Ah! I see. You have hitched the horse up to the wrong cart. I don’t know any real Christians (and there are plenty of people who are not Christians) who know that in God we live and move and have our being.
But you demean the work of Christ by saying that it is ineffective to salvation. It is not the Holy Spirit who saves us. The Holy Spirit is not the Name given whereby we must be saved.
You cause a stumbling block at the gate of salvation. You are overemphasizing the illustrations.
Scripture says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It doesn’t say that you may believe if you have been pre-generated. You forget that God has already created all men and seeks to redeem His creation, the creation He calls made in His Image. By stepping into the role of God, and saying that God doesn’t want some people, you make God out to be a respecter of persons. This is the exact opposite of the way God has revealed Himself.
“Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”
And that is not a general statement. “He” is a very specific person and not a representation of “a select some.” He is “one of any.”
God has not forbidden any that they have the ability to fear Him and work righteousness.
Ben, your response does not merely hit the wrong cart; it completely derails into a dangerous division of the Triune Godhead and a severe misreading of the text. By trying to pit the work of the Son against the work of the Holy Spirit, you are preaching a fragmented gospel that strips God of His absolute glory as the sole Author of salvation.
Let’s look at the theological and exegetical collapse of your argument:
1. Pitting the Son Against the Spirit is Trinitarian Heresy
You state:
"It is not the Holy Spirit who saves us. The Holy Spirit is not the Name given whereby we must be saved."
Think carefully about the gravity of what you are saying. The Bible never pits the Person of the Son against the Person of the Spirit. Salvation is an inseparable, sovereign work of the
Triune God.
- The Legal Phase: The Son perfectly purchased His people on the cross in 33 AD, paying their debt in full.
- The Vital Phase: The Holy Spirit effectively applies that blood-bought redemption to the elect corpse by sovereignly quickening them into life.
To say the Holy Spirit does not save us directly flatly contradicts Scripture. Paul explicitly declares that God saves us
by the Holy Spirit:
“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”
—Titus 3:5
Without the
Vital Phase—the sovereign quickening of the Holy Spirit—the finished work of Christ would remain completely unapplied to a single dead sinner. The Spirit doesn't replace Christ; the Spirit applies Christ!
2. The Absolute Myth of a "Resperter of Persons" in Election
You claim that by holding to a sovereign election where God chooses a specific people, I am making God out to be a
"respecter of persons."
You are completely misinterpreting what that phrase means in the Bible. As the great high-Calvinist commentator
John Gill masterfully noted on Romans 2:11,
"respect of persons" is a forensic term relating strictly to courts of law: [
1]
- A judge is a "respecter of persons" if he lets a guilty wealthy man off the hook because of his bribe, or condemns a poor man out of prejudice. It means showing partiality based on outward plumbing, social class, or race. [1, 2]
- However, a sovereign King is never a respecter of persons for bestowing free grace, favors, or alms on whomever He pleases. If a king chooses to forgive a debt for one man, but demands justice from another who refuses to pay, he is not a respecter of persons; he is simply being merciful to one and strictly just to the other. [1, 2]
If God chose the elect based on their future faith, their good choices, or their ancestry,
then He would be a respecter of persons, because He would be preferring them for something found in their flesh! But High Calvinism maintains that God's election is based
entirely on His own sovereign good pleasure, completely independent of anything in the creature (Ephesians 1:4-5). God doesn't choose you because you are better, smarter, or more willing; He chooses because He wills to choose.
3. Squeezing the True Meaning of Acts 10:34–35
You weaponize Peter's words to Cornelius:
“God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him... is accepted with him.” You claim this means anyone has the native ability to fear Him.
You have completely ripped this text out of its historical context. What was the massive shift happening in Acts 10? The gospel was finally going to the
Gentiles. For thousands of years, the Jews thought God only loved people with Abrahamic blood. Peter’s sudden realization in Cornelius’s house was not an endorsement of free-will ability; it was the realization that
God does not respect ethnic boundaries! As John Gill writes on this verse, God doesn't value a man more because he is a Jew, nor value him less because he is a Gentile. [
1,
2]
Furthermore, you are putting the cart before the horse again. You think Cornelius feared God in his natural, unregenerate strength. But a dead, hostile, unregenerate man
has no fear of God before his eyes (Romans 3:18).
If Cornelius genuinely feared God and worked righteousness, it is because the Holy Spirit had
already performed the
Vital Phase of quickening in his heart, causing him to seek after God. His fear of God was the
evidence of his election, not the cause of it.
The Bottom Line
You claim that I am causing a "stumbling block at the gate of salvation" by saying a man cannot believe until he is quickened. But you are trying to make a decomposing corpse step through a gate before it has legs or breath.
Scripture's order is absolute. Man cannot practically perform a supernatural work until he is vitallly made a new creation. You want a salvation where Christ provided a potential bridge, but man's self-generated faith supplies the final, decisive difference.
I reject that carnal timeline. Salvation is of the Lord from first to last. The Father purposed it (
Eternal Phase), the Son purchased it (
Legal Phase), and the Holy Spirit infallibly applies it (
Vital Phase), producing the faith and obedience of His chosen people (
Practical Phase). Halleluiah!
