Understanding God’s election

Aah! I think I can help you better understand your own example. Grace means gift, but God's offer of grace is conditional, meaning that it must be accepted via faith before one becomes favored/blessed, and such faith/acceptance is NOT meritorious.

In the end it is,


This is called repentance. And it is cause because God opens their mind

again, I do not have to be born again to believe.. God acts, I chose how to react to God[/QUOTE]
And that is the difference. I believe God acts and because of His actions, I respond in faith. Conversely, if God doesn't affect a change in an individual, they will respond as they always have...in unbelief.

If we are totally depraved?
How can he open a depraved mind that is depraved?

The real question is:

What caused the mind to be enslaved to depravity?

During the presentation of the Gospel...
If God's grace (power) ties up the slave master?
Is the slave compelled to keep doing as the slave master had previously demanded?

That is why we must be saved by grace! To save our soul, not the body!

From the body comes the sin nature!

And that is the difference. I believe God acts and because of His actions, I respond in faith. Conversely, if God doesn't affect a change in an individual, they will respond as they always have...in unbelief.[/QUOTE]


Just like grace was needed and given to save you?
Saved through the faith, that was also given you.
It was not of yourself.

Grace first forces down and clears away the depravity of the flesh that was blinding us from seeing the truth.

Then, God tosses the lifeline of faith to grab hold of, and to wrap around our heart, to lift us by grace over into salvation.

How do you define total depravity? Total inability or the entire man?

Regardless, God isn't limited in what He can do.

But I do agree that it is important that we understand what happened in the fall because that is what is being restored in salvation. That and plus a bonus: becoming partakers of the divine nature.

Just like grace was needed and given to save you?
Saved through the faith, that was also given you.
It was not of yourself.

Grace first forces down and clears away the depravity of the flesh that was blinding us from seeing the truth.

Then, God tosses the lifeline of faith to grab hold of, and to wrap around our heart, to lift us by grace over into salvation.[/QUOTE]
Do you have children? If not, please adopt or consider blogging.

If you are "totally a paraplegic" from an accident? (Adam’s sin)
That would mean that no treatment, nor surgery, could make you mobile again.
For total depravity would indicate there is nothing there to use to rehabilitate the paraplegic with.

It's not total depravity.
It's that man is born enslaved by depravity.

Now? If God can get the slave master tied up, taken out of the picture?
Can that previous slave, under those circumstances, then make choices for himself?
YES!

It's like we see in The Wizard of Oz...
The Wicked Witch was like our slave master of depravity.
After the wicked witch was eliminated, all her flying monkeys and army guards (Winkies)
instantly transformed from doing evil, into being capable of doing what is good.

Likewise.. Get our sin nature knocked off its throne?
Grace power from God achieves that.
Then our soul was placed in a position to be free to make real choices for ourselves.



grace and peace ..............

It's Calvinists who can't define it properly.

You keep asking me to define it, while I have been doing so all along.

Why is God limited to what exists? God has no such limitation.
Personally, I believe total means entire. In other words, the entire man is affected in every aspect of his humanity.

But, Paul said the following:


Notice how Paul differentiated himself between his flesh, and what he also considers to be the real Paul.
The depravity of man was inherited from Adam's seed... = the fallen flesh!

God creates the human soul that lives inside a body.
But, a man and woman can only create the body.
A man and woman can not create a soul.

It's the human body's fallen nature that waylays the soul from doing good.
That same soul, that when placed inside a resurrection body, will be doing only good.
The root of the problem is not found in the soul itself.

Adam ruined our chances of living a righteous life outside of God's corrective power to do so by grace.

Man naturally will live seemingly being totally depraved until grace rescues his soul from the power of the fallen nature existing in his flesh.

The flesh is not evil, there's just nothing righteous in it to be able to lead a person into righteousness. Man's fallen nature stems from having a dead spirit, ie not at one with God. A soul is not capable of doing good because it has no agency. Allowing the soul to rule a person is just as bad as allowing the flesh to rule. Both must be brought under the yoke of the renewed spirit. Really both the body and the soul are what Paul calls the flesh

Natural, Sensual
G5591 ψυχικός psuchikos (psï-chiy-kos') adj.
1. (properly) soulish, pertaining to the soul.

I do not know anyone so dumb as to follow that deliberate illogical rabbit trail for your amusement.

Well now you do.

How do you account for the entire man being redeemed in Acts 2:37? When they heard this...the mind, they were pricked in the heart...the heart, and said men and brethren, what shall do?...the will. Mind, heart, and will were all affected as salvation is wrought.

Have a nice ... very nice... day.

May God bless.

.

Entire man??????

Like this entire man?


Sounds to me like you have been having a problem with coming to grips with that truth....
Now that you know? Please, grow in grace and truth...

So you ignore what I ask an explanation for and then give a perfectly good answer to a question I haven't asked and then accuse me of being unable to grasp truth. Nice.

Good bye, smiley....

Good night Johnboy