₦airaland Forum

I grew spiritually the first time I read this article, so fast, it was almost perceptible. It is true that it is a long one, but I hope a lot of people get to read this article and find some answers to questions they have been asking.

The article answers such questions as, [b] why would God through Moses ask Pharoah to let His people go when He had decided to harden Pharoah's heart? How can it be the will of God that Jesus be crucified when it is His commandment that we don't kill? It is a very remarkable article (at least for me ) and I will be making some remarks about the article hereafter and I encourage everyone to be patient, read the article and make a comment or two.

Logic Mind:
did you write all of that?

No. I wish I could write like that.

Are There Two Wills in God?

Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved


My aim here is to show from Scripture that the simultaneous existence of God's will for "all persons to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4) and his will to elect unconditionally those who will actually be saved is not a sign of divine schizophrenia or exegetical confusion. A corresponding aim is to show that unconditional election therefore does not contradict biblical expressions of God's compassion for all people, and does not nullify sincere offers of salvation to everyone who is lost among all the peoples of the world.

1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, and Ezekiel 18:23 might be called the Arminian pillar texts concerning the universal saving will of God. In 1 Timothy 2:1-4 Paul says that the reason we should pray for kings and all in high positions is that this may bring about a quiet and peaceable life which "is good, and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills (thelei) all persons to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." In 2 Peter 3:8-9 the apostle says that the delay of the second coming of Christ is owing to the fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. "The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not willing (boulomenos) that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." And in Ezekiel 18:23 and 32 the Lord speaks about his heart for the perishing: "Do I indeed delight in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather in his turning from his way that he might live? . . . I do not delight ()ehephoz) in the death of the one who dies, says the Lord; so turn and live" (cf. 33:11).

It is possible that careful exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:4 would lead us to believe that "God's willing all persons to be saved" does not refer to every individual person in the world, but rather to all sorts of persons, since the "all persons" in verse 1 may well mean groups like "kings and all in high positions" (v. 2). It is also possible that the "you" in 2 Peter 3:9 ("the Lord is longsuffering toward you, not wishing any to perish" refers not to every person in the world but to "you" professing Christians among whom, as Adolf Schlatter says, "are people who only through repentance can attain to the grace of God and to the promised inheritance."

Nevertheless the case for this limitation on God's universal saving will has never been convincing to Arminians and likely will not become convincing, especially since Ezekiel 18:23, 32 and 33:11 are even less tolerant of restriction. Therefore as a hearty believer in unconditional, individual election I rejoice to affirm that God does not delight in the perishing of the impenitent, and that he has compassion on all people. My aim is to show that this is not double talk.

The assignment in this chapter is not to defend the doctrine that God chooses unconditionally whom he will save. I have tried to do that elsewhere and others do it in this book. Nevertheless I will try to make a credible case that while the Arminian pillar texts may indeed be pillars for universal love, nevertheless they are not weapons against unconditional election. If I succeed then there will be an indirect confirmation for the thesis of this book. In fact I think Arminians have erred in trying to take pillars of universal love and make them into weapons against electing grace.

Affirming the will of God to save all, while also affirming the unconditional election of some, implies that there are at least "two wills" in God, or two ways of willing. It implies that God decrees one state of affairs while also willing and teaching that a different state of affairs should come to pass. This distinction in the way God wills has been expressed in various ways throughout the centuries. It is not a new contrivance. For example, theologians have spoken of sovereign will and moral will, efficient will and permissive will, secret will and revealed will, will of decree and will of command, decretive will and preceptive will, voluntas signi (will of sign) and voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure), etc.

Clark Pinnock refers disapprovingly to "the exceedingly paradoxical notion of two divine wills regarding salvation." In Pinnock's more recent volume (A Case for Arminianism) Randall Basinger argues that, "if God has decreed all events, then it must be that things cannot and should not be any different from what they are." In other words he rejects the notion that God could decree that a thing be one way and yet teach that we should act to make it another way. He says that it is too hard "to coherently conceive of a God in which this distinction really exists"

In the same volume Fritz Guy argues that the revelation of God in Christ has brought about a "paradigm shift" in the way we should think about the love of God—namely as "more fundamental than, and prior to, justice and power." This shift, he says, makes it possible to think about the "will of God" as "delighting more than deciding." God's will is not his sovereign purpose which he infallibly establishes, but rather "the desire of the lover for the beloved." The will of God is his general intention and longing, not his effective purpose. Dr. Guy goes so far as to say, "Apart from a predestinarian presupposition, it becomes apparent that God's 'will' is always (sic) to be understood in terms of intention and desire [as opposed to efficacious, sovereign purpose]."

These criticisms are not new. Jonathan Edwards wrote 250 years ago, "The Arminians ridicule the distinction between the secret and revealed will of God, or, more properly expressed, the distinction between the decree and the law of God; because we say he may decree one thing, and command another. And so, they argue, we hold a contrariety in God, as if one will of his contradicted another."

But in spite of these criticisms the distinction stands, not because of a logical or theological deduction, but because it is inescapable in the Scriptures. The most careful exegete writing in Pinnock's Case for Arminianism concedes the existence of two wills in God. I. Howard Marshall applies his exegetical gift to the Pastoral Epistles. Concerning 1 Timothy 2:4 he says,


To avoid all misconceptions it should be made clear at the outset that the fact that God wishes or wills that all people should be saved does not necessarily imply that all will respond to the gospel and be saved. We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen, and both of these things can be spoken of as God's will. The question at issue is not whether all will be saved but whether God has made provision in Christ for the salvation of all, provided that they believe, and without limiting the potential scope of the death of Christ merely to those whom God knows will believe.

In this chapter I would now like to undergird Marshall's point that "we must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen, and [that] both of these things can be spoken of as God's will." Perhaps the most effective way to do this is to begin by drawing attention to the way Scripture portrays God willing something in one sense which he disapproves in another sense. Then, after seeing some of the biblical evidence, we can step back and ponder how to understand this in relation to God's saving purposes.

Illustrations of Two Wills in God


The Death of Christ


The most compelling example of God's willing for sin to come to pass while at the same time disapproving the sin is his willing the death of his perfect, divine Son. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act inspired immediately by Satan (Luke 22:3). Yet in Acts 2:23 Luke says, "This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan (boule) and foreknowledge of God." The betrayal was sin, and it involved the instrumentality of Satan; but it was part of God's ordained plan. That is, there is a sense in which God willed the delivering up of his Son, even though the act was sin.

Moreover Herod's contempt for Jesus (Luke 23:11) and Pilate's spineless expediency (Luke 23:24) and the Jews' "Crucify! Crucify him!" (Luke 23:21) and the Gentile soldiers' mockery (Luke 23:36) were also sinful attitudes and deeds. Yet in Acts 4:27-28 Luke expresses his understanding of the sovereignty of God in these acts by recording the prayer of the Jerusalem saints:


Truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever thy hand and thy plan (boule) had predestined to take place.

Herod, Pilate, the soldiers and Jewish crowds lifted their hand to rebel against the Most High only to find that their rebellion was unwitting (sinful) service in the inscrutable designs of God.

The appalling death of Christ was the will and work of God the Father. Isaiah wrote, "We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God . . . It was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:4,10). God's will was very much engaged in the events that brought his Son to death on the cross. God considered it "fitting to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings" (Hebrews 2:10). Yet, as Jonathan Edwards points out, Christ's suffering "could not come to pass but by sin. For contempt and disgrace was one thing he was to suffer."

It goes almost without saying that God wills obedience to his moral law, and that he wills this in a way that can be rejected by many. This is evident from numerous texts: "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will (thelema) of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother" (Matthew 12:50). "The one who does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:17). The "will of God" in these texts is the revealed, moral instruction of the Old and New Testaments, which proscribes sin.

Therefore we know it was not the "will of God" that Judas and Pilate and Herod and the Gentile soldiers and the Jewish crowds disobey the moral law of God by sinning in delivering Jesus up to be crucified. But we also know that it was the will of God that this come to pass. Therefore we know that God in some sense wills what he does not will in another sense. I. Howard Marshall's statement is confirmed by the death of Jesus: "We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen."

The War Against the Lamb


There are two reasons that we turn next to Revelation 17:16-17. One is that the war against the Son of God, which reached its sinful climax at the cross comes to final consummation in a way that confirms what we have seen about the will of God. The other reason is that this text reveals John's understanding of God's active involvement in fulfilling prophecies whose fulfillment involves sinning. John sees a vision of some final events of history:


And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot; they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled (Revelation 17:16-17).

Without going into all the details of this passage, the relevant matter is clear. The beast "comes out of the abyss" (Revelation 17:. He is the personification of evil and rebellion against God. The ten horns are ten kings (v. 12) and they "wage war against the Lamb" (v. 14).

Waging war against the Lamb is sin and sin is contrary to the will of God. Nevertheless the angel says (literally), "God gave into their [the ten kings'] hearts to do his will, and to perform one will, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (v. 17). Therefore God willed (in one sense) to influence the hearts of the ten kings so that they would do what is against his will (in another sense).

Moreover God did this in fulfillment of prophetic words. The ten kings will collaborate with the beast "until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (v. 17). This implies something crucial about John's understanding of the fulfillment of "the prophesies leading up to the overthrow of Antichrist." It implies that (at least in John's view) God's prophecies are not mere predictions which God knows will happen, but rather are divine intentions which he makes sure will happen. We know this because verse 17 says that God is acting to see to it that the ten kings make league with the beast "until the words of God shall be fulfilled." John is exulting not in the marvelous foreknowledge of God to predict a bad event. Rather he is exulting in the marvelous sovereignty of God to make sure that the bad event comes about. Fulfilled prophecy, in John's mind, is not only prediction, but also promised performance.

This is important because John tells us in his Gospel that there are Old Testament prophecies of events surrounding the death of Christ that involve sin. This means that God intends to bring about events that involve things he forbids. These events include Judas' betrayal of Jesus (John 13:18; Psalm 41:9), the hatred Jesus received from his enemies (John 15:25; Psalm 69:4; 35:19), the casting of lots for Jesus' clothing (John 19:24; Psalm 22:18), and the piercing of Jesus' side (John 19:36-37; Exodus 12:46; Psalm 34:20; Zechariah 12:10). John expresses his theology of God's sovereignty with the words, "These things happened in order that the scripture be fulfilled." In other words the events were not a coincidence that God merely foresaw, but a plan which God purposed to bring about. Thus again we find the words of I. Howard Marshall confirmed: "We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen."

The Hardening Work of God


Another evidence to demonstrate God's willing a state of affairs in one sense that he disapproves in another sense is the testimony of Scripture that God wills to harden some men's hearts so that they become obstinate in sinful behavior which God disapproves.

The most well known example is the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. In Exodus 8:1 the Lord says to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."'" In other words God's command, that is, his will, is that Pharaoh let the Israelites go. Nevertheless from the start he also willed that Pharaoh not let the Israelites go. In Exodus 4:21 God says to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go." At one point Pharaoh himself acknowledges that his unwillingness to let the people go is sin: "Now therefore forgive, I pray, my sin" (Exodus 10:17). Thus what we see is that God commands that Pharaoh do a thing which God himself wills not to allow. The good thing that God commands he prevents. And the thing he brings about involves sin.

Some have tried to avoid this implication by pointing out that during the first five plagues the text does not say explicitly that God hardened Pharaoh's heart but that it "was hardened" (Exodus 7:22; 8:19; 9:7) or that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Exodus 8:15,32), and that only in the sixth plague does it say explicitly "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" (9:12; 10:20,27; 11:10; 14:4). For example R.T. Forster and V.P. Marston say that only from the sixth plague on God gave Pharaoh "supernatural strength to continue with his evil path of rebellion"

But this observation does not succeed in avoiding the evidence of two wills in God. Even if Forster and Marston were right that God was not willing for Pharaoh's heart to be hardened during the first five plagues, they concede that for the last five plagues God does will this, at least in the sense of strengthening Pharaoh to continue in the path of rebellion. Thus there is a sense in which God does will that Pharaoh go on refusing to let the people go, and there is a sense in which he does will that Pharaoh release the people. For he commands, "Let my people go." This illustrates why theologians talk about the "will of command" ("Let my people go!" and the "will of decree" ("God hardened Pharaoh's heart".

The Exodus is not a unique instance of God's acting in this way. When the people of Israel reached the land of Sihon king of Heshbon, Moses sent messengers "with words of peace saying, Let me pass through your land; I will travel only on the highway" (Deuteronomy 2:26-27). Even though this request should have lead Sihon to treat the people of God with respect, as God willed for his people to be blessed rather than attacked, nevertheless "Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as at this day" (Deuteronomy 2:30). In other words it was God's will (in one sense) that Sihon act in a way that was contrary to God's will (in another sense) that Israel be blessed and not cursed.

Similarly the conquest of the cities of Canaan is owing to God's willing that the kings of the land resist Joshua rather than make peace with him. "Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings. There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses" (Joshua 11:19-20). In view of this it is difficult to imagine what Fritz Guy means when he says that the "will of God" is always to be thought of in terms of loving desire and intention rather than in terms of God's effective purpose of judgment. What seems more plain is that when the time has come for judgment God wills that the guilty do things that are against his revealed will, like cursing Israel rather than blessing her.

The hardening work of God was not limited to non-Israelites. In fact it plays a central role in the life of Israel in this period of history. In Romans 11:7-9 Paul speaks of Israel's failure to obtain the righteousness and salvation it desired: "Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very day." Even though it is the command of God that his people see and hear and respond in faith (Isaiah 42:18), nevertheless God also has his reasons for sending a spirit of stupor at times so that some will not obey his command.

Jesus expressed this same truth when he explained that one of the purposes of speaking in parables to the Jews of his day was to bring about this judicial blinding or stupor. In Mark 4:11-12 he said to his disciples, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven." Here again God wills that a condition prevail which he regards as blameworthy. His will is that they turn and be forgiven (Mark 1:15), but he acts in a way to restrict the fulfillment of that will.

Paul pictures this divine hardening as part of an overarching plan that will involve salvation for Jew and Gentile. In Romans 11:25-26 he says to his Gentile readers, "Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved." The fact that the hardening has an appointed end—"until the full number of the Gentiles comes in"—shows that it is part of God's plan rather than a merely contingent event outside God's purpose. Nevertheless Paul expresses not only his but also God's heart when he says in Romans 10:1, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for them [Israel] is their salvation." God holds out his hands to a rebellious people (Romans 10:21), but ordains a hardening that consigns them for a time to disobedience.

This is the point of Romans 11:31-32. Paul speaks to his Gentile readers again about the disobedience of Israel in rejecting their Messiah: "So they [Israel] have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they also may receive mercy." When Paul says that Israel was disobedient "in order that" Gentiles might get the benefits of the gospel, whose purpose does he have in mind? It can only be God's. For Israel did not conceive of their own disobedience as a way of blessing the Gentiles or winning mercy for themselves in such a round about fashion. The point of Romans 11:31 therefore is that God's hardening of Israel is not an end in itself, but is part of a saving purpose that will embrace all the nations. But in the short run we have to say that he wills a condition (hardness of heart) which he commands people to strive against ("Do not harden your heart" (Hebrews 3:8, 15; 4:7).

God's Right to Restrain Evil and His Will Not To


Another line of Biblical evidence that God sometimes wills to bring about what he disapproves is his choosing to use or not to use his right to restrain evil in the human heart.

Proverbs 21:1 says, "The king's heart is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wishes." An illustration of this divine right over the king's heart is given in Genesis 20. Abraham is sojourning in Gerar and says to king Abimelech that Sarah is his sister. So Abimelech takes her as part of his harem. But God is displeased and warns him in a dream that she is married to Abraham. Abimelech protests to God that he had taken her in his integrity. And God says (in verse 6), "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against me; therefore I did not let you touch her."

What is apparent here is that God has the right and the power to restrain the sins of secular rulers. When he does, it is his will to do it. And when he does not, it is his will not to. Which is to say that sometimes God wills that their sins be restrained and sometimes he wills that they increase more than if he restrained them.

It is not an unjust infringement on human agency that the Creator has the right and power to restrain the evil actions of his creatures. Psalm 33:10-11 says, "The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nought; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations." Sometimes God frustrates the will of rulers by making their plans fail. Sometimes he does so by influencing their hearts the way he did Abimelech, without them even knowing it.

But there are times when God does not use this right because he intends for human evil to run its course. For example, God meant to put the sons of Eli to death. Therefore he willed that they not listen to their father's counsel: "Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting. And he said to them, `Why do you do such things, the evil things that I hear from all these people? No, my sons; for the report is not good which I hear the Lord's people circulating. If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?' But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death" (1 Samuel 2:22-25).

Why would the sons of Eli not give heed to their father's good counsel? The answer of the text is "because the Lord desired to put them to death." This only makes sense if the Lord had the right and the power to restrain their disobedience—a right and power which he willed not to use. Thus we must say that in one sense God willed that the sons of Eli go on doing what he commanded them not to do: dishonoring their father and committing sexual immorality.

Moreover the word for "desired" in the clause, "the Lord desired to put them to death," is the same Hebrew word (haphez) used in Ezekiel 18:23,32 and 33:11 where God asserts that he does not desire the death of the wicked. God desired to put the sons of Eli to death, but he does not desire the death of the wicked. This is a strong warning to us not to take one assertion, like Ezekiel 18:23 and assume we know the precise meaning without letting other scripture like 1 Samuel 2:25 have a say. The upshot of putting the two together is that in one sense God may desire the death of the wicked and in another sense he may not.

Another illustration of God's choosing not to use his right to restrain evil is found in Romans 1:24-28. Three times Paul says that God hands people over (paredoken) to sink further into corruption. Verse 24: "God handed them over to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves." Verse 26: "God handed them over to dishonorable passions." Verse 28: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to a base mind and to improper conduct." God has the right and the power to restrain this evil the way he did for Abimelech. But he did not will to do that. Rather his will in this case was to punish, and part of God's punishment on evil is sometimes willing that evil increase. But this means that God chooses for behavior to come about which he commands not to happen. The fact that God's willing is punitive does not change that. And the fact that it is justifiably punitive is one of the points of this chapter. There are other examples we could give, but we pass on to a different line of evidence.

Does God Delight in the Punishment of the Wicked?


We just saw that God "desired" to put the sons of Eli to death, and that the word for desire is the same one used in Ezekiel 18:23 when God says he does not "delight" in the death of the wicked. Another illustration of this complex desiring is found in Deuteronomy 28:63. Moses is warning of coming judgment on unrepentant Israel. What he says is strikingly different (not contradictory, I will argue) from Ezekiel 18:23. "And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you."

Here an even stronger word for joy is used (yasis) when it says that God will "take delight over you to cause you to perish and to destroy you." We are faced with the inescapable biblical fact that in some sense God does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18), and in some sense he does (Deuteronomy 28:63; 2 Samuel 2:25).

How Extensive Is the Sovereign Will of God?


Behind this complex relationship of two wills in God is the foundational biblical premise that God is indeed sovereign in a way that makes him ruler of all actions. R.T. Forster and V.P. Marston try to overcome the tension between God's will of decree and God's will of command by asserting that there is no such thing as God's sovereign will of decree: "Nothing in Scripture suggests that there is some kind of will or plan of God which is inviolable." This is a remarkable claim. Without claiming to be exhaustive it will be fair to touch on some scriptures briefly that do indeed "suggest that there is some kind of will or plan of God which is inviolable."

There are passages that ascribe to God the final control over all calamities and disasters wrought by nature or by man. Amos 3:6, "Does evil befall a city, unless the LORD has done it? Isaiah 45:7, "I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things." Lamentations 3:37-38, "Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?" Noteworthy in these texts is that the calamities in view involve human hostilities and cruelties that God would disapprove of even as he wills that they be.

The apostle Peter wrote concerning God's involvement in the sufferings of his people at the hands of their antagonists. In his first letter he spoke of the "will of God" in two senses. It was something to be pursued and lived up to on the one hand. "Such is the will of God, that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men" (1 Peter 2:15). "Live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men but for the will of God" (4:2). On the other hand the will of God was not his moral instruction, but the state of affairs that he sovereignly brought about. "For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God's will, than for doing wrong" (3:17). "Let those who suffer according to God's will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator" (4:19). And in this context, the suffering which Peter has in mind is the suffering which comes from hostile people and therefore cannot come without sin.

In fact the New Testament saints seemed to live in the calm light of an overarching sovereignty of God concerning all the details of their lives and ministry. Paul expressed himself like this with regard to his travel plans. On taking leave of the saints in Ephesus he said, "I will return to you if God wills," (Acts 18:21). To the Corinthians he wrote, "I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills" (1 Corinthians 4:19). And again, "I do not want to see you now just in passing; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits" (1 Corinthians 16:7).

The writer to the Hebrews says that his intention is to leave the elementary things behind and press on to maturity. But then he pauses and adds, "And this we will do if God permits" (6:3). This is remarkable since it is hard to imagine one even thinking that God might not permit such a thing unless one had a remarkably high view of the sovereign prerogatives of God.

James warns against the pride of presumption in speaking of the simplest plans in life without a due submission to the overarching sovereignty of God in whether the day's agenda might be interrupted by God's decision to take the life he gave. Instead of saying, "Tomorrow we will do such and such . . . you ought to say, `If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that'" (James 4:15). Thus the saints in Caesarea, when they could not dissuade Paul from taking the risk to go to Jerusalem " ceased and said, 'The will of the Lord be done'" (Acts 21:14). God would decide whether Paul would be killed or not, just as James said.

This sense of living in the hands of God, right down to the details of life was not new for the early Christians. They knew it already from the whole history of Israel, but especially from their wisdom literature. "The plans of the mind belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:1). "A man's mind plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established" (Proverbs 19:21). "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the LORD" (Proverbs 16:33). "I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). Jesus had no quarrel with this sense of living in the hand of God. If anything, he intensified the idea with words like Matthew 10:29, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."

This confidence that the details of life were in the control of God every day was rooted in numerous prophetic expressions of God's unstoppable, unthwartable sovereign purpose. "Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose'" (Isaiah 46:9-10; cf. 43:13). "all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing; and he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What doest thou?'" (Daniel 4:35). "I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases" (Psalm 115:3).

One of the most precious implications of this confidence in God's inviolable sovereign will is that it provides the foundation of the "new covenant" hope for the holiness without which we will not see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). In the old covenant the law was written on stone and brought death when it met with the resistance of unrenewed hearts. But the new covenant promise is that God will not let his purposes for a holy people shipwreck on the weakness of human will. Instead he promises to do what needs to be done to make us what we ought to be. "And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live" (Deuteronomy 30:6). "I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:27). "I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me" (Jeremiah 32:40). "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).

In view of all these texts I am unable to grasp what Forster and Marston might mean by saying, "Nothing in Scripture suggests that there is some kind of will or plan of God which is inviolable" (see note 26). Nor can I understand how Fritz Guy can say that the "will of God" is always a desiring and intending but not a sovereign, effective willing (see note 12). Rather the Scriptures lead us again and again to affirm that God's will is sometimes spoken of as an expression of his moral standards for human behavior and sometimes as an expression of his sovereign control even over acts which are contrary to that standard.

This means that the distinction between terms like "will of decree" and "will of command" or "sovereign will" and "moral will" is not an artificial distinction demanded by Calvinistic theology. The terms are an effort to describe the whole of biblical revelation. They are an effort to say Yes to all of the Bible and not silence any of it. They are a way to say Yes to the universal, saving will of 1 Timothy 2:4 and Yes to the individual unconditional election of Romans 9:6-23.

Does It Make Sense?


I turn now to the task of reflecting on how these two wills of God fit together and make sense—as far this finite and fallible creature can rise to that challenge.

The first thing to affirm in view of all these texts is that God does not sin. "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory." (Isaiah 6:3). "God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone" (James 1:13). In ordering all things, including sinful acts, God is not sinning. For as Jonathan Edwards says, "It implies no contradiction to suppose that an act may be an evil act, and yet that it is a good thing that such an act should come to pass. . . As for instance, it might be an evil thing to crucify Christ, but yet it was a good thing that the crucifying of Christ came to pass." In other words the Scriptures lead us to the insight that God can will that a sinful act come to pass without willing it as an act of sin in himself.

Edwards points out that Arminians, it seems, must come to a similar conclusion.


All must own that God sometimes wills not to hinder the breach of his own commands, because he does not in fact hinder it . . . But you will say, God wills to permit sin, as he wills the creature should be left to his freedom; and if he should hinder it, he would offer violence to the nature of his own creature. I answer, this comes nevertheless to the very same thing that I say. You say, God does not will sin absolutely; but rather than alter the law of nature and the nature of free agents, he wills it. He wills what is contrary to excellency in some particulars, for the sake of a more general excellency and order. So that the scheme of the Arminians does not help the matter.

This seems right to me, and it can be illustrated again by reflecting directly on 1 Timothy 2:4 where Paul says that God wills all persons to be saved. What are we to say of the fact that God wills something that in fact does not happen. There are two possibilities as far as I can see. One is that there is a power in the universe greater than God's which is frustrating him by overruling what he wills. Neither Calvinist nor Arminian affirms this.

The other possibility is that God wills not to save all, even though he is willing to save all, because there is something else that he wills more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all. This is the solution that I as a Calvinist affirm along with Arminians. In other words both Calvinists and Arminians affirm two wills in God when they ponder deeply over 1 Timothy 2:4. Both can say that God wills for all to be saved. But then when queried why all are not saved both Calvinist and Arminian answer that God is committed to something even more valuable than saving all.

The difference between Calvinists and Arminians lies not in whether there are two wills in God, but in what they say this higher commitment is. What does God will more than saving all? The answer given by Arminians is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace. The answer given by Calvinists is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God's glory in wrath and mercy (Romans 9:22-23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Corinthians 1:29).

This is utterly crucial to see, for what it implies is that 1 Timothy 2:4 does not settle the momentous issue of God's higher commitment which restrains him from saving all. There is no mention here of free will. Nor is there mention of sovereign, prevenient, efficacious grace. If all we had was this text we could only guess what restrains God from saving all. When free will is found in this verse it is a philosophical, metaphysical assumption not an exegetical conclusion. The assumption is that if God wills in one sense for all to be saved, then he cannot in another sense will that only some be saved. That assumption is not in the text, nor is it demanded by logic, nor is it taught in the rest of Scripture. Therefore 1 Timothy 2:4 does not settle the issue; it creates it. Both Arminians and Calvinists must look elsewhere to answer whether the gift of human self-determination or the glory of divine sovereignty is the reality that restrains God's will to save all people.

The Calvinists which I admire do not claim to have simple, easy solutions to complex Biblical tensions. When their writing is difficult this is because the Scriptures are difficult (as the apostle Peter admitted that, in part, they are, 2 Peter 3:16). These Calvinists are struggling to be faithful to diverse (but not contradictory) scriptures. Both Calvinists and Arminians feel at times that the ridicule directed against their complex expositions are in fact a ridicule against the complexity of the scriptures.

I find the effort of Stephen Charnock (1628-1680), a chaplain to Henry Cromwell and non-conformist pastor in London, to be balanced and helpful in holding the diverse scriptures on God's will together.


God doth not will [sin] directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth not directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is a discovery of his will; so that if he should directly will sin, and directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner, and there would be contradictions in God's will: to will sin absolutely, is to work it (Psalm 115:3): "God hath done whatsoever he pleased." God cannot absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by a positive decree, because he hath decreed to effect it. He wills evil by a private decree, because he hath decreed not to give that grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not will sin simply, for that were to approve it, but he wills it, in order to that good his wisdom will bring forth from it. He wills not sin for itself, but for the event.

Similarly Jonathan Edwards, writing about 80 years later comes to similar conclusions with somewhat different terminology.


When a distinction is made between God's revealed will and his secret will, or his will of command and decree, "will" is certainly in that distinction taken in two senses. His will of decree, is not his will in the same sense as his will of command is. Therefore, it is no difficulty at all to suppose, that the one may be otherwise than the other: his will in both senses is his inclination. But when we say he wills virtue, or loves virtue, or the happiness of his creature; thereby is intended, that virtue, or the creature's happiness, absolutely and simply considered, is agreeable to the inclination of his nature.

His will of decree is, his inclination to a thing, not as to that thing absolutely and simply, but with respect to the universality of things, that have been, are or shall be. So God, though he hates a thing as it is simply, may incline to it with reference to the universality of things. Though he hates sin in itself, yet he may will to permit it, for the greater promotion of holiness in this universality, including all things, and at all times. So, though he has no inclination to a creature's misery, considered absolutely, yet he may will it, for the greater promotion of happiness in this universality.

Putting it in my own words, Edwards said that the infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God" (Ezekiel 18:32). But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Psalm 115:3).

God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says he will), even though among those ten million prayers some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time—in fact are always coming to him with no break at all?

Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?

Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. And what he has told us is that there is a sense in which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.

Therefore we should not stumble over the fact that God does and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. When Moses warns Israel that the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon them and destroying them if they do not repent (Deuteronomy 28:63), he means that those who have rebelled against the Lord and moved beyond repentance will not be able to gloat that they have made the Almighty miserable. God is not defeated in the triumphs of his righteous judgment. Quite the contrary. Moses says that when they are judged they will unwittingly provide an occasion for God to rejoice in the demonstration of his justice and his power and the infinite worth of his glory (Romans 9:22-23).

When God took counsel with himself as to whether he should save all people, he consulted not only the truth of what he sees when looking through the narrow lens but also the larger truth of what he sees when all things are viewed through the wide-angle lens of his all-knowing wisdom. If, as Calvinists say, God deems it wise and good to elect unconditionally some to salvation and not others, one may legitimately ask whether the offer of salvation to all is genuine. Is it made with heart? Does it come from real compassion? Is the willing that none perish a bona fide willing of love?

The way I would give an account of this is explained by Robert L. Dabney in an essay written over a hundred years ago. His treatment is very detailed and answers many objections that go beyond the limits of this chapter. I will simply give the essence of his solution which seems to me to be on the right track, though he, as well as I, would admit we do not "furnish an exhaustive explanation of this mystery of the divine will."

Dabney uses an analogy from the life of George Washington taken from Chief-Justice Marshall's Life of Washington. A certain Major André had jeopardized the safety of the young nation through "rash and unfortunate" treasonous acts. Marshall says of the death warrant, signed by Washington, "Perhaps on no occasion of his life did the commander-in-chief obey with more reluctance the stern mandates of duty and of policy." Dabney observes that Washington's compassion for André was "real and profound". He also had "plenary power to kill or to save alive." Why then did he sign the death warrant? Dabney explains, "Washington's volition to sign the death-warrant of André did not arise from the fact that his compassion was slight or feigned, but from the fact that it was rationally counterpoised by a complex of superior judgments . . . of wisdom, duty, patriotism, and moral indignation [the wide-angle lens]."

Dabney imagines a defender of André, hearing Washington say, "I do this with the deepest reluctance and pity." Then the defender says, "Since you are supreme in this matter, and have full bodily ability to throw down that pen, we shall know by your signing this warrant that your pity is hypocritical." Dabney responds to this by saying, "The petulance of this charge would have been equal to its folly. The pity was real, but was restrained by superior elements of motive. Washington had official and bodily power to discharge the criminal, but he had not the sanctions of his own wisdom and justice." The corresponding point in the case of divine election is that "the absence of volition in God to save does not necessarily imply the absence of compassion." God has "a true compassion, which is yet restrained, in the case of the . . . non-elect, by consistent and holy reasons, from taking the form of a volition to regenerate." God's infinite wisdom regulates his whole will and guides and harmonizes (not suppresses) all its active principles."

In other words, God has a real and deep compassion for perishing sinners. Jeremiah points to this reality in God's heart. In Lamentations 3:32-33 he speaks of the judgment that God has brought upon Jerusalem: "Though he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men." The word "willingly" translates a composite Hebrew word (milibo) which means literally "from his heart" (cf. 1 Kings 12:33). It appears that this is Jeremiah's way of saying that God does will the affliction that he caused, but he does not will it in the same way he wills compassion. The affliction did not come "from his heart." Jeremiah was trying, as we are, to come to terms with the way a sovereign God wills two different things, affliction and compassion.

God's expression of pity and his entreaties have heart in them. There is a genuine inclination in God's heart to spare those who have committed treason against his kingdom. But his motivation is complex, and not every true element in it rises to the level of effective choice. In his great and mysterious heart there are kinds of longings and desires that are real— they tell us something true about his character. Yet not all of these longings govern God's actions. He is governed by the depth of his wisdom expressed through a plan that no ordinary human deliberation would ever conceive (Romans 11:33-36; 1 Corinthians 2:9). There are holy and just reasons for why the affections of God's heart have the nature and intensity and proportion that they do.

Dabney is aware that several kinds of objections can be raised against the analogy of George Washington as it is applied to God. He admits that "no analogy can be perfect between the actions of a finite and the infinite intelligence and will." Yet I think he is right to say that the objections do not overthrow the essential truth that there can be, in a noble and great heart (even a divine heart), sincere compassion for a criminal that is nevertheless not set free.

Therefore I affirm with John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of all men. Yet I also affirm that God has chosen from before the foundation of the world whom he will save from sin. Since not all people are saved we must choose whether we believe (with the Arminians) that God's will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to human self-determination or whether we believe (with the Calvinists) that God's will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of his sovereign grace (Ephesians 1:6,12,14; Romans 9:22-23).

This decision should not be made on the basis of metaphysical assumptions about what we think human accountability requires. It should be made on the basis of what the scriptures teach. I do not find in the Bible that human beings have the ultimate power of self-determination. As far as I can tell it is a philosophical inference based on metaphysical presuppositions. On the other hand this book aims to show that the sovereignty of God's grace in salvation is taught in Scripture.

My contribution has simply been to show that God's will for all people to be saved is not at odds with the sovereignty of God's grace in election. That is, my answer to the above question about what restrains God's will to save all people is his supreme commitment to uphold and display the full range of his glory through the sovereign demonstration of his wrath and mercy for the enjoyment of his elect and believing people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/are-there-two-wills-in-god

LagosShia:
the ignorance,hate and blindness of a fanatical christian missionary:

boko haram,the criminals causing destrcution are representatives of Islam,but the Muslims who fall victims to boko haram are not "muslim"!!!

they do anything and say anything just to preach against Islam!!!

read reply to "frosbel":

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-850902.160.html#msg10010493

Why are you playing the ostrich? Is it not a muslim sect that has the ideology,"western education is bad"(boko haram)?

Great post. I hope Frosbel gets to read this ! 

goshen360:
Go and read revelation. Christ message to the churches. Pls dont take some part of the scripture and dwell on it. We cannot continue in sin and demand grace to abound.  Without Holliness, no man shall see God. Hence, onced saved is not forever saved. Salvation is each context means different things.

No where in the OP is there a hint that we are free to sin because our salvation is guaranteed. Why do you prefer to chase shadows?

Does it not delight you, at least is it not remarkable, how the writer drives home his point?

(c) Believers are born again (regenerated) when they believe (John 3:3; Titus 3:5). For a Christian to lose his salvation, he would have to be un-regenerated. The Bible gives no evidence that the new birth can be taken away. (d) The Holy Spirit indwells all believers (John 14:17; Romans 8:9) and baptizes all believers into the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). For a believer to become unsaved, he would have to be "un-indwelt" and detached from the Body of Christ.

Frosbel, thanks for the article , it is so beautifully written, so much so that I decided to see what else "your website" has to offer. I ended up generating these threads:

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-847076.0.html#bot

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-847093.0.html

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-847085.0.html


Happy reading.

Once saved always saved?


Once a person is saved are they always saved? When people come to know Christ as their Savior, they are brought into a relationship with God that guarantees their salvation as eternally secure. Numerous passages of Scripture declare this fact. (a) Romans 8:30 declares, "And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified." This verse tells us that from the moment God chooses us, it is as if we are glorified in His presence in heaven. There is nothing that can prevent a believer from one day being glorified because God has already purposed it in heaven. Once a person is justified, his salvation is guaranteed - he is as secure as if he is already glorified in heaven.

(b) Paul asks two crucial questions in Romans 8:33-34 "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us." Who will bring a charge against God's elect? No one will, because Christ is our advocate. Who will condemn us? No one will, because Christ, the One who died for us, is the one who condemns. We have both the advocate and judge as our Savior.

(c) Believers are born again (regenerated) when they believe (John 3:3; Titus 3:5). For a Christian to lose his salvation, he would have to be un-regenerated. The Bible gives no evidence that the new birth can be taken away. (d) The Holy Spirit indwells all believers (John 14:17; Romans 8:9) and baptizes all believers into the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). For a believer to become unsaved, he would have to be "un-indwelt" and detached from the Body of Christ.

(e) John 3:15 states that whoever believes in Jesus Christ will "have eternal life." If you believe in Christ today and have eternal life, but lose it tomorrow, then it was never "eternal" at all. Hence if you lose your salvation, the promises of eternal life in the Bible would be in error. (f) For the most conclusive argument, I think Scripture says it best itself, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). Remember the same God who saved you is the same God who will keep you. Once we are saved we are always saved. Our salvation is most definitely eternally secure!

http://www.gotquestions.org/once-saved-always-saved.html

Can a Christian lose salvation?


Answer: Before this question is answered, the term “Christian” must be defined. A “Christian” is not a person who has said a prayer, or walked down an aisle, or been raised in a Christian family. While each of these things can be a part of the Christian experience, they are not what “makes” a Christian. A Christian is a person who has, by faith, received and fully trusted in Jesus Christ as the only Savior (John 3:16; Acts 16:31; Ephesians 2:8-9).

So, with this definition in mind, can a Christian lose salvation? Perhaps the best way to answer this crucially important question is to examine what the Bible says occurs at salvation, and to study what losing salvation would therefore entail. Here are a few examples:

A Christian is a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This verse speaks of a person becoming an entirely new creature as a result of being “in Christ.” For a Christian to lose salvation, the new creation would have to be canceled and reversed.

A Christian is redeemed. “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). The word “redeemed” refers to a purchase being made, a price being paid. For a Christian to lose salvation, God Himself would have to revoke His purchase that He paid for with the precious blood of Christ.

A Christian is justified. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). To “justify” means to “declare righteous.” All those who receive Jesus as Savior are “declared righteous” by God. For a Christian to lose salvation, God would have to go back on His Word and “un-declare” what He had previously declared.

A Christian is promised eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Eternal life is a promise of eternity (forever) in heaven with God. God promises, “Believe and you will have eternal life.” For a Christian to lose salvation, eternal life would have to be taken away. If a Christian is promised to live forever, how then can God break this promise by taking away eternal life?

A Christian is guaranteed glorification. “And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). As we learned in Romans 5:1, justification is declared at the moment of faith. According to Romans 8:30, glorification is guaranteed for all those whom God justifies. Glorification refers to a Christian receiving a perfect resurrection body in heaven. If a Christian can lose salvation, then Romans 8:30 is in error, because God could not guarantee glorification for all those whom He predestines, calls, and justifies.

Many more illustrations of what occurs at salvation could be shared. Even these few make it abundantly clear that a Christian cannot lose salvation. Most, if not all, of what the Bible says happens to us when we receive Jesus Christ as Savior would be invalidated if salvation could be lost. Salvation cannot be reversed. A Christian cannot be un-newly created. Redemption cannot be undone. Eternal life cannot be lost and still be considered eternal. If a Christian can lose salvation, God would have to go back on His Word and change His mind—two things that Scripture tells us God never does.

The most frequent objections to the belief that a Christian cannot lose salvation are 1) What about those who are Christians and continually live an immoral lifestyle? 2) What about those who are Christians but later reject the faith and deny Christ? The problem with these two objections is the phrase “who are Christians.” The Bible declares that a true Christian will not live a continually immoral lifestyle (1 John 3:6). The Bible declares that anyone who departs the faith is demonstrating that he never truly was a Christian (1 John 2:19). Therefore, neither objection is valid. Christians do not continually live immoral lifestyles, nor do they reject the faith and deny Christ. Such actions are proof that they were never redeemed.

No, a Christian cannot lose salvation. Nothing can separate a Christian from God’s love (Romans 8:38-39). Nothing can remove a Christian from God’s hand (John 10:28-29). God is both willing and able to guarantee and maintain the salvation He has given us. Jude 24-25, “To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”


http://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-lose-salvation.html

Is eternal security biblical?



Answer: When people come to know Christ as their Savior, they are brought into a relationship with God that guarantees their eternal security. Jude 24 declares, "To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy." God's power is able to keep the believer from falling. It is up to Him, not us, to present us before His glorious presence. Our eternal security is a result of God keeping us, not us maintaining our own salvation.

The Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed, "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand" (John 10:28-29b). Both Jesus and the Father have us firmly grasped in their hand. Who could possibly separate us from the grip of both the Father and the Son?

Ephesians 4:30 tells us that believers are "sealed for the day of redemption." If believers did not have eternal security, the sealing could not truly be unto the day of redemption, but only to the day of sinning, apostasy, or disbelief. John 3:15-16 tells us that whoever believes in Jesus Christ will "have eternal life." If a person were to be promised eternal life, but then have it taken away, it was never "eternal" to begin with. If eternal security is not true, the promises of eternal life in the Bible would be in error.

The most powerful argument for eternal security is Romans 8:38-39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Our eternal security is based on God's love for those whom He has redeemed. Our eternal security is purchased by Christ, promised by the Father, and sealed by the Holy Spirit.


http://www.gotquestions.org/eternal-security.html

frosbel:
There is no such thing as limited atonement, Jesus Christ made a full atonement for our sins.

There is necessarily a limit on the atonement, since not[b] all [/b] men are saved.

Wrong !!

Jesus Christ died for the entire human race.

He tasted death for every man.

It is for us to choose or reject this atonement.

If He died for every man, why will everyone not be saved?

People do not limit the atonement , they either accept it or reject it.

All persons do, except of course, the Universalists, who dream that ultimately everyone, will be reconciled to God.

The Gospel is simple, let not intellectual theology becloud it's wonderful truths.

There is a place for reason in the study and teaching of the Word of God, we will do well to reason as far as such reasoning do not contradict the Word.

Indeed God does draw men to Him but only those who are humble enough to admit their need for a saviour and thus salvation from their sins.

Really? Then it is safe to suppose those are the men He decided to save
and subsequently those for whom Christ’ death availed for.

Remember that verse " God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble ".

I remember.

And yes those who do repent do so , because of God's mercy.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? – James 3:11

There is no limitation but the power of choice to accept the full atonement or reject it

To God and to Him alone be all the glory of salvation, not man and not man’s ability to choose.



Frosbel, a thousand apologies for my very late reply.

frosbel:
hmmm

lets chat about this tomorrow

Alright, I'll be delighted to.

Limited Atonement

                                                                 For Whom Did Christ Die?




Like the doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of limited atonement is highly controversial. It seeks to answer the question, “For whom did Christ die?” The Bible teaches that Jesus died on the cross in order to make an atonement for the sins of people. That is, to make-up or pay the price for transgressions against God.

We know from the Scriptures that not all people go to heaven. Many go and will go to hell. And they do so because their sins were not atoned for. Therefore, all Christians believe in a limited atonement. Otherwise, he or she would be a Universalist (believing that all go to heaven).

Since only those who repent and believe will be saved, the real question is this: To whom and by whom is the atonement limited? One view says that humans limit the atonement. They argue that Jesus died on the cross to make the payment of sins possible. And by doing so, they limit the effect of the atonement. They argue that Jesus died for the whole world – meaning all people. But not all people have faith in His work. So people limit the power of His atonement.

Another view says that God limits the atonement. They argue that Jesus died on the cross to actually save those whom He predestined to save. And by doing so, they limit the extent of the atonement. They argue that Jesus died for those whom He elected – meaning some people. So God limits the reach of His atonement.

So the response is either of the two. God limited the extent of the atonement to those whom He predestined or man limited the effect of the atonement to those who are special enough to believe.

So the response is either of the two views. If man limited the atonement, than the effect and power of the work of Jesus is limited but the extent and reach is for all. Thus, those who are special enough to repent and believe do so. God shares the glory of salvation with man.

If God limited the atonement, than the effect and power of the work of Jesus was actual and certain but the extent and reach of such work was limited to some. Thus, those who repent and believe do so because of God’s work. God deserves the glory.

Historically, this doctrine has been referred to a Calvinistic belief, but as mentioned, all Christians must identify a limitation in some sense. To say otherwise is heretical for God is not saving all people.


http://www.t411.com/doctrines/limited-atonement

JOHN OWENS' CLASSIC QUESTION
                                                    John Owen - (1616 - 1683)
                                                    For Whom Did Christ Die?



"The Father Imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for either:


1. All the sins of all men.

2. All the sins of some men,or

3. Some of the sins of all men


In which case it may be said:


a.  That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so none are saved.

b. That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.

c. But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?


You answer, Because of unbelief.  I ask is this unbelief a sin, or is it not?  If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not.  If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died?  If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!"


http://www.sovereignpotter.com/John_Owens_Classic_Question.html

CALVIN AND THE REFORMATION
                                                       Benjamin B. Warfield



   John Calvin did not belong to the first generation of Reformers. When Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, he was a child of eight years old. When he entered upon his work as Reformer, the first great battle of the Reformation had been fought out. Zwingli was already some five years dead. Luther, although only fifty-two, was already an old man, broken in health and depressed in spirits. Melanchthon was already showing ominous signs of wavering on the first principles of the Reformation. Bucer, at the height of his powers, was laboring fruitfully at Strasburg, striving against overwhelming odds to unite the forces of the Reformation into one common movement for the gospel.

    Calvin held Luther in the deepest reverence, and gladly called himself his disciple. He called him "that illustrious apostle of Christ, through whose labors the purity of the gospel has been restored to this age." There had been mutterings of reform before the Reformation in France as elsewhere. But it was not from the timid Biblicism of LeFevre D'Etaples that Calvin received the gospel. Through whatever channels it reached him, the source of his inspiration lay in Luther. The more specific influences that made him precisely the Reformer he was, he received, so far as he received them through a human hand, not from Luther, but from Bucer. Bucer did not make him a Reformer. He had entered fully upon his Reformatory work, and that, in acts of epoch-making character, before he came into contact with Bucer. Nor did Bucer give him the particular bent which characterized his work as Reformer. This bent was fully in evidence from the very beginning of his Reformatory work. We have to reckon in Calvin with an individual genius of the first order, which saw both more widely and more deeply than Bucer himself ever saw. He had already found his chief lines of work and had suffered in their behalf before he came into close association with Bucer. But he found in Bucer a congenial spirit, with many of whose points of view he fell in, and from whom he derived much that was valuable.

    He took over from Bucer, for example, his mode of stating the great doctrine of predestination. All the great Reformers were predestinarians. The Reformation was, from the theological point of view, an Augustinian revival. Its very heart was a revolt from the conception of salvation which had dominated and cursed the Middle Ages, a conception which threw man back at the decisive point in his salvation on himself. As a current maxim put it: Do the best you can, and God will see you through. What you had to do was, no doubt, reduced to as little as possible, in the interests of troubled consciences which knew they could do nothing to the purpose. It came to amount to about this: You push the button and God will do the rest. But always you had to push the button. And this was a button sinners could not push! Therefore, the Middle Ages [Catholic Church] minimized sin. Man was a sinner, no doubt, they taught; but he was not very much of a sinner. He was not so much of a sinner that he could not actively cooperate with every help God would give him; that he could not earn salvation for himself, if God would only give him a little timely aid.

     It was against all this fatal doctrine of human ability and human merit that the Reformation threw itself with passion. It launched its dart, as Robert Browning phrases it, point-blank at the head of this lie -- taught original sin, the corruption of man's heart. It taught -- and this is the core of the whole matter -- salvation by free grace alone; free grace, that is, the absolutely gratuitous mercy of God, given not to those who have earned it, but to the undeserving. Thus all the glory of sinful man's salvation belongs to God, and man has nothing of which he can boast except the saving God himself. And when you teach free grace, absolutely free grace, and mean it, you are a predestinarian. A grace that is given freely, absolutely freely, apart from all merit, of whatever kind, hangs, of course, wholly on the will of the giver. Accordingly, all the Reformers were flaming predestinarians: Luther and Zwingli and even Melanchthon, before he began to fall away from the purity of the gospel which at first he had taught with such vigor. Calvin thought that Luther's and Zwingli's way of teaching predestination was a little too -- not decided or assertory, it could not be that -- but too speculative in form and perhaps inconsiderate in expression. He liked Bucer's way of putting it better; a way of putting it which says it all, and says it all with clearness and force (for is it not the saving truth of God?), but keeps the mind and heart fixed all the time on the glorious fact that what is being talked about is the pure will of the All-merciful Father, who by his free grace saves sinners. So, like Bucer, Calvin preached the common Augustinianism of the Reformation in a superlatively practical way.

    And here we touch one of his chief characteristics as a Reformer. He was by way of eminence the practical Reformer. He was the greatest exegete of the Reformation age: he was the Reformation's greatest theologian. And he was the practical genius of the Reformation. We do not say he was the practical genius of the Reformation in spite of his learned commentaries and his profound and profoundly reasoned theology. We would better say it was in large part because of them. Calvin probably never did a more practical thing than expound the Scriptures day by day with the penetrating insight and the clear, searching honesty of comment in which he is unsurpassed. And he certainly never did a more practical thing than write the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The publication of that book was like the setting up of the King's Standard in Medieval Europe -- that the lieges might gather to it. It was raising the banner on high that all men might see it and rally around it. It provided at last a platform for the hard-bested Protestants, everywhere spoken against, and far too easily confounded with the radicals of the day -- radicals who scouted the very foundations of the Christian faith, overturned the whole fabric of the social order, outraged the commonest dictates of ordinary decency. Its publication met a crisis and created an epoch. It gave a new stability to Protestantism, and set it before the world as a coherent system of reasoned truth by which men might live and for which they might gladly die.

    It was not merely in such performances as these, however, that Calvin's practical genius showed itself. It conditioned all his work as Reformer, and gave it its specific quality. What from the very first he set himself to do was to organize Protestantism and to discipline it. Organization, discipline -- these are the things that distinguish an army from a mob. In point of fact, Calvin found Protestantism a mob and transformed it into an army. That was his great achievement, the specific task that fell to him among the Reformers. Luther did not even attempt, or wish, to organize the Protestants. Preach the gospel, he said: that is enough, and everything else will take care of itself. It was not enough: and everything else did not take care of itself. Calvin, coming into the Reformation movement at a later date, when the confusion had become confounded, saw that it was not enough. It may have been in his French blood; it may have come from his legal training; it may have belonged to his individual genius. But when he came to Geneva, a youth of twenty-seven, he came with his program of organization and discipline already in his hand, and with an indomitable will to put it in practice. The Genevans would not have it. They drove him out. He lived and worked three golden years in Strasburg. Then the Genevans brought him back. And he came back with the same program of organization and discipline in his hand, and with the same inflexible will to put it in practice. It took him fourteen years to accomplish it. But he accomplished it. And the result was that Geneva became not only the wonder of the world, but happily the model of the Reformed world; and because of its model, also in a true sense its savior, and, with it, the savior, as Mark Pattison says, of Europe. We should keep well in mind that the organization and discipline which Calvin introduced into Geneva was the organization and discipline of the Church, not of the town. The so- called "Blue Laws" of which we hear so much, Calvin did not introduce into Geneva. He found them there. They were an inheritance from the Middle Ages and were common to Geneva and all similar towns. They were civil ordinances, and Calvin, as Reformer, had nothing to do with them, except as good citizen to do his citizen's part toward reducing them to rational and ethical consistency. What he introduced into Geneva was distinctively church organization and discipline. It was the prevalent view among Protestants that it was the business of the Church to preach the gospel and to administer the sacraments, leaving it altogether to the civil authorities to deal with offences. Calvin could not take that view. The Church must not only preach the gospel, he said, but among its own constituency see that it is lived. The sole instrument by which this duty can be performed is discipline. Spiritual discipline, of course; for the Church is a spiritual body. Only spiritual penalties could be inflicted, culminating in exclusion from the ordinances of the Church, or excommunication. The actual conflict in Geneva turned accordingly on the protection of the Lord's Supper from unworthy participants. In establishing this church-discipline in Geneva, Calvin drove in a wedge between the Church and State, the ultimate effect of which was to make him the father of the principle of a free Church in a free State.

    The purification of the Church, of course, had its effect on the State. Leaven will leaven the lump in which it is placed. A holy Church tends to make a moral community, and Calvin was not slack in preaching among Christian duties the duty of good citizenship. And so, as a by-product of Calvin's labors, Geneva became a notably moral community: its sumptuary laws became, unlike those of many of its neighbors, wholesome and sane, and their execution became straightforward and honest. John Knox bears his testimony to the result: "In other places I confess Christ to be preached; but manners and religion to be so sincerely reformed I have not seen in any other place beside." And from Geneva the leaven spread, and in so spreading put moral health and vigor into the blood of the Reformed world. It is no accident that Lutheranism did not spread beyond the borders of Germany except into the Scandinavian north. The vigor of Protestantism that knew how to live itself out, to strive for its ideals to death itself, found its expression in the Reformed Churches. It was they that bore the brunt of the battle: and so it comes about that, as you look at the map, you see the Reformed Churches ringing the Lutheran Churches around with a protecting bulwark. "Just ask yourselves," says Dr. A. Kuyper, "what would have become of Europe and America, if in the sixteenth century the star of Calvinism had not suddenly arisen on the horizon of Western Europe. . . . The free development of the nations, as seen in Europe and America, would simply have been prevented. . . . It ever remains a question whether the spirit of the Leipzig Interim would not have succeeded, by way of a Romanized Protestantism, in reducing northern Europe again to the sway of the old hierarchy. . . Professor Fruin rightly remarks that, 'In Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland and in England, and wherever Protestantism has had to secure itself at the point of the sword, it was Calvinism that won the victory for it.'"

    Luther led the assault on the trenches; Calvin consolidated the gains. So far as we can see (we speak as a man), lacking either, there would be no Protestantism today.


http://www.sovereignpotter.com/Calvin_And_The_Reformation.html

Who Saves Whom? - Michael S. Horton

"God casts His vote; Satan casts his, but you must cast the deciding ballot"?



The touchstone question in the running debate between Jesus and the Pharisees, Paul and the Judaizers, Augustine and Pelagius, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, the Reformers and the medieval Roman Catholic church, and the Calvinists and Arminians is this: Who saves whom?



In this article I want to offer some brief scriptural responses to the common objections concerning the doctrine of election. If one does not believe in the doctrine of unconditional election, it is impossible to have a high doctrine of grace. As Luther told Erasmus, ignorance of this great truth is in a real sense ignorance of the Christian gospel. "For when the works and power of God are unknown in this way, I cannot worship, praise, thank, and serve God, since I do not know how much I ought to attribute to myself and how much to God." This distinction is essential, he added, "if we want to live a godly life." Further, "If we do not know these things, we shall know nothing at all of things Christian and shall be worse than any heathen."1 As Luther pointed out in his debate with Erasmus, this issue of free will and election is essential in maintaining the doctrine of justification by eliminating any element of human decision or effort as a foothold for merit. Therefore, let's take a brief survey of the biblical support for this important doctrine by considering one of the principal passages: Romans chapter nine.



The Covenant



Running throughout the Old Testament and into the Gospels is the concept of covenant. Although God is the sovereign ruler of all creation and, therefore, quite capable of ruling merely as a dictator, he nevertheless condescends to enter into a covenant with fallen creatures, binding us to him, and himself to us.



This is the background of Paul's letter to the Romans in general, and chapter nine in particular. Paul has raised the issue of faithfulness. Because we are, individually and corporately, foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and anticipate glorification, nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ro.8:39). But that raises an important question, especially for the Jewish believers reading this letter: If God has failed in his promise to save Israel, as many thought Paul was implying in his ministry to the Gentiles, why should we have confidence in his determination to save us?



The apostle then launches into his discussion of the "true Israel." Even in the Old Testament, not every fleshly descendent was a child of God (Is.6:9-13, etc.). At one time, even Esau was a part of God's covenant people, as he grew up beside his brother Jacob. In fact, Esau, according to fleshly descent, was first in line to carry on the Abrahamic inheritance, but God chose to bless Jacob and curse Esau, "before the twins before, having done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not because of the one who works, but because of the one who calls" (v.11). This is the most obvious demonstration that God's gift of grace depends on his own generosity in election rather than on natural descent, racial privilege, or moral righteousness (see Dt. 9:4-6; 29:2-4). "As it is written, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated'" (v.13).



Objections Answered



Paul realizes that he isn't going to get away with this so easily. It is a declaration from the mouth of God himself, but it is going to take some explaining: "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion'" (vv.14-15). Salvation in general and election in particular are due to something in God, not in us. There is a pernicious idea floating around the evangelical world these days, owing more to pop-psychology than to religion, that if we want a basis for self-esteem we ought to remember that Jesus Christ thought we were worth his death. According to Scripture, however, Jesus Christ died for us because "God so loved, " (Jn.3:16). In other words, there was something in God--an inherent compassion, mercy, and love, which moved him to save us while there was absolutely nothing in us that attracted him. Even conservative evangelicals sometimes sound as though God is compelled to show mercy, as though love were his only attribute, but this passage reminds us that God is free to show mercy or withhold it according to his own good pleasure, since mercy, by definition, is not deserved.



After explaining how God is not dependent on his creatures in any sense, Paul concludes, "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy" (v.16). There are few clearer declarations of monergism (i.e., the idea that God alone saves) than this. In one sentence the apostle excludes any human activity, either volitional or physical. There is absolutely nothing our decisions or actions contribute to our own salvation. So much for the popular Arminian maxim, "God casts his vote for your soul, Satan casts his, but you must cast the deciding ballot." Gone is the decisional regeneration that makes the new birth dependent on an exercise of the human will: "You did not choose Me; I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that would last," Jesus told his disciples (Jn.15:16). We "were born not of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God" (Jn.1:13), ", having been predestined according to the plan of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph.1:11).



Notice, too, that this exclusion of "willing and running" takes into its scope not only real, but foreseen decisions and actions on our part. Many will concede that God chose people, but based on his foreknowledge of their own choice. However, this is excluded in the sweep of Paul's statement in verse 13, as in verse 11: "for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, " If God's election depended on our foreseen decision, this not only raises a question concerning God's grace (i.e., foreseen merit is merit nonetheless), but also concerning human sinfulness. After all, if God looked down the corridor of time what would he have seen in us besides sin and resistance? How could he foresee an exercise of the will that he himself did not grant, since "no one can come to the Father unless the one who sent me draws him" (Jn.6:44)?



Of course, this raises three principal objections. The first and most obvious one is the issue of fairness.



It is a measure of our sinfulness and pride that we would use God's gracious initiative in election as an occasion for placing his righteousness and justice in question. If we are, as a race, in as serious shape as Paul has been telling us, especially in the first three chapters, there should not be one reader who would seek God's justice in his or her own case. God's justice--giving us what we deserve--demands our execution. God's mercy, therefore, is owed to none. Paul refers God's mercy to his freedom. Since all deserve judgment, the mere fact that many will be spared is cause for astonishment rather than for wondering why God did not elect everyone.



To illustrate this freedom, Paul recalls Pharaoh to the witness stand: "For this very purpose," God declares, "I raised you [Pharaoh] up, that I might show my power in you and that my name might be declared in all the earth" (v.17). No Jewish reader needed to be reminded how negatively Pharaoh figured in Israelite history. While it might be excessive to compare him to Hitler, there is no doubt that the Egyptian ruler who had held Israel captive for slave labor was the last person first-century Jewish Christians would have wanted Paul to use as an example of God's freedom. Nevertheless, the apostle reminds them of the words of Exodus 9:16, that God had raised him up. Later, he will also recall to their attention the fact that "There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God" (13:1).



Amos called upon a forgetful and apathetic generation to realize God's sovereignty over history: "If there is a calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?, A lion has roared! Who will not fear?" (Am.3:6). In Daniel four we have Nebuchadnezzar's dream, interpreted by Daniel. The proud king was humiliated by God until, in the ruler's own words, "I lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me." He realizes for the first time that "All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; he does according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" His conclusion? "His ways are just and those who walk in pride he is able to humble" (Dan.4:34-37). Isaiah 45:1-7 points up God's use of yet another pagan ruler, Cyrus, "that they may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things." In short, the telos or design of history is the glory of God. Each of us exists because it happens to serve God's design for glorifying himself. He saves us because the exercise of his love and mercy brings him honor, not because there is anything in us that moves him to respond.



Another reason Paul brings up the example of Pharaoh is the circumstances surrounding God's instructions to Moses in the first place. In Exodus 4:18-23, we read that God commanded Moses to return to Egypt. "And the Lord said to Moses, 'When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.'" In other words, God is going to hold Pharaoh accountable for his hardness of heart even in the face of Moses's signs and wonders, and yet God intended to harden Pharaoh's heart all along. It's a tough passage, but there it is.



The second objection picks up where the first leaves off: How can God blame us for what he determined? After all, "Who can resist his will?" (v.19). How could God blame Esau, Pharaoh, or my unbelieving neighbor if they were only fulfilling his plan? This is the essence of the objection Paul anticipates. The belief that God's will "cannot be thwarted" (Dan.4) is not a peculiarity of Reformation thought, nor indeed of Christian thought. It is a basic declaration of theism! If one believes that God is dependent on human beings in any sense (either their willing or running), they are not merely Christians of a different color; they are following an essentially non-Christian and non-theistic interpretation of God's nature. Contemporary evangelical scholars such as Clark Pinnock and Richard Rice realize this and call for a rejection of classical theism for just that reason.



But this idea that God's ultimate intentions and designs cannot be frustrated or overturned creates tension. Paul does not resolve it, as God does not care to reveal it even to an apostle. Calvin warned, "The curiosity of man is such that the more dangerous the subject, the more willing he is to rush boldly into it, Let this, therefore, be our sacred rule, not to seek to know anything about predestination except what the Scripture teaches us. Where the Lord closes his holy mouth, let us also stop our minds from going on further."2 Paul does not reply with a sophisticated line of metaphysical reasoning. He simply says, "Who are you, a mere human, to answer back to God?" In other words, to demand that God defend himself in our presence on this matter is the height of arrogance. Is there any reverence for God anymore? Is the Sovereign God allowed no secrets, no privacy in his heavenly chambers? Must every corner of his rooms be ravaged by our naive and fallen speculations? No, here, to switch metaphors, we come to the end of the precipice and to take a single step farther is to fall hopelessly into despair and confusion.



Next, Paul appeals to another Old Testament allusion: the potter and the clay. In Isaiah 29:15-16, the prophet declares, "Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, 'He did not make me'?" But Paul changes the last question to read, "Why did you make me thus?" Out of the same lump (i.e., the same mass of fallen humanity), God chooses to make vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy, one to bring him glory by demonstrating his justice, the other to glorify him for his compassion and mercy. There is no distinction, as all are taken from the same group. Therefore, the elect cannot be proud.



Notice that this will of God is not capricious or arbitrary, a view that many Arminians suppose and hyper-Calvinists encourage. This, it must be said, is a view of God that has more in common with Greek philosophy than with Christianity. It is fatalistic and hopelessly at odds with the biblical picture. Rather, God's will is connected to his nature and attributes. In this sense, as Jonathan Edwards pointed out, no being (including God) has a free will. The will serves the nature and God is moved to elect, redeem, justify, and save not because of an arbitrary decision or whimsical display of power, but in order to show mercy and compassion. Remember, these are "vessels of mercy." He "will have mercy on whomever he will have mercy." In other words, God is presented in this passage as electing men, women, and children out of an already condemned and ruined race. Their condemnation is just, so God is not responsible for the resistance, disobedience, and hatred of those who are rejected, but only for the salvation of those who do embrace the forgiving grace of God.



Finally, it is essential that we point out what Paul labors to make clear elsewhere, especially in Ephesians chapter one: All of this is "in Christ." We are chosen, predestined, redeemed, justified, called, sealed, and so on, "in him." One of the great New Testament emphases, recovered so clearly by the Reformers, was that election should only be taught and understood in the context of one's relation to Christ. In other words, we cannot search for our election in an abstract philosophical manner. To be chosen is to be "in Christ" and to be in Christ is to be united to him through faith. We find our election not in our performance, race, success, or outward signs--for this was Israel's folly, but in Christ's cross and resurrection.



If these answers are not good enough for the reader, Paul concludes, the alternative to election is immediate judgment for all human beings (vv. 22-23).



The final question that is likely to be asked is this: Aren't we really talking about the nation Israel? Many of us were raised with the explanation that Romans nine was dealing with Israel's election, and not ours. This meant that Romans nine could be ruled inadmissible for use in the debate. But as Paul made clear here as elsewhere, the true Israel is created by grace, not by human descent, decision, or duties. Thus, there is no true Israel apart from faith in Christ. Only those who cling to him in faith are chosen; the rest are judged along with the Gentiles (Ro.11:5-10). "Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham," Paul instructed the Galatians (Gal.3:7). There are no Jews who ever have been saved, are now saved, or who ever will be saved who were not chosen members of the church in both testaments--the ancient (Old Testament) church looking forward to Christ and the modern church looking back to Christ and forward to his return.



Nevertheless, to emphasize that he is not speaking merely of the nation of Israel, Paul adds, "even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles," (v.24) drawing on Old Testament prophecies pointing to the ingathering of the elect Gentiles together with the Jewish remnant in the formation of one body.



The Basis of Reprobation



Much could be said about the other side of the coin. As there are vessels of mercy that are chosen, so there are the vessels of wrath that are rejected. All Paul the apostle wishes to say about this matter is this: No one is reprobated by God without just cause. "What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why?" Does Paul answer, "Because they weren't chosen"? No, the blame is squarely on their shoulders: "Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law" (vv.30-33).



One of the surest ways to be confident that you are not one of the elect is to pursue a righteousness that you have created by your willpower and effort. The elect are simply those who have put down their swords of war, their shovels for digging out their own righteousness, and have placed themselves at the mercy of this God who has promised to have compassion on all who seek him. They are to be comforted by the fact that if they are seeking him it is because he himself has first loved and drawn them to himself. However, unbelievers are not to look to their election, but to Christ, whose offer of forgiveness extends to all people everywhere: "Come unto me, all you who work and are loaded down and I will give you rest."



Thus, this doctrine is calculated to drive home the idea that God saves us by grace alone because of Christ alone. Many are willing to accept that they were justified freely, but their resistance to this doctrine reveals an unwillingness to fully accept the idea that their salvation is not conditioned on anything in them. May we all, regardless of our traditional perspective, take this passage from Paul's Magna Charta seriously and employ this doctrine of election not merely in the service of theological debate, but in grateful appreciation and thanksgiving.§


http://www.glenwoodhills.org/article.asp?ID=512

@Topic.
Certainly not!
@Frosbel
Preach on, fiery Calvinist!

frosbel:
^^^

Happy new year first off.

It is completely out of line with the bible to suggest that once someone is saved they have no further role to play.

In your opinion, just sit back, fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride, without lifting a finger.

Sorry to burst your bubble, just not true.

A happy new year to you too.

Ok, I hear you. I wanted that statement recorded.

frosbel:
"God helps those who help themselves."
The earliest recording of this saying is actually from Aesop's fable "Hercules and the Waggoner." A man's wagon got stuck in a muddy road, and he prayed for Hercules to help. Hercules appeared and said, "Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel." The moral given was "The gods help them that help themselves." Aesop was a Greek writer who lived from 620 to 564 BC, but obviously did not contribute to the Bible. As a biblical truism, the proverb has mixed results[b]. We can do nothing to help when it comes to salvation; salvation is through Christ alone[/b]. In the work of sanctification—becoming more spiritually mature—we are to join in the work. 1 Peter 1:14-15 says, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior."

Really, Frosbel! Hope you are not trying to encourage people to,''just sit back, fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride, without lifting a finger''? It would be so unlike you. 

frosbel:
b]"God helps those who help themselves."[/b]
The earliest recording of this saying is actually from Aesop's fable "Hercules and the Waggoner." A man's wagon got stuck in a muddy road, and he prayed for Hercules to help. Hercules appeared and said, "Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel." The moral given was "The gods help them that help themselves." Aesop was a Greek writer who lived from 620 to 564 BC, but obviously did not contribute to the Bible. As a biblical truism, the proverb has mixed results. We can do nothing to help when it comes to salvation; salvation is through Christ alone. In the work of sanctification—becoming more spiritually mature—we are to join in the work. 1 Peter 1:14-15 says, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior."

If you say this work contributes to salvation, then you[b] lost me[/b]  .
This is because you just said ,’’ We can do nothing to help when it comes to salvation; salvation is through Christ alone’’.And  here, you are talking of salvation , not  just being born again.
Take time to read articles before you post them, that way, you will avoid shooting yourself in the foot. It is you I fault, I will only find fault with this writer, if he goes on to say as you do, that a believer can lose salvation.

The most common is the belief that a believer can lose salvation (arminianism)

A person's destiny cannot be altered one bit.

Religion of peace my foot!

Congrats,Joagbaje.

frosbel:
^

Please remind me , which one.?

Maybe I forgot 

Post #12 on this thread.

If  you had even made an attempt, your declaration below, perhaps, would have been just.

frosbel:
This should put this Calvin matter to rest .

To come back six months later to claim ''victory'' seems fraudulent  .

frosbel:
This should put this Calvin matter to rest .

Very funny.

You sneeringly bypass my previous post.

frosbel:
You are funny.

God saves us, provides us with all that is required to endure to the end   , our part is to remain in the vine.

A man can walk away from the faith , something called Apostasy.

To suggest otherwise is to reduce man to a robotic being with no ability to choose right from wrong. Total Heresy I say.

No, I am not, just trying to show you some of the absurdities in your viewpoint.

If God decided to save all, all will be saved. If some, they will be saved.

One of the problems with you is that you are still embedded in the freewill dogma. Some of the vestiges of Catholicism is still left in you to be overcome.

frosbel:
Although God definitely promises to do his part to keep us saved to the end, this does not mean that we do not have a part to play. God promises eternal security, but not unconditional eternal security. Nearly all God's promises are conditional; that is, they are dependent in part on us for their fulfillment.

And our part is so important, it overrides God’s part or intention and yet, God is Omnipotent!

Comparison of:
Arminianism and Calvinism
                             
1.
  Arminianism: Free-Will or Human Ability

Although human nature was seriously affected by the fall, man has not been left in a state of total spiritual helplessness. God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He does not interfere with man's freedom. Each sinner possesses a free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. Man's freedom consists of his ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters; his will is not enslaved to his sinful nature. The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner's gift to God; it is man's contribution to salvation.
 
Calvinism: Total Inability or Total Depravity

Because of the fall, man is unable of himself to savingly believe the gospel. The sinner is dead, blind, and deaf to the things of God; his heart is deceitful and desperately corrupt. His will is not free, it is in bondage to his evil nature, therefore, he will not - indeed he cannot - choose good over evil in the spiritual realm. Consequently, it takes much more than the Spirit's assistance to bring a sinner to Christ - it takes regeneration by which the Spirit makes the sinner alive and gives him a new nature. Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God's gift of salvation - it is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God.


2.
  Arminianism: Conditional Election

God's choice of certain individuals unto salvation before the foundation of the world was based upon His foreseeing that they would respond to His call. He selected only those whom He knew would of themselves freely believe the gospel. Election therefore was determined by or conditioned upon what man would do. The faith which God foresaw and upon which He based His choice was not given to the sinner by God (it was not created by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit) but resulted solely from man's will. It was left entirely up to man as to who would believe and therefore as to who would be elected unto salvation. God chose those whom He knew would, of their own free will, choose Christ. Thus the sinner's choice of Christ, not God's choice of the sinner, is the ultimate cause of salvation.
 
Calvinism: Unconditional Election

God's choice of certain individuals unto salvation before the foundation of the world rested solely in His own sovereign will. His choice of particular sinners was not based on any foreseen response of obedience on their part, such as faith, repentance, etc. On the contrary, God gives faith and repentance to each individual whom He selected. These acts are the result, not the cause of God's choice. Election therefore was not determined by or conditioned upon any virtuous quality or act foreseen in man. Those whom God sovereignly elected He brings through the power of the Spirit to a willing acceptance of Christ. Thus God's choice of the sinner, not the sinner's choice of Christ, is the ultimate cause of salvation.

     
3.
  Arminianism: Universal Redemption or General Atonement

Christ's redeeming work made it possible for everyone to be saved but did not actually secure the salvation of anyone. Although Christ died for all men and for every man, only those who believe on Him are saved. His death enabled God to pardon sinners on the condition that they believe, but it did not actually put away anyone's sins. Christ's redemption becomes effective only if man chooses to accept it.
 
Calvinism: Particular Redemption or Limited Atonement 

Christ's redeeming work was intended to save the elect only and actually secured salvation for them. His death was substitutionary endurance of the penalty of sin in the place of certain specified sinners. In addition to putting away the sins of His people, Christ's redemption secured everything necessary for their salvation, including faith which unites them to Him. The gift of faith is infallibly applied by the Spirit to all for whom Christ died, therefore guaranteeing their salvation.


4.
  Arminianism: The Holy Spirit Can Be Effectually Resisted


The Spirit calls inwardly all those who are called outwardly by the gospel invitation; He does all that He can to bring every sinner to salvation. But inasmuch as man is free, he can successfully resist the Spirit's call. The Spirit cannot regenerate the sinner until he believes; faith (which is man's contribution) precedes and makes possible the new birth. Thus, man's free will limits the Spirit in the application of Christ's saving work. The Holy Spirit can only draw to Christ those who allow Him to have His way with them. Until the sinner responds, the Spirit cannot give life. God's grace, therefore, is not invincible; it can be, and often is, resisted and thwarted by man.

Calvinism:  The Efficacious Call of the Spirit or Irresistible Grace

In addition to the outward general call to salvation which is made to everyone who hears the gospel, the Holy Spirit extends to the elect a special inward call that inevitably brings them to salvation. The internal call (which is made only to the elect) cannot be rejected; it always results in conversion. By means of this special call the Spirit irresistibly draws sinners to Christ. He is not limited in His work of applying salvation by man's will, nor is He dependent upon man's cooperation for success. The Spirit graciously causes the elect sinner to cooperate, to believe, to repent, to come freely and willingly to Christ. God's grace, therefore, is invincible; it never fails to result in the salvation of those to whom it is extended.


  5.

Arminianism: Falling from Grace

Those who believe and are truly saved can lose their salvation by failing to keep up their faith, etc. All Arminians have not been agreed on this point; some have held that believers are eternally secure in Christ - that once a sinner is regenerated, he can never be lost.
 
Calvinism:  Perseverance of the Saints

All who are chosen by God, redeemed by Christ, and given faith by the Spirit are eternally saved. They are kept in faith by the power of Almighty God and thus persevere to the end.





According to Arminianism:

Salvation is accomplished through the combined efforts of God (who takes the initiative) and man (who must respond) - man's response being the determining factor. God has provided salvation for everyone, but His provision becomes effective only for those who, of their own free will, "choose" to cooperate with Him and accept His offer of grace. At the crucial point, man's will plays a decisive role; thus man, not God, determines who will be recipients of the gift of salvation.


According to Calvinism:

Salvation is accomplished by the almighty power of the Triune God. The Father chose a people, the Son died for them, the Holy Spirit makes Christ's death effective by bringing the elect to faith and repentance, thereby causing them to willingly obey the gospel. The entire process (election, redemption, regeneration) is the work of God and is by grace alone. Thus God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation.

http://the-highway.com/compare.html

NO.

frosbel:
^

You were obviously not reading ! 

Read what I wrote again.

Nite Nite.

I can't understand this post, be more explicit when next you post.
Also your post (#5) needs some clarification in the light of this one.
Bye, for now.

A thousand words but no answer to my question.

[Quote]

Romans 11

5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.[/b]
[/Quote]

The above verses are a complete refutation of salvation by faith and works.

frosbel:
Justification by Faith is only the first half and for SALVATION.

But faith without works is dead.

To suggest that because Christ has forgiven us our sins, we are now free to indulge the flesh at will is False.

We are ONLY saved if we endure to the end and hold on to our faith.

Imputed Righteousness is a false doctrine.

So, in your estimation, the second half is by works? Can the whole of salvation be by grace , while a part is by works?