Jesus Marvelled At Unblief! Why?

The Bible does state that a sinner must believe. There is no arguing that point. Romans 4:5 "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,". The question is whether a sinner believes independent from God or because of God. Paul makes it clear that there are none who seek after God. Romans 3:9-12 "What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”" The Apostle also makes it clear that the sinner is spiritually incapable of belief. Ephesians 2:1 "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,". It is while the sinner is dead in sin, and incapable of faith, that the Holy Spirit regenerates him and makes him able to believe. Colossians 2:13 "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions". Ephesians 2:4-5 "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),"

The action the sinner takes is in response to the work of the Holy Spirit. Salvation does not take place because of any action of man. If even one scintilla of justification was due to something that men do, then salvation is turned into a work. What does the scripture say about that? Romans 4:2 "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God." So, no, no one "can receive the grace of salvation by their actions".

 

I know of no one who believes that sinners believe the gospel independent of God. The fact that the gospel is presented to them and faith comes from the gospel alone is evidence enough that is not true.

 

A well articulated "General Baptist" counterpoint.
If I may ask a follow up question:
If the GOSPEL has the power to initiate the change of heart leading to Salvation, then why do all that HEAR the Gospel not repent and come to Salvation? (What differentiates one who hears and responds from one who hears and rejects?)

 

The difference is one accepted the gospel and the other rejected the gospel.

 

I do not know for sure, but I will guess that the Synergists in this thread will say that it is up to the individual to accept or reject the Gospel. Ergo, salvation rests on an action of man, not God. That is the difference between both views in a nutshell. One view sees salvation as all of God, whereas the other view sees it as a cooperation between God and man.

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I think it's time we stop throwing around the term "synergistic" when Non-cals say man must respond to God. Salvation IS all of God--Regeneration, Adoption, Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, Sonship, Heirship...it is all of God. When we say Man must Respond to God, i do not see how one can interpret that as Man had something to do with Salvation. That is just simply not true.

 

I do not see it as a cooperation with God. Man's response does not earn the moniker cooperation with God else the preaching of the gospel would also necessarily be cooperation with God.

 

Thank you all for your thoughts. This is a question that I have not taken lightly, nor as a 'theoretical' curiosity. Coming to Christianity from Nihilism, I took nothing for granted. My first teachers in God's words were from the Church of God, so the General Baptist view is what I was taught. I have struggled to reconcile what I was told with what I have read in scripture and my own personal salvation experience.

That said, if the GOSPEL WORD is ABLE to save ALL and preached to two people and one person accepts the gospel and one person rejects it, then the difference MUST lie in the persons. If the difference between salvation and damnation lies in the person, then the individual that CHOSE to believe has some MERIT within himself. (Notice carefully that I am not claiming WORKS, he has done no work by OT Law standards, but he is deserving of credit if HE CHOSE to believe and another man CHOSE to not believe.)

Thus both men were sinners and deserved damnation (as Scripture claims), and both men were offered grace (so God is no respecter of persons and loves all), but one person "deserves" to be saved because the man believed and one person "deserves" to be damned because the man disbelieved.

• [Ephesians 2:8-9 NASB] 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

How are the great truths of Ephesians 2 preserved? How is salvation ALL of "grace" ('by grace you have been saved through faith' is all one "gift") if some innate meritorious difference inside a man differentiates who believes and who rejects? How are the saved not "better" than the unsaved whether they choose to boast or not?

This is the struggle I see innate in the "people choose to believe" position. I welcome your thoughts.

 

I reject your position that one man deserves anything. The response from people is irrelevant to determining where the credit lies. Credit lies solely with God regardless of the response of man.

If I give you a gift (salvation is a gift Romans 6:23) and you receive it, do we also claim you took part in giving yourself the gift or do we credit the giver as being the sole agent in giving the gift? No one says the person who reached out and received the gift by taking an action and grabbing hold of the gift with their hands also gave himself the gift. Neither do we say that the person receiving the gift deserves it because they reached out and took hold of the gift.

When man accepts the gospel and believes and asks God to save him neither does he bear and credit for the gift.

 

IMO, your wording is a bit of a red herring. A person believing In Christ does not "deserve" to be saved. God freely bestows His gift of Eternal life on those who believe Him at His Word. This whole idea that a saved person can boast against a lost person because "I chose and you didn't" is fallacious. We are journeying into the realm of philosophy at that point.

 

While I acknowledge that (deserve) is too strong of a word, I had no lesser word to insert ... that is why I placed "deserves" in quotations. With all due respect to your responses, you have thoroughly smashed any argument on DESERVING salvation, but failed to grasp the point that I apparently communicated poorly. Let me try again with more bluntness.

If the difference between believing and not believing lies within individual human beings, how can salvation be completely of God's Grace (unmerited favor)? How is the human difference not a human merit?

 

Because Salvation is Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, HeirShip, SonShip, Regeneration, adoption, etc....that is All of God. I do not help God in that at all. And God provides the means to receive--the Gospel. Believe the Gospel. Christ Died and Rose again to purchase Redemption. Christ did it all.

Asking about one person believing and another rejecting does not disprove or prove anything. Salvation is still all of God.

 

I have answered this but I will be glad to repeat it.

If I give you a gift (salvation is a gift Romans 6:23) and you receive it, do we also claim you took part in giving yourself the gift or do we credit the giver as being the sole agent in giving the gift? No one says the person who reached out and received the gift by taking an action and grabbing hold of the gift with their hands also gave himself the gift. Neither do we say that the person receiving the gift deserves it because they reached out and took hold of the gift.

When man accepts the gospel and believes and asks God to save him neither does he bear and credit for the gift.

 

Quite right. I have had this discussion before with those who you refer to as "general Baptists" (although I call them Synergists) and they do not see the inconsistency in their theology. On the one hand, they will state that salvation is all of God. On the other hand, they will state that the sinner must choose to believe. When I drill down on the "choose to believe" part it reveals that they reject the idea that the Holy Spirit makes the sinner capable of believing through regeneration prior to justification. What I am referring to is the order of salvation or the ordo salutis. The order of salvation is not such as much a chronology that can be measured in time. It has more to do with process. I laid out in post #121 the biblical case for the sinner's response to the work of the Holy Spirit, not in cooperation with Him. This is the crux of the whole matter when asking why one person accepts the gospel and another person rejects it. Like it or not, the Father does not give everyone to the Son (c.f. John 6:36-40). There are those who do not believe because they remain in darkness. Unless the Holy Spirit illumines their heart they are incapable of belief. And despite their frequent denials, "general Baptists" believe the fulcrum on which salvation rests is the individual. The individual must choose to believe independent from any outside force. God is passive in this part of salvation whether your "general Baptists" admit it or not. So, in the end, the one who believes can look to their decision to believe as the determining factor of their salvation. Christ may have made the way possible, but He will not assault the creature's free will. That is not what Monergists see in scripture. We see a sovereign God who elects, atones, calls (inward and outward), regenerates, converts, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies. God orders every step.

 

The Gospel Preached IS the outside source.

 

We know that the carnal mind is enmity with God. We know that men love darkness more than light. We know what is in the heart of man, because it's revealed in the Scriptures.

You are copping out.

Why does one choose God, and another does not, if it's up to the individual? There is only one Scriptural answer, and you haven't given it.

But this is where these discussions always end, and why I seldom get into them. The logical, and unscriptural conclusion of your premises is that one chooses God because he is better than the one who does not, and that's what saves him. I hope for your sake that you did everything just right in your conversion: prayed just right, with the right level of purity, with just the right thoughts, because your second birth depends on it.

Have a nice evening.