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Dave Slayer
Guest
Cornelius said:
I finally agree with you on something. ;)
:amen
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Predestination
- Thread starter joechrist
- Start date
I finally agree with you on something. ;)
:amen
In fact the reasoning is in perfect harmony with the Bible.
Eph 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love:
Eph 1:5 having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Eph 1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved:
Eph 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love:
Eph 1:5 having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Eph 1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved:
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Dave Slayer
Guest
shad said:
You say my reasoning is out of context, I disagree but I can live with that. I never said God was controlling. I used to be in your position and I understand how you feel the way you do. I am not that the best explaining what I believe, sadly. I wish I could present this to you in a better way. I have some friends at another forum who are well more prepared in this area, I will see if I can get some of them to come over here and post on the subject.
In the meantime, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I used to worry about this subject quite a bit but not so much now. Either way, all believers, all of the chosen (whomever they may be) will be glorified. We will be conformed to the image of Jesus.
:amen
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Dave Slayer
Guest
Cornelius said:
I think the question is this. Did God choose us before He saw in the future we would accept Jesus? I used to believe that way but I do not anymore. I like the following article on this very subject.
HOW ABOUT ELECTION BASED ON FOREKNOWLEDGE?
Source: http://kruszer.tripod.com/election3.html
In trying to reconcile the verses about election with their concept of "free will", many people explain election this way: God foreknows our faith and elects us on the basis of our choice of Him. This theory, although it suits the free will idea, is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 8:29-30. ("For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified)."
One only needs to ponder briefly the implications of the previous assertion to understand how impossible this system would be. For if God chooses man based on their choice of Him, it really is no choice at all on the part of God. He is merely rewarding His creation for a choice they made. (As Chuck Swindoll puts it: "that's not pre-destination that's post-destination". It would also follow that God's will would then be controlled and defined by the will of His own creatures. (For He could only chose to save them if they would chose Him.) Yet Jesus Himself declared: "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you..." (John 15:16)
Another essential point to consider regarding this line of thought is this: Supposing that man is foreordained to salvation based on his foreseen acceptance of God, one would have to ask, how would that man have been able to chose God without it first being of God? For according to the above verse, only those who have been predestinated are called unto salvation, are justified and glorified. Without God first predestinating man, there would be no faith to foresee.
Or, to put it another way, if man is dead in his sin (as previously established), if he, left to himself, does not desire to come to God and depends solely on God's calling and drawing to come to Him, God could not have looked into eternity to come and seen that I would choose Him; for in fact I would not, were He not the one choosing me first. ("We love Him because He first loved us ") The free- willer puts the cart before the horse.. He asserts that God gives faith because man is willing. But the bible teaches that "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy".. (Romans 9:11) Again, the free-willer (Arminian) says: God chose me because I am willing. But I say, (and I believe the scriptures affirm) that I am willing, because He chose me.
Charles Spurgeon explains it in a similar fashion: "Did my savior die for me because I believed on Him? No; I was not then in existence; I had then no being. Could the Saviour therefore have died because I had faith, when I myself was not yet born? Could that have been the origin of my Saviour's love towards me? Oh! no; my Saviour died for me long before I believed. "But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would have faith; and therefore, He loved you." What did He foresee about my faith? Did He foresee that I should get that faith myself, and that I should believe on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that, because no Christian man will ever say that faith came of itself without the gift and without the working of the Holy Spirit."
While considering this issue of faith based on foreknowledge, one must also take a close look at Romans 8:29 "The first few words clearly say "For whom He did foreknow..." Note that it does not specify "for those whose faith He did foreknow.."; it does not say that there was anything in particular in us that He foreknew, but it says WHOM He foreknew. He foreknew people. And those people that He foreknew, he predestinated, He called, He justified and He glorified. . If one would try to say that it was our faith that He foreknew when the text does not say so, another could just as easily say that He foreknew our works, and that would be equally false.
Dave Slayer said:In the meantime, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I used to worry about this subject quite a bit but not so much now. Either way, all believers, all of the chosen (whomever they may be) will be glorified. We will be conformed to the image of Jesus.
:amen
I dont worry about it, friend, I know you are wrong. You should read the bible within context.
It has very much to do with it. God clearly states that he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion. He decided this before the foundation of the earth.Eph 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love:
Eph 1:5 having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Eph 1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved:
We should should just read what the Bible says and not try and push it into our understanding.
Once we realize that God is in fact sovereign in ALL things, and that our will is NOT free, we move into a new liberty. We can then see that it is indeed God who work in us to will and to work for his good pleasure.
God is causing you to WILL. Your will is not free.
Php 2:13 for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
He predestined you and your footsteps and your decisions. The fruit in you comes from Him as well. No man can boast.
Eph 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Eph 2:9 not of works, that no man should glory.
God is causing you to WILL. Your will is not free.
Php 2:13 for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
He predestined you and your footsteps and your decisions. The fruit in you comes from Him as well. No man can boast.
Eph 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Eph 2:9 not of works, that no man should glory.
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Dave Slayer
Guest
shad said:Dave Slayer said:In the meantime, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I used to worry about this subject quite a bit but not so much now. Either way, all believers, all of the chosen (whomever they may be) will be glorified. We will be conformed to the image of Jesus.
:amen
I dont worry about it, friend, I know you are wrong. You should read the bible within context.
Then prove it. :yes
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Dave Slayer
Guest
If God knows who will love Him, then why does He have to draw them? That's an oxymoron.[/quote:2onlcydh]Elf said:
I agree. I believe the only reason why we love God is because He first loved us. That is also why I don't buy into the "foreseen faith" idea. God is the author and finisher of our faith, the Bible says. If God didn't first give us faith, there would be no faith to foresee.
I do not think it has anything to do with loving God first; I think has to do with God calling people because those people were chosen by God. Take David; God called him as a Shepard boy. Sure David had a heart for God but it was even more; God had chooses his anointing; not like man today who so often decides this person is anointed because he went to Bible school for four years.
Look at Paul; who was killing Christians until God blinded him and knocked him off his horse. He had no love for Jesus but his ministries were one of the Greatest in the NT. God calls men not systems.
Look at Paul; who was killing Christians until God blinded him and knocked him off his horse. He had no love for Jesus but his ministries were one of the Greatest in the NT. God calls men not systems.
If God knows who will love Him, then why does He have to draw them? That's an oxymoron.[/quote:3eqxyoyz]Elf said:
Drew
Member
No. Just because the Romans 9 text says that he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy does not legitimize taking that very general statement and concluding that the matter at issue is the specific matter of the eternal destinies of individuals. You need to actually make the case that eternal destinies are what Paul is talking about. And in the case of Jacob and Esau, Paul tells us what the "choice" is about. And it is not that one goes to heaven and the other to hell, it is that one will serve the other (and actually that the nation of Edom will serve the nation of Israel). Why do you seem to think that Paul means something other than what he says he means?Cornelius said:
Same with Moses and Pharoah. The mercy shown is not in respect to eternal destinies, but rather in God delivering the Jews from the clutches of Pharaoh.
Why do people insist on replacing what Paul is talking about (in respect to these 2 examples) with a theology about predestination of people to an eternal fate? Paul tells us what the "choice" is about in each case, and it is manifestly not a choice about eternal destinies.
We are not talking about that passage. We are talking about Romans 9.Cornelius said:
I am reading what the Bible says - I suggest that it is you who is "reading stuff" into the text. As shown above, Paul tells us what God's choice is. It is me who is taking Paul at his word and you who thinks he means something other than what he says he means.Cornelius said:
Drew
Member
But the "works" here are not "good works" - they are the works of the Torah. Paul is not addressing the boast of the morally self-righteous here, he is addressing the boast of the Jew, who thinks that he has an inside track on justification in virtue of being Jewish, that is by being under the Torah.Cornelius said:
To be fair here, the reader needs to unshackle himself from the deeply ingrained, reformation inspired, pre-disposition to read "works" as "good works" in Ephesians 2:9. Once freed of that pre-disposition, the reader can then ask the question as which of the following views makes more sense given the arguments Paul mounts in verse 11 and following (and other stuff we know Paul believes):
1. The salvific power of doing good works is being denied in verse 9;
2. The salvific power of doing the works of the Law of Moses (the Torah) is being denied in verse 9.
Explanation 2 is the one that makes sense in light of what Paul goes on to say in verse 11 as well as what he says in Romans 3, where he makes it clear that, in respect to good works, the Jew and the Gentile are in the same boat.
Proceeding to an examination of Ephesians 2:11 and following, Paul uses the "therefore" to show us that he is now going to fill out the implications of what he has just said. This is important because what follows will help disambiguate what Paul means by "works" in verse 9.
Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men) 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
Paul is clearly now talking about the Jew-Gentile divide, and how the actions of Jesus have brought Jew and Gentile together. Remember the "therefore" from verse 11 - Paul is telling us the implications of his verse 9 statement that none are saved by "works". Now here it becomes clear that these are the works of Torah since, obviously, it is by doing the works of Torah, being "under Torah" as it were, that the Jew could say "I am part of God's covenant people" or I am a member of "Israel". What marks out the nation Israel from the Gentile? Possession and doing of Torah, of course. This is an exceedingly powerful argument - Paul here is obviously talking about the basis on which the Gentiles were excluded from membership in the covenant family - and that basis is obviously the possession of Torah and doing its works.
14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations
How much more clear could Paul be - he is talking about Torah. What has divided the Jew from the Gentile and been the barrier? Good works? Obviously not, both Jew and Gentile are in Adam – they are on “the same side†of any good works barrier (fisrt 20 or so verses of Romans 3). It is doing the works of Torah, of course, that is the very thing that the Jew might otherwise boast in and which is now being declared to not be salvific.
What Paul says in verses 11 and following does not cohere with a “works = good works†interpretation but makes perfect sense if we understand the "works" in verse 9 as the works of Torah, and not "good works" in the more general sense.