Christ's Redemption and Atonement

[Rippon]

Scripture Citations Are From The NRSV

Sorry but this is another verse distorted for theological purposes.

Rip : The verse is 2 Timothy 2:25 : "correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth"



God does not give repentence but it is refering to God allowing them to repent.

Rip : You're the one with a distorted theology guiding your view of Scripture.It says very plainly that the Lord grants repentance. Yet you deny the fact.There is no such business "allowing them to repent."



This passages is dealing with Christians who are in sin.

Rip : The 'opponents' don't sound like Christians to me.


The fact that God desires all men everywhere to repent and come to the knowledge of truth proves imfactically that God does genuinely give all sinners alike the opportunity to repent...

Rip : I won't deal with your distortion of 1 Timothy 2:4 at this point. However, God does not "imfractically" ( give all sinners alike the opportunity to repent.Tell me how the bulk of humanity who have never heard of Christ/Gospel can be said to have been given the opportunity to repent?!


however He knows all that are to come.

Rip : How magnanimous of you for saying the Lord "knows all that are to come." But the Lord of the Bible has a lot more authority than that! He determines, decrees, appoints, ordains every particular.To say that he merely "knows" is kind of blasphemous.


Thus repentence is only a gift in the same sense as faith is.

Rip : Huh? What does that mean? Repentance is a gift of God as is faith. There is no need to equivocate.

Acts 5:31 :God exalted him as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

Acts 11:18 : When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

 

[Rippon]

All Scripture Cited Is From The NLTse

But this does not mean that all to who God reveals truth to will believe or come at His drawing.

Wait a minute -- you still have John chaper 6 in your Bible, don't you?! All of those drawn come. There is no doubt about it.

Verse 37: However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.

Verse 39 : And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day.

Verse 44 : For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.

Verse 65 : Then he said, "That is why I said that people can't come to me unless the Father gives them to me."

Are we copacetic?

 

[Allan]

Rip : You're the one with a distorted theology guiding your view of Scripture.It says very plainly that the Lord grants repentance. Yet you deny the fact.There is no such business "allowing them to repent."

I do not deny anything. The word is 'give' but it's meanings are such that it can mean to permit, or even 'to cause' either of these are fine since God must act in order to bring that man to repentence and in do so is allowing them to repent. Not that God is giving him repentence so he can repent. You would need to be somewhat off the wall to presume that a believer does not have it within them to repent if God brings them to it. And again if God brings them to it, it is because He is allowing them to repent. He is not 'giving' the believer something they don't have. That is non-sense on any scale.


This passages is dealing with Christians who are in sin.

Rip : The 'opponents' don't sound like Christians to me.

Then I suggest reading it a little more.

Rip : I won't deal with your distortion of 1 Timothy 2:4 at this point. However, God does not "imfractically" ( give all sinners alike the opportunity to repent.Tell me how the bulk of humanity who have never heard of Christ/Gospel can be said to have been given the opportunity to repent?!

Rom 1-2 is a good example to start.

Rip : How magnanimous of you for saying the Lord "knows all that are to come." But the Lord of the Bible has a lot more authority than that! He determines, decrees, appoints, ordains every particular.To say that he merely "knows" is kind of blasphemous.

No, but then you really didn't have much of a point here did you, so you just did what comes naturally.

Acts 5:31 :God exalted him as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

Acts 11:18 : When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

What about them. They fit exactly in the defintion I previously gave. It seems that you are impling if God did not implant repentence into some men (or in the case above believers as well) then they are not able to repent. that is just silliness. All men everywhere can repent but not all men everywhere will. However man can only repent when God is dealing with them.

 

[Allan]

But this does not mean that all to who God reveals truth to will believe or come at His drawing.

Wait a minute -- you still have John chaper 6 in your Bible, don't you?! All of those drawn come. There is no doubt about it.

Verse 37: However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.

Verse 39 : And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day.

Verse 44 : For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.

Verse 65 : Then he said, "That is why I said that people can't come to me unless the Father gives them to me."

There is no disputing that all that the Father gave to Christ will come but not all whom the Father draws will come. Verses 37 and 39 do not speak of God's drawing but His giving to Christ. Yes, their coming is bound in His drawing however we find nowhere that His drawing is only to a few but in fact notice in your own theology you acknowledge 2 callings. I contend that the so called 'inward calling' is only a logical conclusion based upon your theology and not so much as that which is born out from the scriptures. In fact those verse I previously gave speak volumes in that God called but they rejected and we can include the Parable of the Marriage feast as well to this argument as well.

However verses 44 and 65 merely state that no man can come to Christ unless the Father draws him, because unless God initiates through the revelation of truth because no man can come to the spiritual truth of Christ by himself - it is only revealed to him by God.

 

[David Lamb]

Are we copacetic?

Allen may be, but I've no idea. "Copacetic" is not in my dictionary (where the next entry after "cop" is "copal"). Sorry Rip, was it a typo?

 

[Allan]

Allen may be, but I've no idea. "Copacetic" is not in my dictionary (where the next entry after "cop" is "copal"). Sorry Rip, was it a typo?

It's like saying "are we clear on this".

 

[David Lamb]

It's like saying "are we clear on this".

Thanks, Allan, and apologies for spelling your name with an e before.

 

[Allan]

:jesus:

Thanks, Allan, and apologies for spelling your name with an e before.

LOL.. if you notice, even though it is spelled out almost no one spells it right :laugh: I've gotten Alan, Allen, Alen, and every once is a while it is correctly spelled "Allan". Oh well at least they know me.

 

[russell55]

This is not a true statement - imo. We all are capable of believing in something and this includes Christ. However the belief or faith that we place in Christ is only when God, not man, reveals His truth to us. But this does not mean that all to who God reveals truth to will believe or come at His drawing.

I don't know how you avoid seeing that there is, in scripture, a kind of drawing/calling/revealing that is always effective. Paul actually sometimes uses the word "call" as a metonymy for being saved. There is a kind of calling/drawing/revealing that always ends in the salvation of the one being drawn.

You're taking this beyond it's context. This does not mean that not all men can believe since the wording is specific that these whom Satan is currently blinding have already rejected the truth..

Whether they've previously rejected the truth is beside the point of my argument, although I do think Paul is speaking generally here: about unbelievers; those who are perishing in general. The point I was making is that not everyone can believe. These are people who, for whatever reason, cannot believe.

We know that man can not come to spiritual truth of or by himself but it must be revealed to him by God who will bring light through Christ Jesus to every man (John 1:9) and the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8), that they might believe (John 3:15-17)

Really? The Holy Spirit works so that those who never hear the gospel might believe?

But not everyone comes whom the Father reveals such to. .... Rom 1:18-32....

The Father reveals the light of Christ through general revelation?

But, more to the point, I believe that scripture teaches two sorts of revealing—a revealing that comes in word only, and a revealing that comes in word and and in the power of the Spirit.

However, I will agree that faith is in a 'sense' a gift in that if it were not for God revealing truth to us that we might believe we would continue in sin. Therefore the gift maintains it's biblical point that Christ is the gift given that we might 'have faith' in Him. (the object of our faith that saves) So it is not a gift in the sense that God gave to us something (faith itself) that we did not already possess but that God gave us Christ (something we did not have) that our faith could be placed no longer in vain things which can not save but in that which God has revealed.

Given that you believe this, how do you interpret Philippians 1:29, where it says that believing in Christ's name is a gift in the same way that suffering for him is a gift?

The passage above simply speaks of believers who already received that light God sent forth due and nothing more. You're trying add to it what is not implied at all. This goes back to John 1:9 in which scripture states that Christ gives light to 'every' [single] man who comes into the world. You have taken this passage far beyond what it was intended to state contextually.

But Paul puts this "light shining in" in the context of the creative work of God. God, who said, in the act of creation, "Let light shine out" has, in the case of our hearts, shone in to them. There is a creative force to this particular sort of giving of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and, I would argue a different sort of light than given to every man. That was an external lighting, but this is God shining in our hearts with the force of God's creative word behind the action.

You will note this is about those who have accepted or already rejected the truth of God's reveliation becasue verse 4 makes a very clear statement that these whom Satan is blinding alreayd have chosen not to believe. It states "in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving ,.." (NASB). Satan is not keeping them from seeing the light so to never see it, but that they are unbelieving and Satan is allowed to keep them from believing. We see this illistrated very well in Rom 1 in which scripture states that after their rejection of the truth God reveals in nature through His revelation and there it states - God gave them over [to their sin, desires, et..] and can also be seen in 2 Thes 2:10-12 regarding the gospel which is rejected. It is also seen with God hardening peoples heart who do not believe or better that reject Him and or His word.

Isn't every single person who is not right now believing an unbeliever? Isn't every single person who is not right now believing one of the perishing? If so, then I don't see your point here. It still means that everyone who is not now believing is blinded by Satan and Satan is keeping them from believing. Can they believe when Satan is keeping them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ? Don't they need God to unblind their minds or stop Satan from continuing to blind them?

No you are in error for He does not 'give' us faith but the object for our faith. You are correct however in that our belief or placing of faith is a direct result of His shining our hearts - IF we will believe.

He gives us the object of our faith and shines in to give "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Isn't knowing "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" an expression of faith itself? Isn't knowing Christ as he truly is called "believing in him"?

God does not give repentence but it is refering to God allowing them to repent.

It doesn't say God allows them to repent. It says God gives them repentence.

This passages is dealing with Christians who are in sin.

Christians can be ensnared by the devil? Christians can be taken captive to do the devil's will?