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NASB | Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing [what is told], and what is heard comes by the [preaching of the] message concerning Christ. |
Subject: Is hearing necessary for salvation? |
Bible Note: Greetings John Reformed, I will grant that you see our sides fairly clearly. I do think the Gospel is a lifepreserver that God has tossed out to all men. However, the analogy isn't exact because what is the other alternative for the drowning person? The way you have depicted it, everyone would be pulling on the preserver. But everyone doesn't take it because there is an alternative. The man who is drowning in sin thinks something else looks pretty good and rejects God's help. If there were no alternatives, everyone would take the God's salvation. When Paul talks about the war in his own body, the war between body and soul, he speaks of the challenge that we each face (Romans 7). The bad news for man is that he is in a body that needs but also wants. He needs food, but he wants too much. Paul said, "who will set me free...?" Romans 8 gives the answer. God has done through Christ what the Law could not do. The righteous requirement of the Law was perfection and God through faith [the kind of faith demonstrated in Paul's words of chapter 7, 'the thing I do, I hate; that which I want to do, I do not do'] is able to make sinful men perfect. He goes on to say that the mind set on the flesh is death, the mind set on the spirit is life. Here is where we can't agree. HOW is the mind set on the flesh or on the things of the Spirit? You see the total depraved nature of man and insist it is God who does the ‘setting'; I see God appealing to man with ample evidence so that even the most hardened can be made soft. Both ways get people saved, but which way is right? Both ways get people saved by the grace of God, but which way jives with the rest of the Scripture? Why does the Holy Spirit fill Scripture with the conditional statements; why the imperatives: the 'thou shalts', the must, the demands; why the warnings of hell and hopes of heaven; why the vocative laments: the hopes and wishes and desires. Why does God speak to man at all in Scripture if the facts can't phase the hardened sinner? From your perspective/belief, you must grant that no one would ever be saved, no one would ever grab the 'preserver', no one would ever 'set his mind on the Spirit' unless God personally put it in their hand and plucked them to safety. Nothing, not the truth of Scripture, not the glories of heaven get even a spark from the depraved man. In my way of thinking, these are very powerful messages, ones that can overcome the fog of error and lies that surround the sinner. I see the difficulty you have in accepting a Gospel that is made available to all, but assured only to those smart enough to take it. It's a risk. But God takes risk. When God made a Garden with choice, God took a risk. It was an experiment, if you will, to see if man would choose good over evil. Man with freewill chose to disobey God: that was part of the nature given him. When God flooded the earth, it was a risk. He didn't make or spark or place desire in Noah to obey and build the ark. That was Noah; he was righteous and blameless. God found the only eight people on earth who still loved Him and so God provided them a way of salvation. The sovereignty of God provided that if Noah built an ark, man would be saved. Noah didn't build the ark because of an ALL CONTROLLING SOVEREIGN GOD put it in him. Think about it, we don't marvel at the faith of Noah because God made Noah build the ark, we marvel because WHAT a FAITH he had! continued... |