God gives a new nature (including will) so that that person may believe?
Well said agedman. That truth makes ridiculous the argument by Arminians that the Doctrines of Grace make a preprogramed idiot out of a man. Until God the Holy Spirit gives man that new nature they are as the Apostle Paul said:
in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:[Ephesians 2:2]
John Dagg writes of this new creation in Jesus Christ [Manual of Theology, pages 277ff] as follows: “So great is the change produced, that the subject of it is called a new creature as if proceeding, like Adam, directly from the creating hand of God; and he is said to be renewed, as being restored to the image of God, in which man was originally formed”
2 Corinthians 5:17, KJV
17. Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Dagg further notes:
“The change is moral. The body is unchanged; and the identity of the mind is not destroyed. The individual is conscious of being the same person that he was before; but a new direction is given to the active powers of the mind, and new affections are brought into exercise. The love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. No love to God had previously existed there; for the carnal heart is enmity against God. Love is the fulfilling of the law, the principle of all holy obedience; and when love is produced in the heart, the law of God is written there. As a new principle of action, inciting to a new mode of life, it renders the man a new creature. The production of love in the heart by the Holy Spirit, is the regeneration, or the new birth; for he that loveth, is born of God.”
“The mode in which the Holy Spirit effects this change, is beyond our understanding. All God's ways are unsearchable; and we might as well attempt to explain how he created the world, as how he new-creates the soul. With reference to this subject, the Saviour said,
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.[John 3:8, KJV] We know, from the Holy Scriptures, that God employs his truth in the regeneration of the soul.
Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.[James 1:18, KJV] Love to God necessarily implies knowledge of God, and this knowledge it is the province of truth to impart. But knowledge is not always connected with love. The devils know, but do not love; and wicked men delight not to retain the knowledge of God, because their knowledge of him is not connected with love. The mere presentation of the truth to the mind, is not all that is needed, in producing love to God in the heart.”
NE indeed will come and accept jesus to save them left to ourselves, for our hearts are deceitful and wicked, but that is why God must and does directlyintervene to save out of humanity His group/people, we call them the Elect!
