Calvinists and Children

posted 2 times...see below.

 

mnw,

you said....
I believe salvation is all of God....I agree
He extends the call to all............I agree
whosoever calls on the name of the Lord may be saved......I agree
I believe we all get the opportunity to believe or reject the Gospel......I agree
Do I believe though that my daughter or anyone would never even have an opportunity to refuse salvation? .......For the most part yes. and BTW..they say no

You also said this...
But there are those roasting in the pit of Hell today and for all eternity that He also loves.
This I disagree with. God does not love each person the same.

You love your child dearly. I have 3 girls I love dearly. Do you love my girls as much as I love them? You never come to see them. You never talk to them. You do not call them by name. You never chasten my girls when they are wrong. You never bless my girls with money for schooling. You would die for your child. Would you die for my child?

I wish no harm on your child, but it would be unfair to my girls to say I love your child as much as I love them. If you told your wife you love all ladies as much as you loved her, what do you think she would think of your love?

Do you see how much you cheapen Gods love by saying He loves everyone? God loves His people and cares for them. God chastens those He loves. This is the very point God was making when He said...I hate Esau. Gods people wanted to know when God had loved them...

Is God love? Yes God is love. But love is pure. If God is love then if we were to study pure love we would see God.

Notice 2 things in this passage.

1st.... Love rejoices in truth. Christ said...He is the way the truth and the light.

Also notice Love has no part of unrighteousness. In fact...Truth is always loved and set apart from unrighteousness. Now notice this verse...

It is God that SENDS the delusion that they might be damned.

2nd....Notice Love never fails. Gods love shown on the cross WORKED!! He loved His people...died for them....and they ARE SAVED. Christ work on the cross was not a picture, but rather the real thing. Christ said..."IT IS FINISHED!!".

Now at this point those that do not believe this pure love like to post John 3:16. One may take note that this is the only place that God says He loves the world. If this meant all of mankind, would not God repete this many times? John 3:16 jives with the rest of the Bible when you read it as it is meant. God loves the world...yes...but not each person the same. I love food. I hate peas. Both statements are true. God can love the world...and yet God can chose a people for his own to love. I love sports....but I love WVU more then I love Ohio State.


Gods love is pure.


In Christ...James

ADDED LATER
I'm writing a book on Ecclesiastes so, I have been looking at Psalm and other wisdom books. Part of this as you may know is understanding parallelism. Once you see parallelism in the Psalms it is easy to follow. But it is everywhere in the Bible. One I just came across is in 1st John.

15Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

17And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

In examining the text, and its context, we find there are three sections here with a threefold structure:

Love of the World (verse 15)
Comes from the world (verse 16)
The world passes away (verse 17)

Love of the Father (verse 15)
Comes from the Father (verse 16)
The one who obeys God remains forever (verse 17)

This is what is called a parallelism. Notice our love for God comes from God.

 

==We don't know, Paul did not know, who the elect are. The command is that the Gospel is to be preached to all the world, to all people.

"that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His Name to all the nations" -Lk 24:47

 

==While it is true that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (etc) I don't know that God loves the people in hell. However if you know of a verse that says God loves the people in hell then please let me know.

==And the Biblical problem with that is?

==Apart from God working in a persons heart nobody would be saved. What does the Scriptures say? "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God" (Rom 3:10-11). Paul continues on in verses 12-20 and it only gets worse. No human, not even your daughter, will truly seek after God unless God is at work in that person's heart. God must draw that person to Himself (Jn 6:44), God must give that person a new heart (Ez 36:26-27), and only then will that person believe (Jn 6:37, 17:2) and be saved (Jn 3:16). Apart from the work of God in a person's heart that person, no matter who they are, will remain in sin. This is why some children who grow up on godly homes, going to church on a regular basis, who's parents read them the Bible, prayed with them, etc, yet that child grows up to reject Jesus Christ and to live in sin. Why did this happen? Well if that person never comes to Christ it is because they are dead in sin and God did not raise them to spiritual life. There are no exceptions to this.

You think this is unfair of God? I don't know why. If God is Holy, and if God is Loving, and if God is all powerful, and all knowing, then I have to know that His plan and election are perfect. He makes no mistakes. But keep in mind that God owes salvation and grace to no human. So no human can claim that God is unfair in this.

"You will say to me then, why does He still find fault? For who resists His will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?" -Romans 9:19-20

==Actually it is not true that "we all get the opportunity" since there are millions of people throughout history that have never even heard of Jesus Christ. Yet Scripture is clear that apart from saving faith in Jesus Christ no man enters heaven. So these people have perished in their sin. Do you think that is unfair of God? After all we read in Acts that God "determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation".

==What Biblical teaching says that "we all get the opportunity to believe"?

==So you believe that God makes salvation possible and then He is dependent upon man to bring it to pass.

 

If you believe in works based salvation, your are not a christian, meaning you are not counted as being in the majority of "christendom".

 

...kinda like waiting for that verse that states God doesn't draw all? Let me ask you this. If God doesn't love those in hell...why did Christ lament and weep over those who refuse Him, those who stoned and killed the very prophets He sovereignly chose?

For what its' worth, here is what John Calvin says in regards to John 3:16...he said: ". . . The Heavenly Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish.''

 

I have never denied what the text "actually" says. The difference is in the interpretation of it. Does Ephesians 1:4 deal with an omnipresent God not bound by time? This is where I stated to let Scripture interpret Scripture. If it's as you say, then Christ didn't die some 2000 years ago...He died at some point prior to creation even being formed. Where the Bible deals with man to man, we interpret it "before" in the sense we know "before" to mean. When the Bible deals with God and man, we cannot hold God to that same interpretation, as there is no "before" with an omnitemporal God.

 

==God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ez 33:11), that is why He wept. However I did not say that God does not love those in hell. What I said was that I don't know that He does. He certainly does not love them the same way He loves His children, I do know that.

==I agree with Calvin on that. I was talking about people who are, present tense, in hell.

 

==My point is that the text says "before the foundation of the world" and it means exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less.

==Yet historically we know He did.

==Christ's death was ordained of God before the foundation of the world, foreknown of God, yet it was carried out in time (1Pet 1:20, Acts 2:23, 2Tim 1:9). Our salvation was, in the same way, ordained of God before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4). Yet our salvation is carried out in time. We are His elect, His chosen ones.

==I have to go with what the text actually says so I can't follow you down that road. While I am aware of the fact that God is eternal, all knowing, and above time, I think Eph 1:4 is clear that God made these decisions before the foundation of the earth. Was there a time when God did not know His elect? No.

 

Asahel Nettleton : Life and Times

by Bennet Tyler & Andrew Bonar ( p.416)

If infants sustain the same relation to the moral government of God as brute animals , then they can no more be the subjects of prayer , of regeneration , of redemption by Christ , or of salvation , than brute animals .
Those who deny that infants are sinners , have devolved on them the Herculean task of defending the justice of God in bringing suffering and death upon millions of beings who are perfectly innocent . Those who admit the doctrine of infant depravity , have no difficulty on this subject .
How old must a child be before he can be said to belong to the human race ? When a child dies , how old must he be before it can be said of him that his death was by sin ? -- in other words , before he can be considered as included in the following declaration of the apostle : ' by one man sin entered into the world , and death by sin , and so death passed upon all men , for that all have sinned . '

 

AND?

What did John Calvin say right after this line?

Commentary on John - Volume 1 by John Calvin, 1509-1564


I just didn't want people to be mislead.

 

James, if anything your "note" you throw in is misleading, as I do not believe that is what John is saying at all. His "order" is in showing that there is nothing inherently good about man worth saving. His love FOR ALL MANKIND is the first step in the salvation process.

 

It looks to me that it does deal with election as well as free will. In their own free will, the chosen of God, asked, and Peter the one elected answered. Many responded and then those now elected could answer those that ask in their free will, what must they do. Is this any different than Joshua 24:15, "And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"? Are they of the elected before they choose?

Again you miss the issue. Are you saying Paul was not "elected"? You also miss there are two gospels being preached, one by Peter, and one by Paul, both gospels laid on the foundation of Jesus Christ. In this "dispensation" of grace through faith, which justification was never known before to man is the gospel for those in the Body Church. It is an uncomfortable position to try and stand on two (2) foundations at the same time.

Unless we separate out, correctly dividing the Word, we will continue in contradicting His Word. The theology of the tradition of man contradicts.

Let me lay out what I have been shown in His Word, and believe. No one has to, but this is what I choose for I asked Him where He wanted me. This is my quote from a previous post elsewhere on this Board. Quote - "From the beginning, which has to do with election, and to whom election belongs. Jesus Christ was elected, and called, Isaiah 42:1-6. God gave Jesus for a covenant for His people (Israel), for a light to the Gentile's. His elect as we see in Isaiah 44:1, Jacob was chosen in advance for God's purpose is Israel to bring forth His elect Jesus Christ. So from this is the reason I don't believe we all have been predestined in this manner. God's purpose is to save all, John 3:16, and I believe this verse shows our "choice in our free will".

Parenthesis my insertion - John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave (Predestined) his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish (free will), but have everlasting life." Unquote.
What is put forth above is His Word, and not doctrine proposed by man, whether Calvinism, Arminianism, or any other tradition of man. We in the "Body Church" are in Him that was "predestined".

 

==Since I answered this earlier in this thread I really don't see why I should answer it yet again.

I said: "God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ez 33:11), that is why He wept. However I did not say that God does not love those in hell. What I said was that I don't know that He does. He certainly does not love them the same way He loves His children, I do know that...I was talking about people who are, present tense, in hell."

==Thats actually not true. His election of persons to salvation is based on His love (Eph 1:4-5).

==Again this is untrue. Calvinists believe that God's election is not "arbitrary" but is based on His purposes. To prove this I can quote several statements of faiths and creeds written by those who hold to a Calvinistic perspective.

==Do you believe that somehow contradicts, or cancels out, the clear verses of Scripture on election?

==According to Jesus, in this dispensation, people are required to come through Him (Jn 14:6). Prior to Christ, and to answer what you said about Old Testament saints, people who had faith in God were saved. Today a person "MUST" come to Jesus Christ.

 

Amen, as God predestined Himself so there would be no "slip-ups".

 

They must be according to you. Anyone that is predestined not to be sent to the "lake of fire", must be predestined to be sent to the "lake of fire".

She called. I must now go eat, for I decided it is best that I do.

 

==Please show me "WHERE" in Acts 2:37-38 election is discussed.

==That is about as unBiblical as it gets. How do you say "now elected" when it is clear from Scripture that election occurs before a person believes?

==I reject hyper-dispensationalism.

==Yes when you say "many responded and then those now elected" you are certainly contradicting Scripture. Scripture is clear, over and over and over again, that election comes before salvation (Rom 8:29-30).

==What?

==John 3:16 says nothing about freewill. The verse simply states that the Gospel is open to "whosoever will", and it is. Election, on the other hand, answers the question "who will" and the Biblical answer is the elect (those given to the Son by the Father).

==And His Word is not saying what you are claiming. John 3:16 says nothing, not one thing, about freewill. It is a simple statement about the fact that salvation is open to whosoever will. It does not deal with election (who will).

 

==Are people reading what is being said or just assuming they know? I really have to wonder and, to be perfectly honest, I am getting tired of re-typing the same replies over and over again.

Those who are not elect are left in their natural, sinful, state. That is the doctrine of preterition and NOT double predestination. This is believed by people who are not even Calvinists. One example is Charles Ryrie (Basic Theology, pg313). As Ryrie states, "the Scriptures do contain a doctrine of preterition though there is not a decree to condemn in the same sense that there is a decree to elect".