winman,
THis is why we can never agree.
Your gospel is that a man......regenerates himself...he believes,he is regenerated.....once again....you think man does not need God to be regenerated.
The Ezk 36 passage as well as the ezk 34 passage describe God Working from start to finish. You and others talk about what man does.
We speak of what God does. Salvation is a supernatural work of God bringing a dead sinner to life.
Your scheme has some men making a better choice than others, It is natural,
biblical regeneration is Spiritual and supernatural:thumbsup:
I do not believe man regenerates himself whatsoever. I had no ability whatsoever to make myself alive, I was dead in sins. If Jesus had not died for me, I would remain dead in sins. It was only because I heard the gospel (and I could not have heard the gospel unless God had provided it) and believed on Jesus that I am alive, all my sins are forgiven.
This is the problem, Calvinists think of spiritual death like physical death. A physically dead person has no abilities at all, he cannot see, hear, smell, touch, whatever etc... But that is not what spiritual death means. It means to be condemned, it means to be under a death sentence. It means to be separated from God, to be at enmity with God.
Now think of a person on death row. This is what a spiritually dead person is like. He is locked up and cannot escape. He is condemned and will be put to death eventually. But he still has ability, he can hear, see, think, and all other abilities. Nevertheless, he is imprisoned or enslaved, he is not free. This is what spiritual death is like.
Now, because Jesus has died for us and paid our sins, we are offered pardon if we will trust on Jesus. We are forgiven our sins and released from prison, which is the condemnation of death. We are no longer imprisoned under the law, we are now under grace. We are free.
Even a Calvinist says a person must believe on Jesus. If believing is a work before regeneration, it is still a work after regeneration. If you believe faith is a work, then you believe a man is saved by works.
Faith or believing simply means to trust or rely on another. It is a ceasing of all work, all effort to save one's self, and to depend on Jesus alone to save us.
It is like going to a doctor when you have a brain tumor or serious heart condition. No man can operate and heal himself. We must go to a doctor and trust him. We allow him to put us to sleep and operate. We do not heal ourselves, the doctor does, but the doctor cannot heal us unless we trust him and allow him to do his work.
Jesus compared himself to a physician.
Mar 2:17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Now, no man boasts when he has been to a surgeon who operated on his brain or heart that he healed himself. Have you ever known even one person who had heart surgery who bragged that he healed himself? I certainly haven't, but I have heard many people praise a doctor for healing him.
The gospel convicts a man and shows him he is sick in sin and will die. It is not much different from going to a doctor and having an X-Ray. The doctor tells you that you have a brain tumor and will die unless you have immediate surgery. If you believe the doctor, you trust him and he operates and heals you. You have done no work, the doctor did all the work. You simply placed your life in his hands and trusted him to heal you.
Likewise, the gospel tells us we are sinners and will die. But Jesus is the great physician who can heal us. If we will trust him and place our life in his hands he will heal us. He does the work, he regenerates us, he gives us life. He forgives all our sins. We are set free from the condemnation we were enslaved under. We are now under his grace and set free from sin. We are now spiritually alive.
If a man is regenerated before he believes, then he is alive without Christ. This denies Jesus. It is not Jesus that gives you life in your system, you believe the Father gives you life without Jesus. This is serious error.
It is like saying you were healed before you go to Jesus. If you are healed, you have no need to go to Jesus to heal you. You have denied Jesus.
No one is spiritually alive until they go to Jesus and Jesus heals you.
Spurgeon realized what I am talking about;
If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him, and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate. But you will tell me that I ought to preach it only to those who repent of their sins. Very well; but since true repentance of sin is the work of the Spirit, any man who has repentance is most certainly saved, because evangelical repentance never can exist in an unrenewed soul. Where there is repentance there is faith already, for they never can be separated. So, then, I am only to preach faith to those who have it. Absurd, indeed! Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine? This is preaching Christ to the righteous and not to sinners.
Do you see what Spurgeon said? He said if a man is already regenerate, then it is ridiculous to preach to that man to believe on Jesus when he is already regenerated and saved. Spurgeon said this would be like offering medicine to someone who is already healed.
And this is what you teach, you teach a man has already been regenerated and made alive BEFORE he trusts on Jesus. He is already healed, he is already regenerated and spiritually alive, he would have no need of Jesus. This view denies Jesus.