Bubba said:
The Scripture is very clear that we are responsible for what we do, it is also clear that no one will come to God without first being regenerated by the Spirit and born again (1 Cor.2:14, John 6:44, Ephesians 2:1-9).
It's about grace, Bubba
I agree with this post. However, the "its about grace" statement stimulated me to make a point I have been thinking about making for some while now.
We need to be careful not to "let the tail wag the dog". In the context of the issue of grace - it is important that we not take a definition of this term, whose origin is entirely unclear,
and then read that definition back into the scriptures.
People (me too) tend to slip into this mode of thinking and it does not work. So, just as an example, people take the word "works" and read it as "good deeds", when, for Paul at least, the context tells us that "works" is most often used to denote the works of Torah - the ethnic charter of the Jews.
In the case of grace, people take the "unmerited favour" idea and run with it. And this way of thinking leads them to squeeze any participation at all on the part of the recipient, no matter how small, out of the equation. Hence we have arguments that if I reach out and "freely" accept a gift, this cannot be "grace" since the
very meaning of the word "grace", when taken to its logical conclusion, excludes the possibility of
any participation on my part.
I think the more correct way of looking at concepts like "grace" (and others) is to see them as shorthand expressions of a longer
story. We then need to look at the scriptural story and see how the
story "defines" the content of grace, rather than taking the "dictionary defintion" and then running with that.
I will suggest that the Scriptural story of "grace", unlike the terse dictionary definition whose origins are not specifically connected to the scriptures, does not exclude some form of participation on the part of the human beings who are the recipients of grace.
I think that there is a thread of thinking in the church which has taken the dictionary definition of word "grace" and engaged in an odd kind of overly technical extrapolation where any notion of "participation" - any idea that we can freely accept the gifts given to us - is mercilessly expunged from the concept, and then read back into the scriptures.
It will be a different kind of life completely. Nothing we can imagine right now. We won't have any desire for anything because everything God has will be given to us and we won't even remember this life.