Featured Can you know if you are "elect".

Did you have any choice in the matter of your physical birth?

Did you have any choice in the matter of your spiritual birth?

 

If I were to 'gift' you a car with the keys parked outside your house and yet you never 'chose' to get in and drive it, matters not. As far as I'm concerned, I gave you the 'free gift' of the car regardless of whether you decide to enjoy the benefits of it or not.

 

Faith is a conviction, NOT a decision. Here is the choice:

15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah. Josh 24

Only the elect have that choice.

 

If one has nothing to do with their spiritual birth then it is just God forcing some to believe or it just being a lottery and your number came up.

 

For one to be convicted one has to have information which can be evaluated. As the verse you posted points out they had to make a choice A or not A. Follow God or reject God. That is the same choice all men have placed before them.

 

That a person chooses to believe does not save them only God can save a person. If a person upon hearing the gospel continues in their unbelief God does not force them to be saved, He grants them their desire and leaves them where they are, lost. But if the person puts their faith in the object of the gospel message (Christ Jesus) God will grant them salvation.

 

No. We don't share the same meaning of 'free gift'. Eternal life is not just a gift, it's a 'free gift'. Those believing are already in possession of it:

He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life;......Jn 3:36

.....He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life,...Jn5:24

... He that believeth hath eternal life. Jn 6:47

 

I don’t think John Owen, or other Puritans will lead you astray. They devoted their lives to understanding scripture and how that knowledge should be worked out in our lives.

They go very deep and are difficult to understand at times, but at the very foundation they were devoted to God and understanding His word.

Good luck in your study. I will look for further threads on their teachings. It will be enlightening.

peace to you

 

Yes. Everyone believing has eternal life. John 3:36; Acts of the Apostles 13:48

Everyone coming to Christ God has wrought within. John 1:12-13; John 3:21

 

Well, yea, a gift, but not a decision or a choice. A gift:

8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; Eph 2

It's a gift in the sense that it's fruit of the spiritual birth which absolutely must occur first:

7 `Thou mayest not wonder that I said to thee, It behoveth you to be born from above;
8 the Spirit where he willeth doth blow, and his voice thou dost hear, but thou hast not known whence he cometh, and whither he goeth; thus is every one who hath been born of the Spirit.` Jn 3

It's those whom God has wrought within that eventually come to the light:

20 for every one who is doing wicked things hateth the light, and doth not come unto the light, that his works may not be detected;
21 but he who is doing the truth doth come to the light, that his works may be manifested, that in God they are having been wrought.` Jn 3

I would think that even a 'milquetoast Calvinist' could understand the necessity of "regeneration before faith".

 

I had no choice, but to embrace Christ

I saw my sin

I saw my future

I saw a Christ as the Savior I needed

 

What baffles me is why someone would continue in unbelief. The evidence for God is so clear to me that I am frankly at a loss as to understand disbelief. If one is only saved by an irresistible grace then what do we say of those that do not get that grace. If God in His sovereignty has decided that most will be lost they are lost not for sin but because God decided not to save them. Man must be able to accept or reject the prompting of God. Even the Puritans & Owen seem to have understood this. As you said Owen warned people not to reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

 

God came to me I didn't go to God... So are all who are born of God... I have evidence I'm elect... Election is in Gods hands not mine... and chance, is spelled Christ (his birth, his life, his death and his resurrection), and without him there is no chance... Brother Glen

 

If as you claim faith is a gift that without which one can not be saved then the withholding of that gift by God means that He has condemned most of His creation to hell for something they had no way of getting. If on the other hand you hold to your regeneration before faith then you have people saved/made alive before they have faith and that calls into question why they even need faith at all.