Josheb
Reformed Non-denominational
- Joined
- May 19, 2023
- Messages
- 4,480
- Reaction score
- 1,952
- Points
- 113
- Location
- VA, south of DC
- Faith
- Yes
- Marital status
- Married with adult children
- Politics
- Conservative
It does negate the establishing of human action of believing prior to regeneration!.........And the fact that a condition (believing) is before the salvation in Acts 16:31 in no way changes anything in Eph 2:8. Your critique of my position is a non-sequitur; the God-centered view of faith being a gift and being ultimately sourced in God in no way changes the fact that faith is a condition prior to salvation in Acts 16:31; both are true..........................
Yes, faith is not of ourselves. This is a genitive of source. The ultimate sourcing of the faith that people excercise is from God. Again, the ultimate source is God. This does not negate the human action of believing; rather, the ultimate sourcing establishes the human action of believing.
It negates it for three reasons. The first has to do with the nature of God versus the nature of the one being saved. The blunt fact is salvation is God's and God's alone and sinfully dead and enslaved unregenerate humans can do nothing with faith even it's given. The entire Bible is a record of people knowing of God's existence (not merely speculating with confidence or intellectually assenting to His existence, but knowing He exists and still acting faithlessly. The second is the fact it is not of ourselves. The third is that what you're actually asserting is salvation through faithfulness, not salvation through faith. At some point the faith has to operationalized to demonstrate or prove the existence of faith. You're arguing that demonstration can be performed prior to regeneration. If it is prior to regeneration then it is a work of the flesh, a work of sinful flesh, NOT a work of the Spirit. The essence of the argument is God gifted a gift (faith), and then the dead-in-sin sinfully-enslaved sinner used that gift for his own interests, in his own might (of himself) to prove to God s/he believes so that salvation by grace may occur - oh, wait, that is not "may" occur, but must occur. That last part always stands in odd juxtaposition to those synergists who say, "God does not coerce salvation," because they are implicitly saying the sinner can coerce God into saving the sinner through the sinner's fleshly act of faithful confession to a gifted faith.
God had previously spoken of this many times, most notably in Isaiah.
Isaiah 64:2-7
As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil— To make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; And shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities.
This idea God gives faith and then the still sinfully dead and enslaved sinner uses his flesh to assert the gifted faith in a righteous manner bluntly contradicts this passage in two ways. The first contradiction is the implication once the gift is given the sinner does then seek God. The second is the premise the righteous act of operationalized faith (faithfulness being the act of confession, "I believe in the name of Jesus!") is NOT still filthy rags. Because it comes from the still-dead and still-enslaved sinner who has only his flesh (not yet gifted the Spirit, according to "faith-precedes-regeneration") it is a righteous act of sinful flesh and God says those do not merit anything.
Which brings up a fourth reason . Supposedly the faith through which one is saved is a gift, and the grace by which a person is saved is a gift (and neither are of the sinner) but because the sinner is not yet regenerate those and the sinner has operationalized those gifts with his/her still-sinful flesh...... this means sinfully dead and enslaved humans can receive God's gifts and use them (or not use them) for their own purposes with only the flesh as their source of power. You've written about the power of God in this process, but the underlying, unstated, logically necessary implication is that it is the still-sinful, Spirit-vacant flesh that wields the power of these gifts.
Yes, that is correct.Yes, faith is not of ourselves.....
So too is the ultimate power to use the gift! The gift is not given the sinful flesh to be exercised by the sinful flesh in a sinful way (selfishness is sinful). The moment the protest, "But it is used in a righteous way!" the protester has argued a works-based salvation and negated his/her own synergism .The ultimate sourcing of the faith that people excercise is from God.
Yes, and the power exercising the gifts is also God.Again, the ultimate source is God.
Yes, it does. It is God who works in us to do His will and serve His purpose.This does not negate the human action of believing; rather, the ultimate sourcing establishes the human action of believing.