reject it, are we still saved? | ||||||
3 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 69868 | ||
"Joe, are you saying that God will grant us salvation even if we don't want it?" I am saying that no one wants salvtion until God grants it to us. Part of the salvation process is changing our natures so that we do want it. "If God wants us to be saved and we reject it, are we still saved?" Such a scenario does not happen. http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/doctrines_grace/tulip.html --Joe! |
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4 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Morant61 | 69874 | ||
Greetings Joe! You wrote: "Such a scenario does not happen." I'm assuming that you mean by your statement that individuals cannot resist God's will. How about Mt. 23:37? "??O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." Isn't this an example of individuals resisting God 's will for their lives? Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |
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5 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 69881 | ||
Should we open up the ol' "decretive, preceptive, and dispositional wills" lecture? :) I think we could both agree that God's "will" carries different connotations in different contexts. One could play a game of Bible ping-pong with the Matthew 23:37's and the Romans 9:18-19's. Rather than hash all that out in my own words, and since Matthew 23:37 is more than anything a demonstration of Jesus' love for Jerusalem, I would like to point interested parties (both of us!) to an excerpt from a recent book I find utterly fascinating. It is _The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God_ by D.A. Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I encourage everyone to go check it out and chew on it a while: http://www.antithesis.com/features/love.html --Joe! |
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6 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Morant61 | 69913 | ||
Greetings Joe! Lecture? As long as you provide the Scriptures which define God's will as being of three types! :-) It always seems like any verse which says that God's will was resisted or didn't come to pass means something else, while every verse which says that God's will was accomplished or accepted means that God determined that to happen! :-) I'll have to check out your recommended book. I like the guys from Trinity! :-) Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |
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7 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 69941 | ||
"Lecture? As long as you provide the Scriptures which define God's will as being of three types! :-)" I will try and avoid cracking open the Francis Turretin for now. ;) The argument centers more squarely on the fact that it doesn't make sense to ascribe the same connotation to every use of the word "will." For example, was it God's will that Jesus die? To say "no" directly contradicts Isaiah 53:10 and Acts 4:27-28. To say "yes" would apparently mean that the sixth and ninth commandments, expressions of God's will, didn't apply here. So the murderers of Jesus accomplished God's will by violating God's will? Therein lies the problem. We also see that God works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11). Since "all" means "all" (insert smile here), His will is done. And yet, as you point out in Matthew 23, Jesus desires the repentance of Israel, and God commands repentance, an expression of his will. Isaiah 46 is a testimony to the efficacy of God's will, as is Psalm 115:1-3. Yet, we see that the unregenerate are unwilling to do what God's will, and are successful in doing so. Another apparent quandry. Does God accomplish all of his will or not? For a last example, we can look at the Lord's Prayer. Jesus teaches us to pray for the kingdom of God to come and for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. What does Jesus mean by "will" here? If we are asking God to accomplish the conformity of creation to His eternal purpose of bringing glory to Himself, then we are asking God to will (efficaciously) that His (preceptive) will be done! You wrote: "It always seems like any verse which says that God's will was resisted or didn't come to pass means something else, while every verse which says that God's will was accomplished or accepted means that God determined that to happen! :-)" It isn't the verses that say that God's will WAS accomplished that we have to worry about, but rather the ones that insist that all of God's will, in no uncertain terms, WILL BE accomplished. "I'll have to check out your recommended book. I like the guys from Trinity! :-)" I found it to be a throught-provoking book. It is a rather brief one (less than 100 pages, comprising four lectures that Carson gave at Dallas Seminary a few years ago), but is jam-packed with things that left me praising God for the revealed complexity of the nature of His love. --Joe! |
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