Birth Before Belief

Does God extend that means to understand towards all sinners than?

 

First you are guilty of the black and white fallacy as there are more than the two options you have given. Further you are guilty of the begging the question fallacy. Lastly I said nothing about a plan of election.

 

God did not do a corporate election of the Church, nor of His plan, but on an individual basis!

 

Says you, I would rather trust in scripture.

 

We can bat this around all day. But your interpretation robs God of his glory and results in self-righteousness as being the savior. Mine gives full glory to God in saving people.

 

I would also, just helping you to see more clearly what they teach....

 

= salvation by self-righteousness.

 

That is your personal view due to your conflation of man making a choice with God's decision to save. They are distinct and man responding in humility does not constitute meriting salvation.

 

Again, no scripture supports this ideology.

 

That is not a personal view. It is what you preach. If salvation is conditional it is not of grace, it is works. It results in salvation for the self-righteous every time, and withholds salvation from those who cannot save themselves.

 

Grace is unconditional. “for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8–10)

 

Since when do we say that the giving of a gift is conditional simply because one must reach out and receive it. In order for it to true be a gift we give do we need to also pick up their hands and place it there while making them grip it? Must we also unwrap it for them? You further misunderstand the word self-righteous. One cannot be self-righteous because of a decision made. Decision making is never described anywhere in scripture as that which make on righteous. Self-righteousness must always be attached to the OT law. Your failure to understand what biblical works is, is what is leading you astray.

 

Believing and faith, which God made us to do, is not a work. Again you fail to understand what biblical works is.

 

When you make human choice the determining factor in salvation, it stops being grace and becomes self-righteousness. And robs God of his full glory, taking some of it to yourself.

 

It doesn't matter how many times you say it it still is not true, it is not supported by scripture and you still fail to properly understand biblical works.

 

It is true if salvation rests on your self-righteous decision.

 

Calvinist would say that God extends that Gift to all sinners, but only His elect have been enabled by Him to actually want to go grab it! The natural man sees and hears and refuses it..

 

You haven't yet addressed my point that the things the natural man cannot comprehend are the deep things of the spirit and not the gospel. You haven't batted around anything, except strawmen.

My interpretation is right from Romans 1:16

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

The gospel is the "power of God". I'm not lessening his glory one iota by saying the Holy Spirit enables men to understand it.

 

Only the self-righteous will reach out to receive it. But the gospel is not packaged that way. You turn it into law when you suggest it has conditions strapped to it.

 

Just because you add "self-righteous" in front of "decision" doesn't make it so. Further you cannot show me in scripture where a decision for God equals self-righteousness. Honestly the whole thing is a silly notion.