A friend asked me these questions...

[unred typo]

1 Peter 1:2 -- “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.â€Â
Election is unto obedience.
To quote from Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, "When Paul writes to the Ephesians that it is 'by grace you have been saved though faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is gift from God' (Eph. 2:8), what does 'it' refer to?"

The footnote gives the answer: "The whole process of salvation, which includes our faith."

The Bible, the Greek itself, tells us that faith is apart of salvation and the Holy Spirit thru Paul lists faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us in these two passages that faith is a gift of the Spirit, the burden is on those who believe different, to try and prove otherwise. But this can't be done. ~JM~

The whole process of salvation is indeed a gift. It is not deserved nor earned. You can’t buy it or beg it or demand it. It is by God’s mercy and grace that he allows us to be elected unto salvation by obedience to his Son. Do you think it matters to God whether you are obedient or not? Is it going to ruin his day if you refuse to follow the message of Christ to be saved? You are less than a germ in the whole scheme of things. What is truly amazing is that he allows us the supreme privilege and honor to be his bond slaves. If we follow and obey, even more amazing is the promise that he will make us his children and take us to heaven to live with him there.

Faith is believing God’s promises, pure and simple. This is a gift because it is his faithfulness in showing us that he can be trusted to do what he has promised that enables us to trust him more. If he wasn’t faithful to do what he said, we could not trust him and have faith in him.

Why do you turn everything into some mucky muck theological equation? It’s simple. It’s real. It’s real simple.
:fadein:

You mean this refusal to accept your inadequate version? I have explained what you apparently seem to miss in your 'study' of this portion of scripture. You may have missed my reply sandwiched in between your double entry of the same post. Feel free to read it again for the first time.
:wink:

 

[JM]

Perhaps you’d like to deal with the proof as posted instead of offering up a red herring. It’s posted twice in hopes that you would offer a differing exegesis of the passages listed, but you failed to do so, twice.

 

[Proximity]

Destiny, that is exactly what i sought after, thank you for posting that so clearly! Now if only a mod could lock this thread so that this topic doesn't get further butchered...