"Not by works" - false!

Notice the qualifier, I did not say everyone else said everyone who does AND......

You keep saying I believe EVERYONE. That is not true


This is what you said
Notice you left out AND......

That in my view was dishonest. If you meant to include and you should have said it. Remember your first post I responded to was to tell someone we believe everyone who leaves is in context. My argument is that is not true
so would you like to discuss who it does pertain to?

Yes, 'believing' is in reference to being a Christian.

Yes, God chooses us on the basis of our faith in God, not on the basis of righteous work performed.

This is a conclusion based on the (erroneous) premise that being chosen means being created and picked out to be a believer apart from any consideration whatsoever of the person being chosen. If fact, you have to come to this conclusion if you view election this way, according to Calvin.

You only cooperate insofar as you choose to respond with trust to God's gracious gift of faith (the ability to know something you can't see is true). And even that decision to respond in trust is bathed in God's gracious encouragement to do that trusting.

Yes, it varies because you believe that God gives us our believing.
No, God gives us the gift of faith (the ability to know something is true that you can't see and know is true yourself).
And it is upon that 'knowing' that we then trust God for the forgiveness of sin and are justified.

Then explain it.

Ah, not to avoid your question - but I am confused with too many "anyones" and now "everyones" and is this "and" . . . ? -- I am going to just to chalk it all up to a misunderstanding somewhere - and admit I might have made a mistake or false accusation - but I sure was not trying to, and acknowledge that we interpret I John 2:19 differently.

Blessings, Chester

Saying one is wrong because they are wrong is circular logic.

And an antichrist

I mean really? Was this so hard? It is literally what I said was it not?

And who is an antichrist. John gives that definition also

What do you think an antichrist is

As for different interpretations

I just as I said in my first post take him to mean what he said

People who were with them and have departed and now are antichrist have never been saved

Do you see it different?

according to Christ which happens first:

• God chooses a person to reveal Himself to?
• a person creates in themselves faith towards a God they do not know, do not believe, and do not seek?

interesting!

in your theology, does God choose people who have fake-faith waiting to be revealed as not-faith-at-all by the passage of time?
does God not know they don't actually have enduring faith? can people fool God into thinking they have faith, when ultimately they do not, so that they can trick Him into choosing them?

or has God not really chosen them?

why did God choose Judas? did Jesus not know? or did He? was Judas saved, ever?
if so did Christ choose to save Judas in order to lose him? is God ignorant of this or surprised or . . ?
why then, choose Judas? did Jesus-God choose him for salvation or for something else?

certainly you do not think Judas chose himself?

how was Saul chosen on the basis of Saul's faith if Saul hadn't even heard His voice, did not know His will, had never seen Him, was not seeking Him, and did not believe but instead hated the report of Him?

if Saul was chosen while he was completely ignorant & faithless and a violent enemy of God, how can you say he was chosen on the basis of his faith in God? you have to say, God knew the faith that he would have after God chose him. but this faith is a product of the choice God made to reveal Himself to Saul -- cause & effect -- and if you insist that God chooses to reveal Himself to people based on His omniscient prescience ((rather than on God's own will)), and you also insist that Christ will lose some of His sheep due to those sheep not maintaining their own faith, then you conclude that God chooses people He knows are faithless, having omnisciently chosen them based on their so-called 'faith' which is truly non-faith.

doesn't your theology have God constantly making bad choices?

Definition of work: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result
God's Greatest commandment as to what we must do: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 And Jesus replied to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

Premise 1: We are not saved by works per Eph. 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it [faith] is the gift of God, 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Premise 2: Salvific faith is a work as it is a mental effort done in order to achieve a purpose. It is part of the greatest commandment of the Law for one must obey God and God commands us to believe.
Conclusion: Since we are not saved by works and faith is a work ... we therefore cannot save ourselves via faith. Therefore faith must be given by God that we be saved.

Premise 1: The depravity of man makes it impossible to have faith independent of God providing it. (None seek God)
Conclusion: We therefore cannot save ourselves via faith. Therefore faith must be given by God that we be saved.

Premise 1: Faith is given us as a gift from God (not from yourself)
Premise 2: God loses none whom He chooses: John 6:39 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of those He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day.
Conclusion: Enternal security for all those God chose before the foundation of the earth

Premise 1: Christ intercedes for his sheep
Premise 2: Christ and the father are of one essence ... thus the Father grants all Christ's requests
Conclusion: Christ does not intercede for unbelievers (the goats) or they would be saved.

Premise 1: Christ refer to believers as being "born again" John 3:3
Premise 2: Christ refer to believers as being his "sheep" Luke 12:32
Premise 3: Christ refer to believers as being "spiritually dead" Col. 2:13
Premise 4: Christ refer to believers as being "adopted" Romans 8:23
Premise 5: Christ refer to believers and non believers as being "clay to be molded by the potter as he wishes" Romans 9:21
Conclusion: It is not possible birth oneself, for sheep to chose their shephard, for a dead person to make himself alive, for a child to chose a parent to adopt him, for clay to chose its destiny .... therefore it is not possible for a person to chose to believe in order to be saved. God must chose to insert belief/faith into a DEAD PERSON so that he might be BORN AGAIN and be ADOPTED by the potter that formed the CLAY into a vessel He loves.

Premise 1: God does not share his glory (Isaiah 42:8)
Premise 2: Man must cooperate with God to complete the salvific process (false premise)
Conclusion: There is a contradiction in the two premises... therefore, at least one of the premises must be false

Premise 1: Christ died for everyone without exception (false premise)
Premise 2: Not everyone is saved
Conclusion: Christ died in vain for unbelievers

Directly regarding the question of this board ... Not [Saved] by works
Premise 1: Faith is a work (by definition)
Premise 2: We are saved by co-operating with God. God's part is to die for us, intercede for us, be resurrected for our justification while our task is to believe without God giving us this faith (False premise)
Conclusion: We are saved by works.

God takes the initiative by sending the testimony of the Holy Spirit about the Son into the world:

6 ...it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
9 ...God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.
10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.
1 John 5:6,9-10

Faith is instilled in the heart of the person who hears, through the testimony of the Spirit, the word of God about the Son:

"17 ...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." - Romans 10:17

Some accept the truth shown them about the Son, while others reject the truth given them about the Son. But in either case, both the Christ receiver and the Christ rejector were shown by the Spirit that what they can't see about the Son really is true. They were both given the faith to know that the gospel is true. But it is the Christ receiver who retains that faith and places his trust in what he now knows to be true about the Son, while the Christ rejecter casts away the faith he was given to know the gospel is true and chooses not to believe it.

God gives the faith to believe. Man does the believing/trusting in response to the faith he has been given. Or he chooses to discard the faith he has been given to know the gospel is true.

Fake believers are not among the elect.
They aren't among the elect because the elect are chosen on the basis of their faith.
Fake believers don't have faith.

Judas was not chosen for salvation, for he did not believe (John 6:64). He was chosen to fulfill a position.

He wasn't chosen on the basis of his faith. No more than any Levite was chosen for his office based on his faith, or Caiaphas was chosen to be High Priest because of his faith, yet all of them had an anointing to operate in the office that they were chosen to fill.

"49Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

51He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation..." - John 11:49-51


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I know this is pages from where the discussion is now, but you have shocked me, DCon, with badgering, your immature comments, your name calling, your total lack of addressing the topic, and especially attacking the person, not the topic. I realize you cannot construct an argument, and don't know the Bible, but these ad hominem attacks have really pulled you down.

Do you even think about what Jesus thinks of your cruel and unkind behaviour? I've reported you. You have completely lost me with these revelations of your petty character. I had no idea you had fallen so far from God!

Spend some days reading the Bible and praying. If you repent, maybe the Holy Spirit will begin the process or spiritual formation, and transformation!

These ungodly posts certainly cannot come from a Christian who walks with God, and obeys the Holy Spirit. I'm being harsh, because people need to be warned in this forum that you are as far from Christ as I have ever seen. Weird to think at one time I saw you as an honest leader in this forum. I guess a taste of power has utterly corrupted you.

I don't come around here much, because of the heresies. But even more because of the way people treat each other.

"34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." John 15:12

"And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27

When God judges us what will you say to defend these abhorrent attacks? Jesus won't care about anyone's theology! Instead, he will be judging character, and whether we grew and were transformed into mature people in Christ. You are spiteful, acting like a petulant child. I could careless about what people believe, unless it is far beyond the pale of historical theology. Real heresies!

But when someone like you, DCon hammers away at a small difference in perfectly acceptable soteriology, then it is time to call you out. I don't know which narrow minded church or denomination you go to, or where you got your Bible school training, but in the 4 seminaries from different denominations have taken courses for transfer credit and my degree, I have never seen a single professor or student, including in my PhD program, mock and attack someone like you have, for merely having a different soteriology than them. Especially when a lot of this is just a timing debate. You have taken something about being free and free will, which comes from the American constitution and not the Bible and made it into an idol. Very sad, very pathetic!

"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Philippians 2:1-4

oh wow, so that means I can marry Amanda then? despite the fact she is currently married , has a young son, and is considering divorce? Well thats a load off our minds.

Amanda (whoever she is) and you have absolutely nothing to do with the issue being discussed.

I have always struggled with understanding how anyone who has received the Holy Spirit into their heart.......can discard that faith they were given.....it really baffles me.

It happens.

Having faith (believing/trusting) is not included in the self righteous works that can not justify:

"5 ...to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness." - Romans 4:6

Paul is contrasting the work that does not justify with the 'work' of believing that does.
But osas erroneously lumps a person's believing in with the works of the works gospel and so invents this concept where God is giving you your believing so as to make it so it's not your work in a works gospel.

We need to go by what the Bible says, not by what man made doctrine says.
Trusting in God is NOT a work of self righteousness such that it can only be understood as something God does for you, or else it's you working for your salvation.
It's okay for you to do the 'work' of believing.
That's not the 'works' gospel.

I can relate very much to your teaching Judges.....if I have any questions I will be asking you..