Saved at birth? Part 2

With all due respects, Dale.
I have had those scriptures you cited above rammed at me from many well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) others here, but none of them proves what you are trying to say.

So Jesus said to Nicodemus: marvel not that I said ye must be born again.

So ?

Was this a requirement FOR eternal salvation ? Being born again ? Was this a prerequisite OF being eternally saved ? To be a child of God one must be born again ? How do you get born again ? Same question Nick asked, right ?

Does one make himself born again ? Does one say a little prayer, and exercise faith in order to be born again, and in thus being born again, get saved ? Is such a faith requirement to being born again inherent in all men ? Can a poster I know here conjure such a faith up from being once a sinner, a swine that loved to wallow in its own filth, or a dog attracted to its own vomit ?

Does one go from being such a depraved, unfeeling, ungodly, Christ rejecting, unregenerate, sin-practicing, sin-loving, sin-seeking, sinner one minute to a repentant, remorseful, Christ-loving, Christ-seeking, born again child of God the next, entirely on his own ?

If your answer is yes, where is the solid Scripture to support the answer.
If your answer is no, then we both agree it takes the Holy Spirit to regenerate the sinner.

But if your answer is yes, then why does the Holy Spirit regenerate Mr. A, and not Mr. B ?

And as for Christ, my question still stands.

Is Christ, to you, an already Redeemer, and already Savior ?

If your answer is yes, then when did He become a Redeemer, and when did He become a Savior ? When the first man believed on Him ? Who was this first man ? Of whom is He a Savior ? Whom, and what, has He redeemed.

If He becomes a Savior only at the instance someone believes, then He is not at rest. He is still at work, saving His people, He is still redeeming His people. If He is still saving and still redeeming, then where are the Scriptures ?

I know that Hebrews says He is now an Intercessor, interceding for His people.
But is an Intercessor a Redeemer ?

So, according to you, the Triune God authored the salvation of sinners, then the Son put on the form of man, went up on that cross, endured its agony, cried it is finished, died, was buried, resurrected, was seen of more than 500 witnesses, ascended into heaven, sat down at the right hand of Majesty, BUT, we have to preach for His finished work to be actually finished, because He accomplishes nothing without the gospel preacher, in fact, He accomplished nothing unless someone goes and preach, right, did I get you correctly ?

So. Which one saved. Christ, or the gospel ?
Which one was crucified. Christ, or the gospel ?
Which one washed the sinner's sin away. Christ's blood or the gospel.

Once more let me reiterate.

None of those whom God foreknew in eternity past, whose names He wrote down in the Lamb's Book of Life, will ever be lost because Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and the blood that covered His people's sin flowed from before the foundation of the world, in eternity past, and in time, at Calvary, that blood purchased and redeemed all His people, irrespective of their chronological, theological, and credal position in relation to Calvary.

Therefore, the foreknown, elect child of God was born redeemed, saved, BUT unregenerate and at enmity with God because of his sin nature inherited from Adam, and this child of God will be regenerated and born again by the Holy Spirit in accordance with God's will in due time, and we can hem and haw and hammer our fist at the table but we simply cannot claim any share in that glory by assigning our preaching of the gospel as an element for the redeemed sinner's final salvation.

That glory, majesty, power, and awe belongs to Christ and Christ only.

 

I can understand, now, where you are coming from, and many on this board.

You all equate the word saved with being "eternally saved".
That is Christ's work alone for His child (of whom I have great hopes I am one).
He only authored and carried out the salvation of His elect.
However, He did command the gospel preached, and that is where all these arguments come from.
Is the salvation that comes from the preaching of the gospel the eternal kind ?
Or is it the temporal kind.
I believe, and hold it, to be the latter.
That is why Paul says of those he wanted to reach in Jewry: "And how shall they believe............"

We preach the gospel to instruct those who are God's own in the kingdom way, the narrow way, the righteous way.
And this gift of ministry is not given to all.
And really, if we think about it, the gospel will appeal only to those who know Christ because they are, from eternity past, His own.

However, not all who are His own will hear the gospel for the simple reason that man is not omnipresent, as the Spirit is, which is why I think it is error to assign any "eternally saving" power to the gospel.

Rather, it is the good news that, as I have told one poster here, God was not simply sitting in Heaven tweedling His thumbs while sinners were going to hell.

 

See, that's where you do well to distinguish between "hope" or belief and faith. Pinoy is telling you that he has hope of heaven but not faith/knowledge of his personal salvation, that he is going there (is what I am hearing).

And he has this "hope only" because it is God's volition, not his own, as to pinoy's destiny. How would pinoy presume to know what God knows about his salvation? God has (according to y'all's theology) not told us how He chooses whom He chooses to save. So any claims on our part to know we are "elect"/eternally saved are mere presumption. We may have a burning "fever" (of works) but it may be from some other "bug" we've caught!

Now IF God converts us through the gospel (which gospel is Christ the Holy Spirit knocking at the door of our heart, Rev 3:20) and we CHOOSE to open the door, we will soon believe and receive of the Spirit such that we have our proof of salvation, His indwelling. And that indelling is what is needed to have faith -- proof of our hope, Heb 11:1. But again, not to be deceived by our own feelings, we need to have some way of knowing what we feel is HS and not deceiving spirit. The only way is through knowing how God chooses whom He does to salvation.

Now I think Pinoy is somewhat confused about eternal vs temporal salvation because he realizes that God is sanctifying him during this life as part of salvation (else he is running some spiritual treadmill in this life that is getting him nowhere -- much like the Catholics). So many of the purposes we feel we have been predestined to fulfill seem temporal in nature and not a product of the gospel but of daily living for Christ. This is a true perspective.

Pinoy's doubts are regarding his justification -- has he (can he even know) if he is saved eternally? Isn't the gospel given to lead men to justification rather than sanctification? Yes! Justification of the soul so that the spirit may be sanctified daily until the DoC, Phil 1:6, 3:21! Sanctification is "the working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself," even our "vile bodies!"

skypair

 

Perhaps you can show me someone in the New Testament that was saved without hearing the gospel?

Peter preached Christ at Pentecost. Thousands were saved. Peter preached to Cornelius. Salvation came to his house. Phillip was led by an angel of God to the Ethopian Eunuch. What did he do? He preached Jesus to him (Act 8:35).

The preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ is God's plan to bring salvation to His elect children. (I Cor. 1:21) Since it is God's plan, and Holy Spirit is the one who convicts and draws and regenerates, God still gets all the glory.

peace to youraying:

 

Perhaps you can show me someone in the Old Testament that was saved by hearing the gospel ?

So ? Where does it say in any of these Scriptures that they were saved, sins forgiven, eternally in Christ, all because of the gospel ? Who made them rich and saved and co-heirs in Christ ? The gospel ? Or the very Christ of whom they hear in the gospel.

No. God's plan to bring His children to salvation is the cross, culminated in time. In eternity past, all His children were already washed by the blood of the Lamb of glory slain from before the foundation of the world. Which is why none will ever be lost - before, during, or after the cross.

God's plan to deliver most, not all, of His children from the pollutions of the world, is the gospel, its preaching, its teaching.

The gospel is the good news of their deliverance, already finished, not about to be finished (depending on them).


If the gospel is what brings salvation, then the cross becomes meaningless. If the gospel is what causes salvation, then all men born before the preaching of the gospel were damned, and God had no elect until after the cross, and salvation is concentric, with the center in Jerusalem, not heaven.

If the gospel is what causes salvation, then God has no business using the term "all men" in the Bible since not all men can be reached by the gospel, and not all men have been reached by the gospel to this point in time.

The salvation of God's elect children is independent of the gospel, independent of the preacher, the missionary, of theology, or creed, or geography.

God has His elect people from the foundation of the world, and they were not just in the Middle East.

And to you.

 

There was a distinct OT gospel -- the "gospel of the kingdom." We find it preached by John the Baptist in Mt 3:2. In Acts 18:32-19:6, we see 13 men who were saved by that OT gospel (Apollos included). When they later heard and received the gospel of Christ, they manifested the indwelling Spirit of the new birth. This is a great study in the distinctiveness of OT and NT gospel, the manifestation of belief, and whether it was "Christ-based" or based on the expectation of something else, King Messiah.

It is clear from scripture that Christ's death was not revealed to them as the means of salvation -- that they didn't have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit -- that the very gospel of salvation was different though having the same Sacrifice, unknown to one era and known in the other.

No, it is clear that they were not washed yet else they'd have gone right to heaven instead of awaiting the resurrection of Christ. However, when Christ had died for sins, He then took them "captivity" to heaven from sheol.

Don't go all ballistic on us, pinoy. :laugh: You just don't have a few facts straight in your mind. The NT gospel is the revelation of the work of the cross. The OT gospel was the revelation that God would forgive sin when He came (Isn't that what He did?).

You are using a very restrictive definition, the NT definition, of the "gospel." As I have demonstrated, the gospel was different in the OT. The gospel of nature spoken of in Rom 1:19 is yet another but "unpreached" gospel. Surely you can see that if all these be included as gospels, then ALL men would have heard one or more of them, right? All 3 depend on Christ's work at the cross but not all 3 reuire that knowledge in order for one to be JUSTIFIED, phase #1 of salvation.

This is ONLY because you believe that God alone, monergistically chooses who is to be saved. If you would look at any instance of salvation in scriptures, you would realize that there is something for the hearers of the word to do else they won't be saved. To presume one's own "election" -- indeed, to take the gospel out of the equation -- is to bypass the biblical means of entry into eternal life.

skypair

 

I apologize, pinoybaptist. I had forgotten these things that you believe. A temporal salvation, not an eternal salvation, and so on....

I had promised myself not to engage you, and a few others on this issue. No offense to you, but if the terminology, the very words we use, do not have the same meaning, then discussion of the meaning of passages of scripture is always a waste of time. But again,

peace to youraying:

 

No need to apologize, brother, no offense has been made, and none taken.

And I concur with the last parts of what you said.

God bless, and peace to you.

 

BTW, brother, where is Westahn Nu Yoik?

peace to youraying:

 

I'm in an area of Buffalo, a pretty, quiet little town called Tonawanda, about 10 minutes from the Peace Bridge to Canada and 15 minutes to Canada via Niagara Falls, NY.

 

I get it now, "west of New York". I thought you were somewhere in Southeast Asia:laugh: ; I am such a hillbilly!

peace to youraying:

 

--- I thought God ordained the works of Christ before the world began; meaning the work of the cross? "His workmanship" is consistant with the rest of the Bible meaning that there is nothing I can do to merit this salvation. This verse cannot mean that we "His Workmanship" was before ordained because we cannot walk in them. The work or death was for ordained.

 

Well...

...all this talk about whether we must be saved by the gospel is true. Remember, Jesus IS the WORD, John 1. In both OT and NT, people come by the Word though He Himself was only here a short while.

1Pet 1:23 confirms it -- "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." So there was a gospel preached from the Word in the OT and there is a new gospel preached from the Word in the NT.

As for you, Pinoy. I can see why you ask all those quesitons --- you have to go into hibernation every winter (like I did when I lived in Buffalo!!). My recommendation is that you, like me, become a "born again Southerner!!" :laugh: Down here, we don't have any "Rip Van Winkles" sleeping through the important parts of church teaching like the sotierology sections of the Word.

skypair