Featured Where does Faith come from?

Hopefully someone said....

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. - Romans 10:17

And... Hopefully the ministers are including faith messages in their sermons that will awaken such faith!

 

The beauty of the gift of faith is it guides us in decision making. If we have faith in going in a certain way, we know it is a safe move. If we do not, then we dismiss the idea. If faith must be conjured up, it is flesh faith and we march ourselves straight into harm's way.

 

Faith is being fully persuaded in one's mind (Rom 14:5)
Faith in God is being fully persuaded that He will perform what He has promised (Rom 4:21)

This can be possible only if one is convinced about the truths of God. If I have knowledge of the truth that I am a totally depraved sinner in the flesh, then I will consequently be fully persuaded in clinging on to God's promise to save me in Christ, for I have no other hope.

But we are deceived and darkened in our minds by sin in our flesh (Rom 7:11, 2Cor 4:4) and sin hardens our hearts from receiving truths (Heb 3:13). In order for the truth to set us free from this bondage to sin unto life, the mind must be enlightened and a new heart must be given (Eze 18:31). God's overcoming our own sinful flesh's deceptions is a supernatural work and is all by grace (2Cor 4:6, Rom 5:20).

I hold faith itself to be a negative work that's to be done by us (John 6:29) - but the leading us into truth that results in faith is by God's grace alone. Theoretically, if the flesh were given a new heart and renewed unto repentance, it would simply have to deny self to believe in Christ and receive life. But it never does so, therein proving that God's spirit alone leads us to and preserves us in truth, therein Him being the author and finisher of our faith by grace alone.

It is the weight of all the above that leads me to believing the faith that endures is a gift of God - not necessarily Eph 2:8 in isolation, since I read that similar to Rom 6:23 by the same author, where salvation to eternal life is focused on as the gift contrasted against it being earned by works.

 

No quite. In the church age (which is the only dispensation wherein OSAS holds true), even if a true believer stops believing, he is still saved because he's been born again: 2Ti 2:13 If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

You did a good job of clarifying the parameters of the OP.

 

If God grants to us that we come to Christ, and you cant do that unless you have faith, logically then it is our faith which comes through Him.
65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”

 

Many people refuse to hear, because they are not of God. Which again points to our faith coming from God. To be 'of God' means God has done His work in you by regenerating your spirit so as to believe, otherwise you never will believe. And this points also to God's choice, not of ourselves to have faith.

45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. 46 Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”

 

George, where do we find the term or idea "the church age" in scripture? I see covenants throughout scripture, but no mention of a "church age." It is one of the reasons why I have left dispensationalism. It is a false, human, construct.

 

The pre-flood dispensation was called the former age by Bildad (Job 8:8) thus the "pre-flood age", if you will. That age's end was marked off by the Genesis 9 Noahic sacrifice/covenant. Therefore Job and his friends were living in a different age than their pre-flood fathers, a "post-flood age" if you will; although those expressions aren't in scriptures.
Similarly, Christ instituted a new testament/covenant (Mt.26:28/Heb.8:6) by his sacrifice, hence a new age [so far we've identified at least 3 different ages by scriptures], one wherein Christ makes up his body, which is the church - hence "church age". Call it whatever you want at the end of the day. You know what I'm referring to. That age comes to close once the fulness of the Gentiles be come in (Ro.9:25) and God reverts back to Israel in yet another new covenant (Heb.8/Jer.31).

And I'm pretty confident that it was indeed Christ who said the words new testament. So if it's a "human construct", then it is the construct of the man Christ Jesus and I stand guilty of believing that human construct.

 

Christ said New Covenant (he said it in Aramaic so I have no idea what the Aramaic words are).
I understand dispensationalism. I consider it a false construct, which is for a different topic. I wouldn't have brought it up here except you bring it up here as though it actually has something to do with the topic of the thread.

 

My initial reference to dispensationalism was simply a clarification of a certain OSAS view and within parenthesis. You asked, I answered.

 

Romans 10:17 King James Version (KJV)
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Pretty clear, isn’t it?

 

Romans 12
3 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

The faith is given to you from God, I take it from your use of the other verse, that your faith came from you because you decided to listen to the gospel? But it is God who gives the gift of hearing too. Do not boast about your ability to hear. I have heard some say they were better hearers and better learners like a Darwinian survival of the fittest which is a wicked thing to say.

Deuteronomy 29
2 Now Moses called all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land— 3 the great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to [a]perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day.

 

No one brags about their ability to hear.

 

Luke 8:8
But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Luke 14:35
It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Romans 11:8
Just as it is written: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see And ears that they should not hear, To this very day.”

Revelation 3:13
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’

 

Why would God need to give a spirit of stupor if by their nature they already have a total inability?

 

That is the point. Those who were chosen inherited eternal life and those who were hardened did not. The compilation of Deuteronomy 29:4; Jeremiah 5:21; Ezekiel 12:2 in Romans 11:8 emphasizes that God has not opened their eyes to spiritual understanding. The "spirit of stupor" is a judicial hardening. John MacArthur writes, "God’s judicial hardening of a man’s heart is never separate from that man’s hardening of his own heart." MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Vol. 2, p. 103). Chicago: Moody Press. The fact that some men have their spiritual eyes opened is an act of God's grace. God would be justified in condemning all if He so desired.

 

So your position is that even though mans natural state is dead like lazerus and because of this innate nature they cannot understand the gospel, God must also blind them or give them a spirit of stupor?

Im just trying to get clarification.

 

No. Sinful man already has a "spirit of stupor" by the very fact he is still in his sins. He is already hardened. Romans 11:8 was not God giving sinners something new. It was a statement of the judicial hardening they already had. Earlier in Romans 9:18, Paul writes, "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires."

 

Are you arguing that humans, by their nature, have ability?

It seems that the Apostle Paul answers your question.

Romans 9:19-23 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—