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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: What does the word"believe"involve |
Bible Note: Food for thought... No one ever does anything outside of their own nature. For example, I have the nature of a man. I cannot choose to breathe water like a fish. My nature is man, not fish. Fish cannot choose to be like men. A dog follows its nature in being dog-like. It cannot choose to be like a bird, for the qualities of being bird-like do not reside within the dog. Now, what I do, like all men, is choose only those things that seem good to me. In fact, you cannot force me to do anything. If you hold a gun to my head, and order me to do something, this will result in an evaluation. I will see that disobedience might get me killed, a condition I deem as "not-good." Compliance might spare my life, a condition I deem as good. So I comply. You have not forced me, you have only adjusted the condition from which I make my decisions. (Of course, I have to have a sufficient understanding of guns, and enough certainty that the threat is real.) God looks down through the annals of time. What does He see? He sees that no one does good, that no one seeks Him, that no one seeks truth (Psalm 53:1-3). God is far from their thoughts (Psalm 10:4), and their highest, noblest efforts at righteousness are utterly foul in His sight (Isaiah 64:6). Man sins by choice and as a matter of course from his very nature. Sin fills every aspect of his being from head to toe (Isaiah 1:5-6). His heart and mind is filled with it (Ecclesiastes 9:3; Ephesians 4:17-19; Titus 1:15; 1 Timothy 3:8, 6:5). "The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9). There remains no good in men (Romans 7:18). Man is basically evil, not good. His heart is as hard as stone (Ezekiel 11:19; Jeremiah 23:29). Man imagines that he is only sick, but the Bible says he is dead (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13). Man feels he is, at worst, near-sighted, but Scripture says he is blind (2 Corinthians 3:14). Man shrugs off his vices as minor, but the Word says he is a slave (John 8:44; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Timothy 2:26). That is what God sees looking down through the annals of time. There is nothing -- nothing at all -- in lost people that make them worthy of salvation. Absolutely nothing. They deserve eternal damnation. Lost people are dead per the fall. They are completely without God and, in fact, see God as an enemy, one who has usurped their sovereignty. They will never see obedience to God as a good thing; therefore they will never choose it. They’re utterly unable to make good, moral choices. God, also, cannot be different than His nature allows. He can only be what He is. His holiness is such that none can stand before Him at judgment and be counted righteous unless they are really and truly righteous, for God will never excuse the guilty (Exodus 34:7). Nevertheless, before creation, God decided beforehand to lovingly set apart a people for Himself, but not as a result of anything worthy in them (Amos 3:2; Matthew 7:23; John 10:14; Ephesians 1:4-5). Salvation is a gift of God (Romans 6:23) for which He alone receives all the glory, all the credit (Isaiah 43:11; Ephesians 2:10). Wages are given to people because they've earned the wage (John 4:36). If a person does something to earn a gift, it ceases to be a gift, but a wage. Even faith is a gift (Ephesians 2:8). Because of the fallen nature of our hearts, there is a strong desire to garner at least a tiny bit of the credit for our salvation. It certainly is understandable why those sorts of teachings are popular. However, the teaching of "foreseen faith" has no Biblical basis, nor does it have a logical foundation. Man obeys God as a result of salvation, not to gain it, if that were the case then according to scripture, no one would be saved. By the way, just saying you are not guilty of something, does not make it so... -John |