Ezekiel 18:21-23

No it doesn't. You are overlooking the teaching on free will that has been put forth many times. Your misunderstanding of free will has led you to a false conclusion.

First, that is not the non-Calvinist view. Techinically speaking, taht is what I believe. However, my belief is calvinistic. We agree in principle, we simply use different terms to describe it.

Second, I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that man's choice will always act in accordance with his nature. That is what it means to have free will, or to make a free choice. Man's choice is constrained by nothing outside of his nature.

We have said this many times and you have been here long enough to learn something new. Please don't continue to repeat false statements. Start learning from those who know what they believe. Thanks.

 

Okay, I'm back.....

This is not really what I believe at all. I believe that God brings the elect to salvation and that he makes them perfect, but it's process, and it's a process that's not complete until that final step in the salvation process: our glorification.

Regeneration (as I use the word, as as many Calvinists use it) is just the start of that process in our experience. It is the beginning of the new life, but just as a baby grows and develops and works to become what he is created to be, so those who are regenerated grow and develop and work to become the sort of new person God has recreated them to be.

I would not use the word regeneration that way. I would call that process sanctification. I think of regeneration as the birth part of the process--the very start of things, and sanctification as the growth part of the process--the development of increasing Christ-likeness.

It takes both things to save us: The washing of regeneration by which a new life is begun; and the renewing of the Holy Spirit , by which the transformation that begins with the new birth continues to be worked within us.

I think you might have a hard time supporting this view with scripture. Scripture calls those who are "in Christ" a new creation. Everything has changed. He is a completely different sort of person, a new sort of human being. But just a a newborn is not a whole lot like the person he will eventually become, so it is with the newly reborn. From the outside, there might not be much that impresses us, but a wonderful life has begun, and with that new life comes a process of growth that will always, unfailingly, eventually result in a perfect person who is all that God has recreated him to be.

...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ...

Well, I think our bondage to Satan is broken at the point of our new birth. We were once under the power of Satan, but Christ's redemption freed us from that slavery, and that's the reason we are free to become more and more righteous. We have been delivered from Satan's grip and transferred to the kingdom of God's son.

We are already in reality children of the King, but just like a baby (or adopted child) begins a process of learning and growing to behave according to the expectations of the family he has joined, so we have begun the process of learning and growing to behave like the those of the heavenly family we to which we belong.

[ May 04, 2003, 07:48 PM: Message edited by: russell55 ]

 

I believe there is a difference in salvation and sanctification; salvation is IMHO, not a process, but I would agree that sanctification is.

Bro. Dallas