Featured Who's Responsible?

The point you're missing is the New Covenant is to a seed. There was a Vine, the TRUE Vine, that we are grafted into. We can't, and won't, graft ourselves into that Vine.


Psalms 80:3 Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.


Psalms 80:7 Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.

"Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river."(Psalms 80:8-11)


"So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved."(Psalms 80:18,19)

 

Excellent observation, can't wait to hear the answer to this one. :laugh:

 

You are asking something too deep for me to understand in regards to when anyone is quickened.....none of knows the very instance when this happens, imo...

 

How do you know that?

 

John the Baptist filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb, David made to hope while on his mother's breast, Isaac born after the Spirit by the time of his weaning, Paul separated from his mother's womb to preach Christ among the Gentiles.

I think that's pretty much the norm for all of us, jmho.

 

Look at our natural birth. We had no clue we were alive, yet life was already there, unbeknownst to us. I believe it to be that way when we're quickened, imo.

 

You're asking me things that are WAY above my paygrade. If I don't know something, I'll confess I don't.....

 

Willis, I am doing well. I have been very, very busy. I have to pick and choose my social media time. I pray you are doing well; continuing to walk in the grace of our Lord.

 

Steaver, don't be too quick to give me a thumbs up. Remember, I am Reformed.

There are many great truths of the Bible that Calvinists and Arminians agree on. The fact that man is responsible for his choice of accepting or rejecting the gospel message is one of them. As I quoted from Acts 17:30, God is declaring to all men everywhere that they are to repent. God is not responsible for man's choice. By responsible I mean He does not bear any culpability for man not choosing Him. Of course, no man can choose God without His first calling him, and all whom God calls will respond in the affirmative. So, only God is in the unique position to receive all of the credit and none of the blame. Man is in the unique position of receiving all of the blame and none of the credit.

 

Good post Willis. IMO, Uzza went to heaven 'spanked'.

 

But Abraham saith, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. Lu 16:29

....synonymous with, fulfillment of:

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little. Isa 28:10

Abraham's proclamation was not a good place to be, it was an awful place to be. Relegated to the letter only is a hopeless situation.

....and you don't get even the tiniest bit of a hint of a prophetic allusion to another greater resurrection soon to come upon that audience?

Only in your flesh centric imagination Winman.

I've neither quoted from the Sermon on the Mount nor pulled anything from context.

If he had the law written in his heart he would at least have had the desire to help the poor man, his actions show that he did not. The actions of the good Samaritan INDEED showed that he did have the law written in his heart, and the Jews, who had the law and were hearers of it, who also referred to Samaritans as dogs, stepped to the other side of the road and walked on by.

...and I'm sure the prophetic message within that parable also escapes you because of your flesh centric approach.

Again, only in your imagination. That's what you want to get out of it.

 

Genesis 3:17
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

Galatians 6:7
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

1 Corinthians 3
New International Version (NIV)
The Church and Its Leaders

3 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Romans 7:4
So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

2 Corinthians 5:
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[Or Christ, that person is a new creation.] The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[Or be a sin offering] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1 Corinthians 15
New International Version (NIV)
The Resurrection of Christ

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[Or you at the first]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[That is, Peter] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.




The above is the Gospel not regeneration before faith.Most of the time we plant a seed and water it we don't ever see the results. They might reject it, but down the road many people keep watering it with the same word that you might of started something that you will never know this side of heaven, but they might be a treasure you never knew about.

I knew someone who I worked with a warehouse worker, hated us Christian who had bible study at work. He mocked us, he made fun of us.

I thought there was no hope for him, but we prayed for him, loved him even with the way he treated us. I seen an unregenerate, a dead sinner slowly change with the word and life we lived from the Spirit living in us,even being a mocker that his stone heart started to melt away and he came to Christ.

He started going to our bible study before the warehouse went out of business.

Where he is now I don't know, but we are weeping what we are sowing, the ground is cursed because of us and we are given the means to start changing it co-workers with God.




Romans 6
New International Version (NIV)
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

6 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[Or be rendered powerless] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

 

Blows my mind, your version of election is OK with you; God elects a few from birth, but the multitude is left to their own devices. The references to Isaac, David, John the Baptist, and Paul that I gave in the post are not exceptions, they are examples that apply to all of His children:

26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother. (I know you won't, but check out Ps 87)
27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: For more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath the husband. (check out Isa 54)
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now. Gal 4