Agree 100%
A true born again believer knows they were seeking God at different points in their lives and the Good News was the answer to that quest.
TULIPism is most always one line out of context.
"No one seeks God"
Used and abused to fit a system.
Are you a monergist or a synergist?
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A true born again believer knows they were seeking God at different points in their lives and the Good News was the answer to that quest.
TULIPism is most always one line out of context.
"No one seeks God"
Used and abused to fit a system.
Well no can be saved otherwise... the Gospel is a personal message of redemption because Christ Jesus died for all sin.
Bible 101
I preach Christ the way the apostles preached Him — as the One who died for sinners (Rom 5:6–8), for the world (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2), and as the One whose gospel is commanded to be proclaimed to every creature (Mark 16:15).
I don’t pretend to know who is elect or reprobate, but I do know that the offer of salvation is genuine for all who hear it, even though only those who receive the love of the truth will be saved.
When I tell a stranger that Christ died for sinners, I’m not lying — I’m obeying the biblical pattern of universal proclamation.
The tragedy is not that someone might believe Christ died for them; the tragedy is that some refuse Him, just as Jesus lamented in Matthew 23:37. So I preach the same gospel to everyone, trusting God to draw His own and leaving the results in His hands.
Not by works!
Works are a plurality of prescribed deeds that claim to accomplish gaining God's approval.
There is only ONE WORK that God accepts. Not works.
Do you know what that one work is that God approves of?
Are you ready to think?
Or do you want to keep hiding?
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed
his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” John 6:27-29
Do you know what that says????
Arminianism would say that man has a natural ability to believe.
But God's words says that without grace being given, no man could believe.
For when the power of grace is being given?
In that enabled state, man is made free to believe... Or, not to believe!
As long as you keep using Arminianism as your "form letter response?"
You will not need to rethink anything that needs correction to make you more like Christ in your thinking.
SBS ....
I don't have much time so I'll try to be succinct. To preface my answer I want to say a little about the language we use to describe things of God, eternal things, that had no antecedent in the earth until they were revealed to man by revelation of the Holy Spirit. What is true, especially of the Greek used in the New Testament, is that it was a very common and somewhat simple language. Many spoke it. It's apparent that God used Koine Greek, a common, everyday dialect, to reach a wide audience with the message distributed by the Apostles of the Lamb and the other apostles.
One issue with the language is that the same word can mean many different things. Or, conversely, many words can be translated, in the English, to the same word. I've written about this before so I don't want to get into here again save for one additional comment: men have a habit of making common words into religious words with their own meaning. Hardly anyone thinks about the word "baptize" anymore without envisioning a man putting another man under the water at a church service. It's likely, however, that when Greeks hear the word "baptizo" they envision a cleaning rag being immersed in water. It was always a word that meant "to immerse" but men's minds have added the religious meaning to it because God used it to reveal something to them. (I can expound on this later if you wish.)
Sadly, my time is short but I'll write a few more things.
Christians tend to handle the issue of man only after his fall: Adam and Eve expelled from the garden. This truncates their understanding of man. So, in difficult areas, where it is hard to understand why something happens the way it happened, they will insert things like "Well, God can do whatever He wants" or "Sometimes God works in mysterious ways" or "God is sovereign"... Something like that. They'll invent things like a "Christophany" or a "Theophany" to attempt to give meaning to certain occasions when what is written in scripture does not align with the assumed standard.
Man is a spiritual being. He was created as a spirit clothed in flesh. That is why they were naked and not ashamed. Now, nowhere is this explicitly written. So, many who are sola scriptura will reject this outright, even though the scriptures, themselves, state that the Holy Spirit has all authority. In my view, understanding the state of man as a spiritual being is wisdom. Man's flesh is just the container in which a spirit resides. Adam and Eve were like their father, God, who was spirit. And they interacted with God commonly because they were completely compatible with Him. But of course they (Adam and Eve) were not perfect, not complete. We know this because they were vulnerable to the enemy and his deception. We know the story. But the emphasis I want to make is on the shift in identity: from being a spiritual being like their father to ultimately being a body of flesh. This shift affects the entire human race and is the central reason man needs a Savior: Christ.
Sorry, I have to go. I will attend to this after the weekend.
Blessings.
According to you it isn't teaching that but to majority of Scholars and Theologians it is. Even foolish AI makes a similar claim which is funny because it makes several claims for both sides of the coin.
Bottom line is God made us able to do something that we choose not to do. And honestly I wished both Armenian and Calvin never existed because there's truths on both views but in order to be for one or the other you must ignore blatant facts.
Yes, I believe in Predestination, being Chosen, being Elected, and having Free Will that we clearly never use properly which is why God has to intervene the way Paul explains it.
This is a wonderful explanation and I don't disagree with any of it. I'm more concerned with what transpires to restore man into relationship and be reconciled to God.
The explanation that all man need do is stop resisting God is accurate, but it is very simplistic and doesn't actually account for all that transpires between God and the individual. I find so many who only concern themselves with what I believe are the visible responses of individuals, and little thought is given to the unseen spiritual activity of God.
I truly appreciate the discussion. And I don't deny the cooperation of man in salvation, but I don't believe people understand well the invisible hand of God that undergirds so much of the transaction.
A. Theistic Determinists, seem to have no problem accepting the proposition that God does not love mankind but, in fact, hates the majority of us because we are genetically descended from Adam. However, it is very well understood that in Hebrew idiomatic language, “love” and “hate” can sometimes be used to express preference rather than literal love and hatred. In this way, it can be interpreted to mean that God preferred Jacob’s line for the continuation of the Abrahamic covenant, rather than actually having hatred for Esau.
B. As proof of this consider the KJV of Genesis 29:31 which says: And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren. While this is the literal translation of the Hebrew text which uses the word שְׂנוּאָ֣ה śə-nū-’āh (hated). Almost every other translation does not use the word "hated" but something like preferred.
C. At least you are being honest about the Calvinist position that God does not love mankind as a race but only a small portion of them He calls"the elect." If we take God's supposed animosity towards the Esau seriously then we arrive at the same conclusion the Catholics did - that God damns unbaptized newborns, and children solely by virtue of their genetic connection to a remote ancestor (which was Augustine's idea) or, as the Reformers who were familiar with law reframed it, God IMPUTED Adam's personal sin to all his descendants (except Jesus).
Either way, whether judging children for the sins of their fathers (or vice-versa) is a practice God Himself repudiated both through the Law of Moses [Deuteronomy 24:16] and the living word spoken by the Prophets [Ezekiel 18:20]
B. One thing the scripture affirms is that God loved mankind even while we hated and opposed Him.
3 For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another (Titus 3:3)
Here Paul shows us graphically and specifically why we were His personal enemies and it was related to the life we voluntarily chose to live
C. Why did God bother to intervene and save us? The Apostle Paul explained what God's motive was in the next few verses: 4 But when the KINDNESS of God our Savior and His LOVE FOR MANKIND appeared, 5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.…(Titus 3:4-5)
D. The word KINDNESS [χρηστότης] denotes the moral grace that expresses itself in benevolent action. While modern English often narrows “kindness” to a gentle disposition, χρηστότης combines THAT gentleness with moral usefulness, generosity, and ACTIVE GOODNESS.
Romans 2:4 declares that the “riches of His KINDNESS” is what leads [not compels] sinners to repentance, revealing divine χρηστότης as redemptive in purpose. God’s kindness is not merely sentimental indulgence but patient, richly resourced benevolence that woos rebels home. Of course, to someone obsessed with the idea of God as a Being who controls every event cannot accept the idea that we choose to love Him.
E. Next Paul uses a particular word for love in this verse which shows conclusively that God loves our entire species. This word is philanthrōpía (from 5384 /phílos, "a friend" and 444 /ánthrōpos, "of MANKIND, people") – properly, a "friend (benefactor) of HUMANITY"; a person who warmly loves others, treating them with the respect (benevolence) that befits each one being created in the image of God. 5363 /philanthrōpía ("a benefactor") actively shares kindness (what is needed) with others.
The deterministic claim that God “hates” most of humanity collapses once we recognize that Hebrew idiom uses love and hate to express covenantal preference rather than emotional hostility, as seen in Genesis 29:31 where śənū’āh (“hated”) clearly means “less loved.”
Scripture explicitly forbids judging children for ancestral sin (Deut 24:16; Ezek 18:20), which dismantles Augustine’s inherited‑guilt model and the Reformers’ imputed‑Adam framework.
Paul affirms that our enmity toward God arose from our own chosen behavior (Titus 3:3), not genetic descent from Adam, and then declares that salvation appeared because of God’s χρηστότης (active, benevolent kindness) and His philanthrōpía—literally “love for mankind,” not love for a predestined subset.
This means God’s redemptive posture is universally benevolent, wooing humanity rather than coercing a select few, and Romans 9’s Jacob–Esau language must be read as covenantal history rather than evidence of divine hostility toward the human race.
Can you answer a simple question regarding your cooperation with our Lord under grace?
Do you pray everyday without ceasing?
The “divine nature” is God’s eternal, unchanging moral essence — the reality of what God is in Himself, not what He occasionally does. Scripture describes it as His inherent holiness, goodness, truth, love, life, righteousness, and faithfulness, the qualities that cannot be altered, corrupted, or contradicted. When Paul speaks of God’s “divine nature” (Romans 1:20), he means the essential being that cannot lie (Titus 1:2), cannot be tempted by evil (James 1:13), does not change (Malachi 3:6), and cannot deny Himself (2 Tim 2:13). It is the nature fully revealed in Christ, “the exact imprint of His nature” (Heb 1:3), and the moral likeness believers “participate in” through the Spirit (2 Peter 1:4). In short, the divine nature is God’s immutable moral perfection — the essence that makes God God.
The divine nature that man partakes in is not the fulness of the essence of God. There are aspects of the nature of God we share in, often called the communicable attributes of God. For us to receive the essence of God would be to make us as God Himself. The statement concerning the divine nature was made in reference to those in Christ becoming partakers of the divine nature.
