That's right. man does have a responsibility. Man is responsible for his SIN! But, It's called culpability.
Man has no responsibility FOR his salvation, because he can't save himself, but he is responsible in his salvation, not to be saved, but to live in his salvation, if in fact he is saved.
Do you think non-OSAS is saying something terribly different than this?
Non-OSAS says you have the responsibility to continue to believe in Christ, just as you had the responsibility to first believe in him. It's the exact same believing. Just a continuation of that believing. But I'm told that the responsibility to continue to believe is an evil work of my flesh....
even though it's the exact same, unbroken, uninterrupted believing I did to get saved in the first place.
Did you devise a plan to save yourself?
My plan is to
believe. Believing is manifested in obedience. To think that one can purposely be disobedient and think they're continuing in the belief that saves, they are deceived. This is James' point. If you think believing unto justification can mean not obeying God then you are embracing a faith that can not save you. And if anyone thinks he's talking about just kingdom reward, and not salvation, remember the context is
justification.
NO! God did. Did you add something to wjhat Jesus Christ did for you? NO
Is this how you pray? "Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself;
"44 "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him..." (John 6:43 NASB)
What you have to explain is how this means I come automatically and I have no choice whether to listen and respond to the call, or not. John himself explains in 1 John 5:9-10 NASB how there are those who hear the testimony of the Holy Spirit, but don't respond, and who are actually calling the Holy Spirit a liar by not to believing.
I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves.
There are those who simply refuse the power of the Holy Spirit to believe and be saved. That doesn't mean man saves himself. It simply means they don't want righteousness and as a result lose out on the capacity to be empowered to trust in Christ and live in righteousness. They will be fruitless--that fruitlessness being the evidence of their rejection and denial of Christ. They will be burned, not saved. It doesn't matter if they believed before and were fruitful. What matters is they forfeited that which can, or did, make them fruitful for the Master and arrived at the Judgment without any fruit (no oil, no increase in talents...).
Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do.
No. I simply want to take full advantage of it. That is man's responsibility. Those who don't will show their rejection of that grace by the fact that they are fruitless. But OSAS says you don't have to be fruitful to be saved. It means nothing in regard to the grace you received. You will only lose reward. But the Bible says if you are fruitless you have rejected the grace of God's forgiveness somewhere along the line. That's a bad thing. You can't be saved without God's forgiveness. That's the only way to be saved. Fruitfulness is how we know if you are clinging to the only way a person can be saved--the forgiveness of their sins. You have to be found clinging to and trusting in that forgiveness on the Day of Wrath to be saved by that forgiveness.
There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am.
They forgot the grace they had received, and as a result trampled it underfoot treating it as an unholy thing. Their fruitlessness being the evidence of that. Peter says
purposely being fruitful means remembering the forgiveness you have received. OSAS says I don't have to be fruitful in a remembering of the grace I have received. I'll be saved nonetheless. It says fruitless people will NOT be thrown into the furnace, even though the Bible plainly says they will.
It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not-that is the difference between me and them."
Some soil is such that it will support life seeded in/on it, and watered. Other soil will not. That is the difference. The Bible plainly teaches this.
The grace of God is the seed, and the watering,
not the soil. The seed is spread everywhere in the world. The soil is the fundamental potential of the heart for the love, or hatred for righteousness in a person. You're essentially saying God purposely determines who will have soil 1,2,3, and 4 ahead of time by his own sovereign design. I say the potential of the soil realized in any one person when it gets planted and watered is based on the person themselves, not on what potential of soil God restricted them to. If he did determine soil types by design then that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for him to say he desires all men to be saved and come to the truth. IMPOSSIBLE.
Have you improved the grace God gives?
Surely you can see now this is not about improving on God's grace. It's simply being of a type of soil that God's grace will thrive in, and embrace, bringing that grace to fruition in all the fruit of the Spirit. Some soil is simply not going to do that. It will not support righteous life planted in it for the reasons given in the parable--love of other things, trials and tribulations, etc. If we don't purposely bother to nurture what God has planted in us we are showing what kind of soil we really are and if that soil will be burned in the end, or not (Hebrews 6:7-8 NASB).
