Your question is really an accusation against God. Take it up with God.
You mean God should take it up with God. Since he is just a puppet saying what God forced him to say.
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Your question is really an accusation against God. Take it up with God.
Your question is really an accusation against God. Take it up with God.
It's your accusation of God that demands God act according to your will.Is it not Calvinist doctrine that leaves this question hanging out there? It's a natural question. What is the answer?
It's your accusation of God that demands God act according to your will.
Do you have a verse that is causing you anxiety?
How I read the verse.. . . that the faith that sustains me in this life is not only the gift of God ( Ephesians 2:8 ), . .
I am waiting for the verse that causes you anxiety. Please provide it so we can look at what God is declaring.Think about it. In how many passages in the Bible does God lament the lack of faith? How many times does God lay the charge of faithlessness at the feet of His people?
Claiming that faith is the exclusive gift of God casts all these passages into darkness. They are rendered inexplicable.
Faith is the Fruit of the Spirit Gal 5:22 so we obtain Faith once we are Born of the Spirit.
Faith is the Fruit of the Spirit Gal 5:22 so we obtain Faith once we are Born of the Spirit.
He just redirects his faith, away from the things in which he formerly directed it, unto God, which he understood in the beginning from what has been made, just like it says in Romans 1.How can a man believe in God unless he is born of the Spirit of God first?
The Spirit Himself is a Gift !So does that mean all the other fruits of the spirit are actually gifts too? So Paul could just as well have said, the gifts of the spirit are, love, joy, peace, patience, self-control, etc?
The Spirit Himself is a Gift !
@adfinitum, I am still waiting...I am waiting for the verse that causes you anxiety. Please provide it so we can look at what God is declaring.
@adfinitum, I am still waiting...
Faith is part of a Spiritual Inheritance accompanying the giving of the Spirit. Eph 1:13-14
13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
Thats why Peter says its an allotted Faith 2 Pet 1:1
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:
Again the word obtained lagchanó:
I obtain (receive) by lot, my lot (turn) is, (b) I draw lots
Paul alludes to this allotment here also Rom 12:3
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
I cant make you understand these things friend.The verse says that the sealing with the Holy Spirit comes after we believe (i.e. faith).
The Greek says literally "to those having obtained a faith equally precious with ours", which gives a different impression.
There is no linkage of ideas between this verse and the others cited because the actual meanings of them are different and the contexts are different. This passage is about the functions of the body which are necessarily unequal in their spiritual demands, God assigning those functions based on capabilities.
And that causes you anxiety because...Revelation 3:18
I cant make you understand these things friend.
I can't make you believe the truth."To those having obtained a faith through....."
What is typically quoted is "obtained like precious faith through..." where faith is tacitly plural as in some quantity of it rather than the singular "a faith", as in The Faith.
Is that too subtle a difference? It makes a difference. Jots and tittles, friend.