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NASB | John 3:16 ¶ "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 3:16 ¶ "For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. |
Subject: why would God withhold the gift of faith |
Bible Note: You argue well. It is a pleasure to explore God's truth with you. I'd like to followup on your comment "But we are not dealing with a race of victims. We are dealing with a race of rebels;" Doesn't this imply that we are accountable, i.e. "not victims", precisely because WE make the choice to rebel? I hold we are accountable for our choices and this requires that our choices be genuine. For our choices to be geniuine, we must have the ability to act on them in a meaningful way and this means we have some power and authority of our own, within the context God provides. Of course, those gifts come from God. You also said "Salvation comes to those whom God shows mercy." I totally agree, especially in light of "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." -- Romans 11:32 I take this to mean that God gives us over to our choices, i.e. He allows us to choose and reap the consequences, and His mercy is gracious precisely because we definitely don't deserve it. Then there is "he who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD , but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble." -- Proverbs 28:13-14 I take this to mean that it is WE who, in response to conviction by the Spirit, choose to confess or to harden our hearts. That is, it is possible to deny the conviction of the Spirit and thus harden our hearts. Along the same lines, "let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD , and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon." -- Isiah 55:7 Again, I take this to mean that the choice to repent and accept God is ours, not God's. Finally, you said "strictly speaking, assenting is a response to faith. If one believes something, they belive it. It is not a choice that one makes whether or not to believe." I choose not to believe this ;) Let me illustrate. In mathematics, there are repeating non-terminating decimals such as 0.999999 where the 9's go on forever. The question is, does this equal 1.0 exactly or not? I can rigorously prove via standard methods that this number does in fact equal 1.0 exactly, but unless you understand and accept the methods of the proof, you probably will not be persuaded. If you are like most people, your intuition suggests that 0.9999 repeating falls short of unity. However, once you see that your assumptions about what this number means are false, you will change your mind, i.e. repent. A converse example involves the proof that 2 equals 1. However, this obviously incorrect conclusion can only be derived by a fallacious step in the proof, i.e. dividing by the equivalent of zero, which is not permitted. If you do not recognize the fallacious step, you might choose to believe that 2 does in fact equal 1. Once the flaw is revealed, you would then repent of your error. Granted, the ability to understand logic is a gift, but the application of that gift is ours. Otherwise, it is not a gift given freely, but rather a means by which to control your thinking. Based on the significance of our choices described in Scripture, I do not hold that God manipulates us in this way. |