Understanding God’s election

[Rufus]

So, as I understand you:

• "all [men]" is a universal term
• We must determine if all [men] is being stated:
  • in the distributive sense meaning, let's say all "mankind" wherever, whenever.
    • Is this the "without exception" that you say Jesus is not speaking about?
  • In the limited sense, let's say some group - all [men] in a group you'll identify for us and why you identify this group.
    • Is this group of all [men] the '"all" without distinction" and meaning simply Jews and Gentiles?
• Jesus doesn't mean all men/mankind because the Pharisees were being hyperbolic when they said, "the whole world"?

I'm not sure what your point is about Satan and the world and how that tells us something about 12:32. Would you clarify?

All in the distributive sense = all without exception, quantitatively. All in the limited sense = all without distinction, qualitatively.

I brought up the the Pharisees use of hyperbole since it was conveniently in the passage. There are many here who naively see phrases like "the whole world" and immediately assume it should be understood in the distributive sense, which can lead to some pretty absurd interpretations.

When Jesus said he would draw "all" to him, he meant in the limited sense. He would draw all without distinction. Does not John 12 teach us that both JEWS (lots of 'em, apparently) and a few GENTILES sought Jesus out? From a biblical and Jewish perspective, there only two kinds of people in the world: Jews and everyone else (i.e. Gentiles). Does the text teach that every single Jew alive at that time sought Christ out? Or did every single Gentile seek Christ out? It's revealing that Jesus didn't make his comment in v. 32 until AFTER his two disciples informed him that there were a few Gentiles who wanted to see him. It was only AFTER they informed him of this fact, did he start speaking and then eventually told everyone that when He is lifted up, he will draw "all" to him, i.e. Jews and Gentiles who "coincidentally" were already seeking him out (on a microcosmic level compared to this New Covenant economy) at that particular time due to his big Lazarus miracle and the nearness of Passover.

Satan fits in beautifully because his being chained up at the bottom of the abyss is limited to one specific purpose: That he cannot deceive the [collective] nations any longer re the gospel. But his "great chain" doesn't stop him from deceiving the unregenerate, generally, i.e. individual people. His chain does, however, facilitate the dissemination of the Gospel to the nations of the world.

 

[Rufus]

Silly.

Always with the rhetoric and implications that no one does the detail of study you do. I do see you attempting to learn how to use some Greek tools. I commend you for that.

Will you provide a word study of every use of helkuō in the Text and prove to me and anyone reading that it's appropriate to use "drag" as a definition in John6:44 and I assume John12:32 also?

It's an interesting study as the word is used for inanimate objects like swords, as well as for people. When it is used for people, we find reasons to see the involvement of human will in the sense of being or becoming willing (drawn) or unwilling (dragged). When you do the study even with your Herculean presuppositions you should be able to grasp some of this.

The only time I use Strong's is when I want to see the root word(s) a word I'm studying stems from. There are better and more current lexical tools. I have a very useful version of Strong's resident on computer that I procured decades ago after finding a guy online who had done a massive amount of work putting such reference works together in a very usable form. I'm currently using it to help find all the details and overlaps and parallels to the word translated as "raise" in John6:39. It's actually a massive study to track all the references and implications of Jesus raising "things."

I'm just saying that "helko" means LITERALLY to drag. I get it that translators also translate the word "draw".

When you do a word usage study for "helko", whatever is being "dragged" or "drawn" is passive. God is active; the object being drawn or dragged is passive. Even when Peter drew his sword from his sheath, that sword didn't have any will to resist. The sword was passive. It was acted upon! And that's how it is with "helko" in the eight times that it's used in the NT, as far as I can tell. Or a fish net is passive when it's tossed into the water and dragged behind a boat, etc. Or when Paul was dragged by the angry crowd he wasn't able resist them even though he likely didn't take kindly to physical force, etc.

 

[PaulThomson]

Judas was never a believer. And Jesus choosing Judas so that he would willingly play the role for which he was created actually supports my claims and the Doctrines of Grace. Judas was a lump of clay created for ignoble purposes (Rom 9), whereas the other 11 were lumps created for noble purposes.

Furthermore, Judas didn't come to Jesus; rather Jesus chose him! No one can come to Jesus spiritually apart from the Father "dragging" them to Him. ("To drag" is the literal rendering of the Gr. term "helko", cf. Strong's 1670, which is rendered "draw" in Jn 6:44.) All manner of people can corporeally come to Jesus under the influence of their own flesh, but none can spiritually come to Him under the influence of the Spirit, apart from God's enabling, causal power.

But that's what election means in the Bible: being chosen for some particular role. It is not a word used in the Bible to declare that someone was chosen to be regenerated so that they can believe and be reconciled to God. The thread is about understanding God's election of people. It is not titled "Understanding reformed election".

 

[PaulThomson]

Yup...the greedy little thief came to Jesus for all the wrong reasons.

And they all came because Jesus chose them. They did not choose him!

The motives for coming are irrelevant to whether the come. Redefining "come" to exclude all coming except "coming with faith in Christ" should ne necessary to make sense of the context. It shoukld not be done merely to make a text fit one's theological ideology.