Featured Faith Precedes Regeneration - Note What Spurgeon Said

Austin, this is the whole point. Satan did those things to the extent God allowed and was restricted by God. God was limiting Satan. Satan was not going along dancing through the flowers on Earth and God put him up to that. Even Satan charges that God put a hedge around Job. He had been wanting to get at Job all along. No one is saying that God doesn't accomplish his purposes sometimes by using means of evil men or in this case Satan himself. My concern is that some of you guys are going further - you are going along with Cheung, and Ken who are charging God directly as a cause of moral evil.

And actually, because of the fact that since the fall we all die and God must determine when, of course God sends calamity and earthquakes, disease, famine, hurricanes, and so on according to His wisdom. But I'm saying don't use Job to prove that God Himself directly causes moral evil because in this case, it was Satan. And if you choose to use that scripture to prove your point you have a problem in that the sin involved or not done is NOT indicated as being caused by God. In all these things, Job did not sin with his mouth. His friends sinned later by pontificating about Job's guilt. No mention of God being the cause of their sin. Were they random molecules? God does not tempt people to sin. Take it up with James.

 

Read it again, Dave. Satan wasn't even thinking of Job until God brought Job up. God instigated the entire thing. God remains good, even when God gives direction to Satan to be able to kill Job's children.
Certainly Satan carried out the things that God allowed, which begs the question of who is the ultimate cause. Romans 9 begs the same question. Paul tells us the answer, but we often don't like the answer because ultimately our flesh wants to hold God to our standard of righteousness and holiness. We think that God must act in a certain way and then we create scenarios to fit God into our box. In reality, we have to accept that God does things according to His will that we just cannot understand or reconcile. We have to leave it as a mystery and believe that God is by nature Good no matter what evil He ordains.

 

I did not say that God is more guilty than Satan. Satan is the father of the lie, not God. Perhaps you should read my post again.
Also, I believe unreservedly in the total sovereignty of God. What I do not believe is that in order to be sovereign He has to make mankind into robots or Stepford wives. He is much smarter than that.
Before conversion, men and women exercise their free will to reject Christ (e.g. John 3:19) because they have wicked, unbelieving hearts. Their inability to come to Christ is not constitutional but moral and spiritual. If they would come to Christ they would be saved (Acts of the Apostles 2:21), but they will not (John 5:40). But when God gives them a new heart and a new spirit, they willingly (Psalms 110:3) come.

It is all of God, but does not bypass the human will; it changes and renews it.

 

Exactly! 'In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong' (Job 1:22). In allowing Satan to afflict Job, God had a higher purpose, which is why it is in the Bible for our education.

 

God's creation has no "libertarian free will". If man did, then man could come to Christ on his own, but he cannot.

True. Psalms 110:3

True. Ezekiel 36:26-27

 

God opened her heart. He did not make her born again. He would have to go against his whole justice.. She also had to chose to make the decision to trust him..

Conviction and drawing I agree. comes in different ways and different timing. some it takes alot longer than others.

but until the penalty of sin is removed (Justification) one is dead in their sin.. the penalty of sin is death.

We are justified by faith. once we are justified (declaired righteous. or imputed as Abraham with Christ's righteousness) we are immediately given new life, new birth. and this life is eternal.

Jesus explained how one is born again.

Just as moses lifted the serpent. so must the son of man be lifted up.; that whoever believes in him will never perish but has eternal life. For god so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. that whoever believes in him will never perish, but has eternal life (new birth) For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. he who believes in him is not condemned. but he who does not believe is condemned already.

Fith or lack of faith is the determining factor.

do we trust God or not..

Abraham did. And God accounted it to him as righteousness.

 

lol.. this is nonsense.

Jesus died for many who will be lost. He chose Israel. and many of them, even though he wanted to gather them together as a mother hen, but THEY WERE NOT WILLING.

Stop thinking you are so special. Your not.. Your just as lost as any sinner..

 

Man can not merit salvation because they placed their faith in someone else.

So you are bearing false witness.. Because I did not merit anything. I placed my trust in someone else to completely save me, because I became poor in spirit.. As jesus said we must do to enter the kingdom of God

 

lol..

Once again, My placing my FAITH in someone I have never met, have never seen, and in a work I never witnessed is not me saving my self or me acting in the flesh.

Works of the flesh are to serve self. When you empty yourself and fall on your knees not even able to look up. your not serving yourself. your crying out for Gods mercy..

The tax collector was dead when he fell on his knees. He was alive when God saved him

 

Not at all.

Totally false.

No one is willing unless God makes them willing. Psalms 110:3

I couldn't agree more.

By the way, the word you should have used is "you're", not "your".

I am still a sinner. But I am now a saved sinner by the sovereign grace of God.

There are only two classes of people - sinners who are lost and sinners who are saved by the sovereign grace of God.

By the way, the word you should have used is "you're", not "your".

 

Where do you get the idea in Luke chapter 18 that he fell on his knees? Luke 18:13 says he was standing.

 

God willed Jerusalem to repent.

they did not


this destroyed your whole theology.

God did not force mankind to sin. and be lost. he will not force people to believe so they can be saved.

sadly, I fear You do not know God at all

 

Nope.

Nope.

 

True, He makes them wlling in the day of His power. See Psalms 110:3.

 

leave it to you to find fault, and ignore the context of what happened

it does not matter if he was standing or kneeling, HE WAS DEAD..

 

Matthew 23:37
Jesus Laments over Jerusalem
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

So you call Jesus a liar.

thank you!

 

It was your misstatement. No reason for your reaction.

True, until God regenerated him and granted the gifts of faith and repentance from dead works.

 

Of course, I did not mention the word 'libertarian,' but is there really such a thing as libertarian free will? If you offer me the choice of tea or coffee, do I have libertarian free will or is my will conditioned by the fact that I prefer the taste of coffee? If you offer a man the choice of Christ or sin, does he have complete liberty of choice? Of course not! 'And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men preferred darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.' But when God gives man a new heart and a new spirit in the New Birth, then he will freely prefer Christ because Christ has set him free (John 8:32). Is that libertarian free will? Perhaps not, because he now prefers light to darkness.

 

You called Christ a liar when you said that He died for goats, when He said that He died for His sheep.

 

nope

if they have no way to still reject. he forced them..

Just like he forced adam and eve to eat of the fruit, then punished them and the whole human race for something they had no choice or way to stop.