Does God LOVE everybody

[Tenchi]

How do you know that Noah and the others did not have the Spirit of God.

Well, the Bible says that "the Spirit was upon" so-and-so, if he was. Simeon, who prophesied over the infant Jesus. is an example of this:

Luke 2:25
25 And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

(See also: Balaam - Numbers 24:2, Gideon - Judges 6:34, Jephthah - Judges 11:29, Samuel - 1 Samuel 10:10, etc.)

Prior to the Atonement of Christ at Calvary, the Spirit came and went from people, not indwelling them permanently, as he does now, post-Calvary. In any case, it isn't ever said of Job that the Spirit was upon him. Nor is this ever said of Noah, either, though God spoke to him at various times. Before his conversion, Cornelius also, is never said in Scripture to have had the Spirit upon him, though he did have a vision in which he was instructed by an angel to visit Peter.

I know that it is the general teaching of Calvinism that you have to be regenerated or born again, but I'm not sure.

It is one of the...peculiarities of Calvinism that it holds that a person must first be born-again (spiritually regenerated) in order to understand and believe the Gospel (which is what Scripture says is necessary to being born-again). I don't know that every professing Calvinist would say this, but certainly the harder-line Calvinists, like R.C. Sproul, held to this ordo salutis, bizarre though it is.

Romans 10:13-14
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

Romans 1:16
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

John 20:31
31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

As these verses plainly indicate, the Bible's ordo salutis is that believing in Jesus necessarily precedes salvation (which is synonymous with spiritual regeneration). Nowhere in the Bible have I ever read that the Spirit must first spiritually regenerate a person so that they then can believe and be saved. The doctrinal contortions of Calvinism, however, demand this inversion of the actual order of things.

The Arminians who were against Calvinism but still had to admit in man's total depravity came up with a work around called "Prevenient Grace." This is a pre-conversion work of the Holy Spirit that makes a person able to come to Christ, but is still resistible. They believed it is given to everybody. That is why it had to be resistible or everybody would be saved.

They "came up" with the doctrine of prevenient grace as a "work around"? That's not what Arminians would say. Instead, they would point to Scripture that amply establishes their view. John 16:8, John 6:44 and 2 Timothy 2:25 all indicate that God must act to convict, illuminate and enable a change of mind about the Gospel in the mind of a lost person. But as Romans 1:16 says, the "power of God for salvation" resides in the truth of the Gospel itself though it is contingent in its salvific effect upon the lost person choosing to believe the Gospel. Jesus himself illustrated this in his mournful words to the city of Jerusalem:

Luke 13:33-34
33 "Nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem.
34 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!

There is nothing of the compulsive here in what Jesus says. Instead, his desire for the children of Jerusalem is subjected to their choice to reject him - just as happens with the Gospel. This isn't a "work around" but what is quite evident in Scripture.

I kind of believe in something like that, but it is only given to those God has chosen and it is irresistible. Thus Noah and all those you mentioned.

But you're making an unwarranted assumption, here, about Noah, Job and Cornelius. See above.

 

[Whatever]

Nowhere in the Bible have I ever read that the Spirit must first spiritually regenerate a person so that they then can believe and be saved.

There is:
Act 16:14 Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.

This is what Robertson's Word Pictures says about "opened"
Opened (diēnoixen). First aorist active indicative of dianoigō, old word, double compound (dia, ana, oigō) to open up wide or completely like a folding door (both sides, dia, two). Only the Lord could do that. Jesus had opened (the same verb) the mind of the disciples to understand the Scriptures (Luk_24:45).

Something supernatural happened there.
John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
This comes from Vincent's Word Studies (I don't think him or Robertson above are Calvinists)
See (ἰδεῖν)
The things of God's kingdom are not apparent to the natural vision. A new power of sight is required, which attaches only to the new man. Compare 1Co_2:14.

What is interesting is that Jesus expected that Nicodemus should already know these things.
John 3:10 Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?

 

[Tenchi]

Maybe so, but that was not what Paul was describing when he said:

1Co_2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

This is the effect of the Fall. The spiritual separation between Man and God caused by Adam's sinful choice produces this inability to "receive the things of God." But this inability is greatly overstated by Calvinists who want to make the inability a corpse-like one such that men like Noah, or Job, or Cornelius shouldn't be possible. But, there they are in Scripture, throwing a two-by-four into the spokes of the doctrine of Total Depravity/Inability.

Certainly, the general condition under which people carry on naturally is one in which God must initiate things with the lost, enabling them to understand the Gospel, but this is because people grow increasingly hardened into sin and disbelief over time, not because they are born rock-hard to God's Truth. This is why evangelism to children, whose hearts have not yet grown hard and cold toward God, is so important. Though they are under the "curse" of the Fall, spiritually separated from God by Adam's sin, they are not, from the womb, moral profligates and hardened toward God, as adults are.

How about Jesus?
John 8:43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

But there were many who did hear his word and became his disciples, though they were not of the Twelve.

Luke 10:1-9
1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.
2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
3 Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.
4 Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.
5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’
6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.
7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.
8 Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you.
9 Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

That "cannot" is that famous Greek word dunamai that some people like to point out is where we get out English word for Dynamite. It simply means to be able or possible.
It also has this thing connected to it οὐκ ouk ook used before a vowel = the absolutely negative.

Well, as the fact of the seventy-two disciples indicate, you're making too broad an application of John 8:43, applying it universally and too profoundly. You'll note that Jesus never says to the Jews who were questioning him, "You cannot understand because the Holy Spirit is not in you." Nor does he say, "You cannot understand because my Father has ordained that you should not understand." No, Jesus locates the reason for their inability to bear - not understand - his words in his audience, not in God's sovereign decree, or an in-born corpse-like inability to take in what he was saying, inherited from the Fall in Eden. In fact, they did understand quite well what he was saying so that, when he clearly equated himself with God, they tried to stone him for doing so (John 8:57-59).

A few verses later Jesus says:
John 8:47 He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."

It seems obvious that hearing, understanding, accepting the Gospel depends upon "being of God" and those who are "not of God" do not hear, or accept it.

It has nothing to do with being "dead."

But the Jews (the Pharisees among them) who resisted what Jesus was saying did so, not because they did not understand him, but because they could not bear to think they're Jewish heritage was not the "in" with God that they had been raised to believe it was. So long had they held their belief that being a Jew (i.e child of Abraham - John 8:39) was itself sufficient to make them members of God's kingdom that they could not bear to abandon this belief. They'd grown hardened into it over time and were unable to break free of that hardening.

So, you're right: Being "dead" - having a corpse-like inability to respond positively to the Gospel - had nothing to do with the Jews's rejection of Jesus in John 8. But the idea that they could not "hear" because they were "not of God" needs to be understood in light of the other things Jesus says of his resistant Jewish audience:

John 8:15
15 You judge according to the flesh...

Jesus doesn't say here, "Because my Father has made you to do so." He doesn't take the Calvinist line and say, "You were born utterly unable to respond to me in any other way than you are."

John 8:19
19 They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”

Jesus points to the ignorance of the Jews here concerning God the Father but he doesn't say, "Which my Father has decreed to be," as a Calvinist would.

John 8:23-24
23 He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.
24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

This is an odd thing for Jesus to say to his audience if it is the case that God the Father has sovereignly decreed for them to die in unbelief in their sins, as Calvinism contends. If this is the actual truth about them, then Jesus's "unless you believe that I am he" remark is pointless and gives the false impression that they can do something (believe) to escape dying in their sins. Worse, Jesus seems to be saying that his audience ought to do act to alter a circumstance of unbelief that God has ordained. Is this not to defy God's will, though? It certainly seems so to me. This is, though, the sort of weirdness a Calvinist must sustain in holding to their soteriological systematic.

John 8:27-28
27 They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father.
28 So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.

How is it that Jesus points to his being "lifted up" in crucifixion as the means by which his incredulous audience would know who he really was, rather than the sovereign decree of God? Is it not ultimately that God simply ordains who will and won't believe in Christ, on Calvinism? If so, why does Jesus not say this but, instead, gives the misleading impression here that, by his crucifixion, illumination of his true identity to his contentious audience would happen?

John 8:31-32
31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

But how is it that "abiding in Christ's word" would set them free and not the sovereign decree of God the Father, as is actually the case, on Calvinism? The Jews could not do any "abiding" unless God had not first ordained that they should do so, right? So why did Jesus give the impression that they could take the action of "abiding in my word" and thus be set free by the truth? He gives no hint that the truth is that they have no hope of abiding in his word if God the Father has not first decreed that they would so abide.

John 8:34
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Here, Jesus gives the real reason the Jews were reacting to his teaching as they were. By long practice of sin, they had become slaves to it and unable to bear the truth of their slavery to their flesh and the devil. God had not enslaved them, or hardened them into their practice of sin; they had chosen to live as they were, just as Cornelius, Job and Noah had chosen to do otherwise, and could no longer bear the exposing truth of God.

 

[Tenchi]

There is:
Act 16:14 Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.

This is what Robertson's Word Pictures says about "opened"
Opened (diēnoixen). First aorist active indicative of dianoigō, old word, double compound (dia, ana, oigō) to open up wide or completely like a folding door (both sides, dia, two). Only the Lord could do that. Jesus had opened (the same verb) the mind of the disciples to understand the Scriptures (Luk_24:45).

I don't deny that God must work to convict, draw and give repentance to the lost person, but nothing in the verse concerning Lydia above states that God sovereignly decreed that Lydia should be saved and so, spiritually regenerated her in order that she should believe the Gospel and thus be spiritually regenerated. This must all be forced into the verse, not drawn out of it.

 

[Whatever]

but nothing in the verse concerning Lydia above states that God sovereignly decreed that Lydia should be saved and so, spiritually regenerated her in order that she should believe the Gospel and thus be spiritually regenerated. This must all be forced into the verse, not drawn out of it.

But we don't get out theology from one verse. Lydia is a human being. She is subject to the reality of the Bible.

2Timothy 1:9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,

Lydia was called with a holy calling according to God's own purpose and grace before time began.

Acts 2:39 For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.”

John 6:37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.

John 17:2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh (the world?), that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. (Like Lydia?)
John 6:45 It is written in the prophets, 'AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

Lydia heard and learned from the Father when He opened her heart to heed or attend to Paul's preaching.

This seems to be the consistent theme in the NT of how people are saved. I'm not forcing it into the verse.

 

[Whatever]

Jesus doesn't say here, "Because my Father has made you to do so."

Actually He kind of does or at least John does.

John 12:37 Although Jesus had performed so many miraculous signs before them, they still refused to believe in him, 38 so that the word of the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled. He said, “Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 For this reason they could not believe, because again Isaiah said,
40
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
so that they would not see with their eyes
and understand with their heart,
and turn to me, and I would heal them.”

They could not believe because it was prophesied in Scripture that cannot be broken.

All the other stuff you said totally fits within our view of man's total inability. It is a matter of the working of the mind (or heart) with the affections, desires, likes and dislikes, subconscious fears, perceptions, the understanding, the reasoning powers, the imagination, conscience, the intentions, the will and so forth.

Yes, the Scribes and Pharisee's had their own views of religion and what the Torah said, and were not about to listen to this upstart tell them what he thought it meant. They had their own beliefs about what the Messiah would be like when he came. Jesus fit none of these beliefs, so they rejected him. Yes they were jealous of all the attention he was getting. That's all part of the fallen nature that can only be broken by a miracle.

 

[Whatever]

As these verses plainly indicate, the Bible's ordo salutis is that believing in Jesus necessarily precedes salvation (which is synonymous with spiritual regeneration). Nowhere in the Bible have I ever read that the Spirit must first spiritually regenerate a person so that they then can believe and be saved.

There is one verse that does this maybe.

1John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

Some versions have it different:
1John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,

"Has been" is past tense and "is" could also be.

My cross reference says "is born" is = Perfect tense, passive voice, indicative mood, third person singular verb.

The dictionary says: The meaning of PERFECT TENSE is a verb tense that is used to refer to an action or state that is completed at the time of speaking or at a time spoken of.

So it sounds like the born of God was already completed by the time of believing.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Mat 16:16 Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Mat 16:17 Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

 

[brightfame52]

Jn 3:16 tells us of God's Love for the world, but never specifically states that God loved all mankind as individuals without exception, that has been read into the text by those who care little about the Truth of God.

And such a verse as Jn 3:16

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Must and should be explained by other verses of scripture that speaks on the same subject as God's Love of People.

First lets look at at an OT scripture that speaks to God's Love to a People Deut 7:6-8

6For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

7The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

8 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

We find here something extremely important about an immutable God and His Love. That God's Love is set upon a people He chooses look at Deut 7:7

7The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

Notice too that His Love is set upon the fewest of all people. This should be a big eye opener for us, God Loves not the masses of mankind, for those He Loves are the few of mankind.

Remember Jesus stated about finding the road that leads to life that few find it Matt 7:13-14

13Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Those few, are and will be those God Loved. So God so loved the world, means He loved a few , chosen ones in the world, His own special ones.

Jn 13:1

1Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

The jews would have known from Deut 7 that God's Love was exclusive for only some, but what they did not know was that some was not limited to them, for God loved some as well of different people groups, outside of their race; but His Love was nevertheless limited to a certain people, but just not to a limited location or race, it was the world at large that this special loved and certain people would be located.

 

[tdidymas]

He chose, elected, a specific person who would be the bloodline lineage of Christ.

That’s the context of Romans 9.

It’s not that He choose Jacob for salvation and Esau for eternal damnation.


That’s the point I was making about Romans 9 and election.


IOW’s the Jews are the elect. A chosen people through whom God has chosen to bring salvation to the world through Jesus Christ.



JLB

I agree with you in this particular conclusion, but I disagree on how you are using it. You are using your interpretation of Rom. 9 in order to deny that God chose individuals for salvation. Am I reading you right? But in Eph. 1 and many other places, Paul clearly states that we are chosen as individuals. Is it possible that Rom. 9 can be affirming that God chose Jacob for national reasons as well as individual reasons? Is it possible that Rom. 9 could be talking about God choosing Jacob for salvation (as is indicated by the context), and passed up Esau (that is, not chosen him for salvation)? So that, Jacob was given mercy, but Esau was given justice in regard to salvation?

 

[Tenchi]

But we don't get out theology from one verse. Lydia is a human being. She is subject to the reality of the Bible.

Yes, Christian doctrine is derived from a comprehensive synthesis of God's word. But you asserted a very specific thing from the verse concerning Lydia, which it doesn't say. It's a kind of "moving the goalposts" to reply as you have above when your assertion about the verse is shown to be in error.

2Timothy 1:9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,

Lydia was called with a holy calling according to God's own purpose and grace before time began.

Acts 16:14
14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

When you have to resort to another book of the Bible entirely to make this verse say what you want it to say, in my opinion, your interpretation of the verse has failed. It's seems very evident to me that the Lord opening Lydia's heart is not the same as the Lord spiritually regenerating her heart. The former is an aiding of Lydia to an understanding of the Gospel that makes her responsible for her choice concerning it. The latter is a metamorphosis of her heart, of the kind that Paul described in 2 Corinthians 5:17.

In Revelation 3:20, Christ stands at the door of a person's heart, knocking upon it. If the person will open the door of their heart to Christ, he will enter in and "dine" with that person. There is no hint in this verse, or it's immediate context, of Christ imposing himself on the person upon whose heart's door he is knocking. Only if they will open the door, will he enter. He doesn't kick it open, enter and force-transform the person so that they want to answer it, then go outside and begin knocking again 'til they open the door. This is the Calvinist's odd contortion of things, but not the Bible's, and none of this contortion is at all evident in Acts 16:14 concerning Lydia's conversion.

In the verse from 2 Timothy 1:9, the "in Christ Jesus" bit is crucial to the "saved us and called us" part of the verse. We are elect in Jesus Christ. God's purpose and grace, expressed in His calling and salvation, are extended to the lost in Christ Jesus. So, then, God has ordained from "eternity past," (i.e. predestined) that all who choose to be in Jesus are recipients of God's salvation and calling; it isn't that God has arbitrarily selected particular people from among the billions on the planet to be His own.

Lydia, then, once she had trusted in Jesus as her Savior and Lord and thus had "put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14), was, being in him, one of the elect of God.

Actually He kind of does or at least John does.

John 12:37 Although Jesus had performed so many miraculous signs before them, they still refused to believe in him, 38 so that the word of the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled. He said, “Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 For this reason they could not believe, because again Isaiah said,
40
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
so that they would not see with their eyes
and understand with their heart,
and turn to me, and I would heal them.”

They could not believe because it was prophesied in Scripture that cannot be broken.

Yes, God judicially hardens people, not in contradiction to a different, softer condition they would have chosen, but in exaggeration of their freely chosen (in a libertarian sense, not a compatibilist one) condition of hardness (as in the case of Pharaoh). And as the seventy-two disciples of Jesus plainly indicate, this hardening/blinding wasn't in effect for all Jews who heard him.

I much prefer the middle-knowledge explanation of Molinism to Calvinism's unilateral divine decree in making sense of God's hardening of people in Scripture. Rather than having to resort to divine "mystery" as Calvinism does, Molinism preserves the state-of-affairs described in Scripture of both genuine creaturely freedom and divine sovereignty by way of God's omniscient "three (logical) moments of knowledge." By His omnisicence, not divine fiat, God accomplishes all that He wills to accomplish. This achieves a reasonable and biblical synthesis of God's word rather than the "mysterious" paradoxes/unsolvable problems of Calvinism.

All the other stuff you said totally fits within our view of man's total inability. It is a matter of the working of the mind (or heart) with the affections, desires, likes and dislikes, subconscious fears, perceptions, the understanding, the reasoning powers, the imagination, conscience, the intentions, the will and so forth.

I understand that some Reformed/Calvinist proponents, seeing the serious problems with theological determinism in relation to the biblical record, think they can resort to compatibilism (i.e. soft determinism) as a solution. But compatibilism is, at bottom, just theological (hard) determinism pushed back a step. The "dirty secret" of Calvinist compatiblism is that the wants/desires of the human person that compatibilism affirms they are "free" to follow, are instituted by God. According to compatibilism, yes, the individual is free to act according to their strongest inclinations/desires/wants but these wants are deterministically decreed by God such that the individual cannot ever follow any other desires than those imposed upon the individual by God. Such compatibilist "freedom" is, then, no freedom at all, really but a slippery bit of word-play and is nothing like what I mean, as a non-Calvinist, by "creaturely freedom."

Yes, the Scribes and Pharisee's had their own views of religion and what the Torah said, and were not about to listen to this upstart tell them what he thought it meant. They had their own beliefs about what the Messiah would be like when he came. Jesus fit none of these beliefs, so they rejected him. Yes they were jealous of all the attention he was getting. That's all part of the fallen nature that can only be broken by a miracle.

But unlike the Calvinist, I don't think that, at bottom, all of what you've described here is sovereignly decreed by God, all of the attitudes, thoughts and behavior of the scribes and Pharisees made by God to happen just as they did. The scribes and Pharisees had various moments of genuine creaturely freedom where they truly could have refrained, or not refrained, from a particular moral action, which is what the things I cited about Christ's Jewish audience from John 8 illustrated.

 

[Tenchi]

There is one verse that does this maybe.

1John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

Some versions have it different:
1John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,

"Has been" is past tense and "is" could also be.

My cross reference says "is born" is = Perfect tense, passive voice, indicative mood, third person singular verb.

The dictionary says: The meaning of PERFECT TENSE is a verb tense that is used to refer to an action or state that is completed at the time of speaking or at a time spoken of.

So it sounds like the born of God was already completed by the time of believing.

If I go back a bit in John's letter I encounter this remark:

1 John 4:16
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us...

This knowledge>belief order of things is echoed by the apostle Paul:

2 Timothy 1:12
12 ...for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.

Romans 10:13-14
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

These three places in Scripture all explain that belief is a result of, and is necessarily predicated upon, knowledge. A person takes in the knowledge of the Gospel, then, and is, as a result, faced with the choice either to accept that knowledge as true, or not - to believe it, or not believe it. If one believes the Gospel to be true, out of this choice to believe arises the choice to act, or not, upon the knowledge of the Gospel one has accepted as true. All of this is a function of the intellect, the mind, leading the human will in its response to the Gospel, not the compulsion of the decree of God upon the individual.

So, when I read 1 John 5:1, even if I read "has been" instead of "is," I understand that belief in Christ precedes and may produce being born of God, as John stated, not the other way 'round.

 

[Whatever]

These three places in Scripture all explain that belief is a result of, and is necessarily predicated upon, knowledge.

The first two verses:
1Jn 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
2Ti 1:12 . . . for I know whom I have believed

Says nothing about believing to be saved. It is somebody already saved simply saying I know whom I have believed.

The Romans passage is no better. I believe that everyone who calls upon the Lord will be saved and that a person needs to hear it to respond to it. The question is who responds and why do they respond.

Php 1:29 For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake

Who is Paul writing too.
Php 1:1 Paul and Timothy . . .To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi

John 6:64 But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."

 

[Whatever]

It's seems very evident to me that the Lord opening Lydia's heart is not the same as the Lord spiritually regenerating her heart.

Here is what Vines New Testament Dictionary says about "opened"
dianoigo (G1272), "to open up completely" (dia, "through," intensive, and No. 1), is used (a) literally, Luk_2:23; Act_7:56, in the best mss.; (b) metaphorically, of the eyes, Mar_7:34; Luk_24:31; of the Scriptures, Luk_24:32 and Act_17:3; of the mind, Luk_24:45, RV (KJV, "understanding"); of the heart, Act_16:14.

When you have to resort to another book of the Bible entirely to make this verse say what you want it to say, in my opinion, your interpretation of the verse has failed.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

I am not making it say what I want it to say. I am using all Scripture to understand what each part means.
Lydia was a natural human being.
1Co 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

You can ignore the above all you want and say it doesn't apply to Lydia, but it does.

1Co 2:15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.

"Judge" Strongs = anakrinō - properly to scrutinize, that is, (by implication) investigate, interrogate, determine: - ask, question, discern, examine, judge, search.

How does a natural woman who does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, nor know them, become spiritual to be able to know and receive them?

 

[Whatever]

I am constantly amazed at how in Romans 9, Paul is expecting the same kind of anti-Calvinist replies to what he teaches as we get now.
This is the J.B. Phillips translation:
Romans 9:16-17 It is obviously not a question of human will or human effort, but of divine mercy. The scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name shall be declared in all the earth’. 18 It seems plain, then, that God chooses on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will harden in their sin. 19-20 Of course I can almost hear your retort: “If this is so, and God’s will is irresistible, why does God blame men for what they do?” But the question really is this: “Who are you, a man, to make any such reply to God?”

 

[follower]

How does a natural woman who does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, nor know them, become spiritual to be able to know and receive them?

How does a rock laying on the ground begin to Praise Jesus !?