I've never known a Calvinist...

I'm sorry, but Paul is not saying that in Galatians 5. In verses 1-15 he is discussing the fact that we are free of the law and that those who depend on the law are not depending on Christ and thus are alienated from Him.

The rest of the chapter describes life by the Spirit and in verse 24 says simply "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires." And that's the way it is.

He closes with "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."

And that's the way we are to be.

Please note that in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul talks about the acts of the sinful nature and then says, "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." It is clear this is not talking about believers!

Calvinism causes great confusion, says that the saved man still has a war inside himself...this is false. Christ promised us joy and peace beyond understanding. Peace and war do not coexist. Yes, I do sin. But I don't want to, and there is no war there because I know that when I do, all I need to do is confess to the Lord and He is faithful and just to forgive me. For the believer, sinning is like Peter taking his eyes off Christ while walking on the water and sinking. Christ pulled him back out. When I take my eyes off Christ, it is not a matter of a war, but a matter of getting wet! And He is always faithful to pull me back out!

 

Maybe you have war, Calvi, but I have the peace of Christ. It definitely passes all understanding. I know in whom I have believed.

 

Try to take these one by one:

Frenchy -- God FINALLY hardened Pharaoh's heart, but if you read the text, you will see that for the first plagues Pharaoh hardened his own heart. God, being outside of time, knew that would happened and so reassured Moses that He would finish the job and that the final condition of Pharaoh would be a God-hardened heart. You must let Bible explain Bible. Remember Hebrews where the writer begs his readers to NOT harden their own hearts as their ancestors did in the wilderness. People harden their own hearts, and if they insist on that path, God will finish the job for them.

"Seek and ye shall find" is definitely NOT to believers. Immediately after the seek, knock, ask, passage is the following: "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

Jesus says His listeners there are evil. That is NOT redeemed. The Holy Spirit did not come until Pentecost, and it is then that they were born again. Jesus is talking to average men in the Sermon on the Mount.

Frenchy, I'm sure you were sinning at 14, but sinning does not make you an adult! Biologically at that age your brain is a mess, in the middle of disconnecting some neuron connections and connecting others. Legally you are still a child. Spiritually you are not yet held accountable for your messed-up actions and thoughts. It may well have happened shortly after that, but unless you were WAY ahead of the rest of us, you were simply a messed-up teenager at fourteen and God knew that and waited. For your sake.

Your daughter had not yet spiritually been separated from God at 5. It is not until the late teens or early twenties that we wrestle with God on our own and reach our own relationship with Him. That is one of the points of the Exodus story. As a child, you are separated from the sins you commit and they are 'dead', as Paul says in Romans 7 -- they are powerless to separate you from God. Because NO child can comprehend God's law (learn it, yes, comprehend it, no), sin cannot exercise its power over them, even though they sin. They are covered by the Blood of Christ until the law is understood by them in their late teens/early twenties. Then they are separated because they sin with full knowledge. Then they must choose which way to go -- make excuses or submit to God. You were right on schedule. Your precious daughter has had a good upbringing I am sure and knows Bible. But her time of being alone with God as an adult will come, too, and it is then she will have to do her own wrestling and make her own decisions. Right now she is believing you and that is not a bad thing.

But the time will come when she will be separate from you and then it will just be her and God.

Brutus -- Please put Galatians 5:17 back into context. Paul spends the entire first section of the letter discussing the futility of trying to rely on the law for what the Spirit and only the Spirit can do. He emphasizes this at the beginning of chapter 5. And so he says, in verse 16: "Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." That sentence comes first. If you live by the Spirit, you WILL NOT gratify the sin nature.

Being a Christian is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Philippians 1:6 says He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun which is, as Romans 8:28-30 tells us, to be transformed into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ. To say that I still have the same war with the flesh I had thirty years ago, in my twenties, is to say the Holy Spirit has done somewhere between nothing and very little with me! And that is not true. I am amazed at what He has done with the mess that was me. And as I look back, amazed, I know I am in His good Hands and that I am perfectly safe. That knowledge and the love He has put in me have stopped the war with my flesh. I live in my flesh, and I understand its weaknesses: when I am tired, I know to sleep. When I am hungry, I know to eat. When I am restless, I know to get up and work physically. But in all of that, I try to discern what the Lord is asking of me at any given moment and obey. How can there be war in that? There is perfect peace. If I mess up, He shows me, I apologize, am forgiven, and He and I keep on going. My goal is for Him to express Himself through me, not for me to concentrate or focus on 'battling my flesh.' When my focus is on Him, He does the battle and He always wins. I am at rest that way. My burden is light.

Now, if you will check the Romans passage you referred to -- 7:21 -- you will find this is NOT a saved man talking. Since Romans 7:7, Paul has been giving a narrative of the person who sins volitionally, dies spiritually, and has that enormous battle inside because he knows the law is right and good and cannot obey it on his own. In verse 14, he says "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin."

No way is that a saved person in that part of the narrative! For just a chapter before, Paul has asserted "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness" (6:18) and many similar verses.

The Jews delighted in God's law. They were proud of it, that it had been given to them, and depended on it and tried to follow not only it, but all the additions the Pharisees and Sadduccees had added. So Paul writes, of this unsaved man, "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin that is at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

This man states he is a prisoner of the law of sin. But the man born again in Christ has been set free from the law of sin. This man says there is a war waging in side, but in chapter 8, the chapter of the man saved by grace, we find "the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace." War and peace cannot coexist with a person. The state is one or the other.

And yet, when I state I have the peace of Christ in me and no war, I am told I am not a Christian! What kind of nonsense is that? I have what Christ promised and so I am told that means I am not a Christian.

The Lord Jesus Christ is my life, my love, my Lord, my God. I was born again in him in my mid-twenties, over 30 years ago, and I have certainly had time to see Him work and therefore I can say with total certainty, "I know in whom I have believed."

 

npetreley, Paul had chosen to serve God long before. He was a trained Pharisee and was careful to obey the law in every way he knew. He considered Christians to be a damaging cult, heretical to the true Scripture. When Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, He was telling Paul that the truth was not where he thought it was, not that Paul's desire for truth was not there. Paul was seeking. He found.

I certainly did no more than that.

In the meantime, your mocking shows far more of the fruits of Calvinism than I think you want it to show.

 

If anyone else tings he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
Philippians 3:4b-6

Paul makes it clear he was seeking to do what was right. Granted his confidence was in the flesh at that point, but that was all he knew which would please God. And despite his wrong heading, God knew his heart and turned him around.

 

Thank you, Bob. No, nothing is built on me!

As far as the war goes, I understand what you are saying. Maybe it's my age now (58), I don't know, but I have already suffered pain that morphine couldn't touch, I have already died in surgery and been shocked back, I have already been abandon by a husband I loved of 20 years and then, years later, found the most wonderful man in the world that I am married to now. I have arthritis, diabetes, and severe carpal tunnel syndrome. I live in pain every day of my life and don't have the energy I used to. Maybe my body just has given up the fight!

The worst fight I feel anymore is right now, the tug of the sunshine outdoors and we have guests coming for dinner so I'd better get into the kitchen!

God has seen me through everything, every pain, every insult, every doubt, every everything. He is utterly faithful and I am no longer even afraid of death. I don't want Barry to be left alone, but I know God loves him even more than I do, so I know God will take care of that, too.

What fight should I be having that I don't know about? My life is the Lord's and I do my best to listen for His direction daily and I have this incredible husband who keeps me bathed in prayer. I am utterly and completely content and at peace. Somehow I feel like I am supposed to apologize for that!

 

Oh goodness, there is sadness. Oh my yes. But that is not the same as a battle inside. One can still feel deep sadness and heart-felt pain and physical pain, but a war inside is something else entirely.

When I was 30, and every instinct in me told me I was dying the night before that surgery (peritonitis, undiagnosed), and the pain was so incredible, I wrote a note to my husband and young son saying goodbye. THAT was a war inside me, learning to give up what I loved.

When my husband left with another woman and I was screaming at God, THAT was a war inside me, learning that my husband had a will that defied all my prayers for our marriage.

It was a couple of months after that when I finally looked up in the black that would have been the ceiling if it were not nighttime, and, after hours of crying...again...finally said what had been needed for me to say for years, even though I had been a born again Christian for about 22 years at that point: "You are God, and I am not. Have mercy on me."

That was the end of my 'intellectually-based' faith and the beginning of my Spirit-based faith.

There have been times of sadness since, and I have to admit I was terrified of getting married again and spent all afternoon two days before our marriage hysterically trying to talk Barry out of it! But that is as close as it has come since that October night in 1991 when I finally gave it all up to God.

Of course there are still times of sadness and 'valley' times. But these aren't internal battles, they are just the sad times, the hurting times. Those won't be gone until heaven.

You don't sound as if you are in a battle, Bob, but rather in a very sad and hurting time. But you know the Lord is with you, and that is the peace we have. If you love your wife the way Barry loves me, and you very well might, then this has got to be tearing part of you up inside. But you know the Lord is in charge. And you know He loves your wife even more than you do. And you KNOW that all of this will work together for the good of both of you because you both love Him.

Pain, oh yes. But a peace in the middle of it that is impossible to explain, right?