What does an unregenerate heart lack that keeps a person from coming to faith?

[John Bauer]

Adam's lone law of God was written for everyone who lives, atheist and all.

Huh? What is this lone law of God?

 

[Ladodgers6]

But his people did not receive him..

The elect will.

faith is a gift from God.

Exactly, God provides everything we need. He is the One who resurrects the dead.

 

[Eternally-Grateful]

The elect will.

His people were an elect people chosen by God for a purpose.

Gods will will be done even with them

Exactly, God provides everything we need. He is the One who resurrects the dead.

Yes. It is all of him. Praise God

 

[Josheb]

Yes...

How are you determining who a Verse is Written to? The Ten Commandments are Written to Some, and to All; on every heart...

Scripture. Scripture is how I determine to whom a verse was written.

But a great deal of attention is necessary to what just happened because Post #135 because it changes what I posted. I said "about," not "to."

!!!ABOUT!!!​

Pay attention! Changing the "about" to a "to" is also what @Dave did in an earlier thread and the bait and switch was corrected but the "about" still went ignored. That is the reason the word about is italicized and underlined. The emphasis is deliberate so the word will be noted and not confused with any other owrd.

Yes...

How are you determining who a Verse is Written to? The Ten Commandments are Written to Some, and to All; on every heart...

The book of Romans was written to "to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints." That is what the letter explicitly states. There is no reason to speculate. No inferences are needed. The first letter to Corinth was written to, "To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours." This is explicitly stated in the second verse of the letter. The letter to the church in Galatia was written to, "To the churches of Galatia: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever."

Paul explicitly identifies those to whom he is writing. All the epistolary authors did. I Paul's case it is not difficult to identify the intended audience because he is overtly explicit about it at the introduction.


Most passages in the Bible have some form of audience identifier. One of the many mistakes @Dave has made in ALL his recent threads is fail to correctly identify the audience. The result is eisegetic, not exegetic. In one post I went through an entire chapter from which two or three verses had been selected, selectively removing them from their explicitly stated context and I should how and where Paul identified about whom he was writing.

Totally ignored. The crickets went to sleep.

 

[Josheb]

Are you saying the Bible is written for unbelievers?

Don't permit the switch. The word "about" is not the word "to."

 

[ReverendRV]

Scripture. Scripture is how I determine to whom a verse was written.

But a great deal of attention is necessary to what just happened because Post #135 because it changes what I posted. I said "about," not "to."

!!!ABOUT!!!​

Pay attention! Changing the "about" to a "to" is also what @Dave did in an earlier thread and the bait and switch was corrected but the "about" still went ignored. That is the reason the word about is italicized and underlined. The emphasis is deliberate so the word will be noted and not confused with any other owrd.

The book of Romans was written to "to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints." That is what the letter explicitly states. There is no reason to speculate. No inferences are needed. The first letter to Corinth was written to, "To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours." This is explicitly stated in the second verse of the letter. The letter to the church in Galatia was written to, "To the churches of Galatia: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever."

Paul explicitly identifies those to whom he is writing. All the epistolary authors did. I Paul's case it is not difficult to identify the intended audience because he is overtly explicit about it at the introduction.


Most passages in the Bible have some form of audience identifier. One of the many mistakes @Dave has made in ALL his recent threads is fail to correctly identify the audience. The result is eisegetic, not exegetic. In one post I went through an entire chapter from which two or three verses had been selected, selectively removing them from their explicitly stated context and I should how and where Paul identified about whom he was writing.

Totally ignored. The crickets went to sleep.

Sorry Brother, I'm confused; probably my fault. I'll have to read it again and listen to your further discussion with @Dave ...

I answered 'Yes', so I agree with the 'about'. I asked a new question about who 'to'...

 

[Ladodgers6]

His people were an elect people chosen by God for a purpose.

What's the purpose?

Gods will will be done even with them

Yes. It is all of him. Praise God

God redeems all those He gave to the Son to save.

 

[Ladodgers6]

Hey ladodgersfan

No, I'm not Arminian. To answer your question. This is how I understand it. And I'll elaborate for anyone who cares to try to understand what it is that they are arguing against.

God alone is good. God cannot deny Himself. He cannot create man as He is. He did the next best thing. He created man dependent on Him. Created by design to live through Him. I like to think of us as a lamp. We were created to be plugged into Him. Everything bit of light (good) that comes from us is sourced in Him. When sin entered the picture, God could not be joined to that which is unholy, so He had to separate Himself from us. Separated, or, unplugged, if you will, man is left with no source of good (by righteous standards), and slowly deteriorating. Physical death entered the scene. Adam and Eve would have never experienced physical death had they never sinned. Some of the long term effects of the physical part started slowly. In the beginning man lived for about 900 years. That slowly deteriorated to what we have today. The physical effects can also be seen in the Law added by Moses, to curb the effects of birth defects from from mistakes in the DNA. Death also entered the scene spiritually. Now man is born unplugged from God. Did the spiritual side of the fall have the same long term effects? I can't see anything like that long term, that is, what we call man being as bad as he can be. Maybe smaller contexts like Sodom and Gomorrah. Heck, look at the U.S. today. Our enemies are injecting sin into this country to destroy it. But, back to the topic at hand. I do see that spiritual slide in the life of an individual. It's a gradual slide that progresses to the end of, what we would call, that person being as bad as he could be. All the while understanding that anything that he does, by righteous standards, is not good. It's tainted by sin somewhere, probably in the motives.

So, as you know, God had a plan to save us while at the same time not compromising who He is, since He cannot deny Himself. This is where Jesus enters the Picture. The second Adam. Through Him, as a result of being in Him, we have peace with the Father and are plugged back in and can then begin to become what God already reckons us to be, legally, in Christ. So, when we are placed into Him, we are given life. With Him (indwelling of the Holy Spirit), we have life. Without Him (No indwelling of the Holy Spirit), we don't have life. The Scripture speaking of faith as being a gift, could just as easily be argued, and I believe it's even a better argument, as speaking from the indwelling forward, after initial faith and conversion. And then as Paul argued in Galatians, this begins our being perfected as a result of that initial faith. That's were life happens, that were we begin to be sanctified through faith, becoming what God already reckons us to be in Christ. What I do know is there is a faith before the indwelling, and the indwelling is necessary, among other things, to be born again.

Thanks for providing in detail your view of sin and the fall. I have questions for you before I retort. I'll do this in sections to make it easier for both of us. Above you talk about the relationship God had with Adam. God was pleased with all that he made including Adam.

But you do not state how sin entered the picture. Can you explain this for me? Why does sin cause alienation from God?

You state you're not an Arminian but you do have synergistic theology, you do know that right?

How is one legally in Christ? Can you expound on Scripture speaking of Faith as being a gift? If Faith is a gift then that obviously means that sinners do not possess this ability by oneself. Which I do hold to. Because as alienated sinners who sin against the almighty God. Also have a fallen disposition against God. Do you know what that is?

You speak of two different kinds of Faith. Never heard of that, but please show me in scripture where I can find this.

Finally, I believe that taught in Scripture that one has to be born again to be able to see, hear and believe and trust in God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Your last statement here strongly suggests that fallen man does possess the ability to save himself apart from Grace. If this is so, then it is no longer Grace, but some inherent goodness in man that is the root cause, instead of God and his deep rich mercy.​

 

[Josheb]

Sorry Brother, I'm confused; probably my fault. I'll have to read it again and listen to your further discussion with @Dave ...

I answered 'Yes', so I agree with the 'about'. I asked a new question about who 'to'...

And a perusal of @Dave's last few ops on faith preceding regeneration will inform the avoidance that's occurred repeatedly.

One of the threads couches its position in Romans 10:9-10.

Romans 10:9-10
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

That is a particularly horrible pair of verse upon which to base faith-precede-regeneration because there are multiple contexts that preclude such an interpretation. MULTIPLE!!! All of them ignored in the original assertion of those two verses as a "Reformed independent" view of faith precede regeneration.

1. The first mistake was to remove those two verses from their surrounding text and treat them as if they stand alone. Exegetically, that is always completely inappropriate (yet it is a very common practice in synergist apologetics).
2. Working outwardly from those two verses the first thing that should be noted is Paul's use of the word, "you". Who is that "you"? To whom is Paul referring? Well..... Paul himself answers that question at the beginning of the exposition. Right there in the first verse of the chapter he explicitly states, "Brethren, my heart's desire....." The "you," in verse 9 and 10 is the brethren, NOT some unidentified non-believing unregenerate. That's @Dave's second mistake.
3. Again, working outward, we find the chapter is the middle chapter in a three-chapter-long narrative on the disposition of Israel. It is NOT an exposition on how the unsaved, unregenerate get saved from sin. Right in the middle of chapter 10 Paul appeals to Moses and the prophet Isaiah (and, by extensions a few of the other prophets through whom God spoke in the OT declaring the exact same sentiments). So what? What relevance are the OT references? Well, first and foremost ALL those OT texts were spoken to and spoken about a covenant people. Not a single word of any of those OT texts was spoken by God to the unregenerate non-believer anywhere. I even posted an op on the always-pre-existing context(s) to aid in the exegesis HERE.
4. Continuing to work outward from both the immediate Romans 9-11 text and the OT text of Moses and Isaiah, Paul has plainly stated two seemingly contradictory positions: 1) Not all Israel is Israel and 2) all Israel will be saved. When we examine the whole of scripture we find the word "Israel" means "those in whom God perseveres." Paul has explicitly stated it is NOT a function how a person wills, how a person works, nor is it a function of bloodline, genetics, or geo-political nation-state status. Paul has explicitly precluded and excluded all three interpretations. @Dave failed to properly note and apply ALL those facts AND ignored the correction requestion those facts be applied correctly.
5. Returning to the Romans 10 text, We also find that Paul is writing about eschatology, not soteriology. His audience is the saints, those who are already saved, and already regenerate, and already gifted grace, mercy, and faith. Everything Paul is writing about in chapters 9 through 11 is about events he believes will soon happen (it does not matter what eschatology we hold..... Paul is clearly expecting something to happen and he is teaching his readers how to manage that same expectation. If the already-saved-and-regenerate saint will have faith, then he (or she) will be saved from the pending travails. We can argue - by extension - that same principle applies to Israel..... as long as we hold true to the definition of "Israel" Paul is using. As long as those in whom God is prevailing have faith they will be saved; they will survive. Everyone else is not going to be saved. They are going to die. The Romans 9-11 text is eschatological, not soteriological.*
6. Working outward from verses 9 and 10 of chapter 10 we find the whole reason Paul even broached the subject of Israel was because of the prior exposition of chapters 3 through 8. Paul moved from the victory of Christ, the superiority of the law of the Spirit, and the impossibility of those in Christ ever being separated from the love of God... to his sorrow for his kinsman. In other words, The Romans 3-8 exposition is another context for what Paul then writes about the Israel that is Israel, the descendants of Abraham that are God's people of promise.
7. When we read Paul's entire epistolary we find the people of promise is a Christological condition. Paul makes this especially clear in Galatians when he explicitly states the promises made to Abraham were made to Jesus, too. Jesus, not Israel, is the promised seed. Abraham had many seeds, but Jesus is the one God promised. Jesus is the promised seed. That makes the covenant Christological, not psychological or biological. @Dave failed to consider that in his use of Romans 10-9-10 and continued to do so even after this context was noted.
8. Working still further outward in the hermeneutical spiral, we examine the author, his audience, and his purpose in writing the epistle. For the sake of space I'll skip further elaboration because I have already covered much of that terrain. The most salient point for this current conversation is that the letter to the Romans was written to the saints in Rome. It was not written to the saints in Corinth or Ephesus or Galatia. The letter to the saints in Rome was not written specifically to address concerns going on in Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, or Jerusalem. It was written first and foremost to address Rome's saints' concerns. Can its contents be applied elsewhere? YES! We know the apostles' letters were circulated. The saints in one locale learned what Paul had taught the saints in other locales. Continuity of doctrine, unity of the faith, and maturity in Christ was established and built in this way. We know this because Peter commented in his second epistle about one of the difficulties and divisions that was occurring in the first century because of the distribution of Paul's writing and Peter affirmed Paul's words, comparing them to "the other scriptures." The ability to generalize the Romans text to any locale, to any group of saints, at any era, does not preclude the fact the letter was written specifically to the saints in Rome living in Rome around 58 AD (not 2025 AD).

That is only a sampling of what a proper exegesis would establish. I could examine what Paul wrote in his earlier letter because those are what he had already established prior to writing the Romans epistle. I could bring to bear what Luke reported in Acts regarding the chronology and historicity of where Paul was, what he was doing, and what the culture was doing in response. I could bring to bear what the other apostles wrote correlating to and affirming Paul's words. I could examine what Jesus said to prove the variety of Paul's words through the gospels (which were written after Paul's Romans epistle). I could make note every single OT reference used by Paul in his Romans 9-11 exposition, in the chapters leading up to that exposition, and examine every single one of those OT references in their hermeneutical spiral.

None of that happened in any of the recent ops "challenging" others' views.

And the few contexts that were broached were ignored even after being asked to consider them.

I am not alone in making this observation (although the various respondents to Dave's ops have taken different approaches to highlighting the exact same deficit: a lack of sound exegesis. It all boils down to a single, simply - very simple - point: It is completely inappropriate to take verses written about saved and regenerate believers and apply them to unsaved, unregenerate non-believers. It is completely inappropriate to take verses written to people and about people already living in a monergistically established Christological covenant and apply those verses to anyone who does not have that covenant relationship!


When the text allows for a verse to be applied in a generalized manner to the pre-saved person the text itself will provide that permission. The text itself will empower such an interpretation. Outside of those provisions..... everything in the epistolary was written to the saints about the saints and should be read accordingly. When that happens synergism and any other thought of faith preceding regeneration is precluded.

There is a pile of presuppositional mistakes made in @Dave's ops. RIGHT NOW the one, single, solitary inquiry seeking an answer is, "Is it appropriate to take verses written ABOUT the already-saved, the already-regenerate believer, and apply them to the unsaved, unregenerate, non-believer?" Regenerate people living alive in God's salvific Christological covenant are ontologically different people. It should not be a difficult question to answer. The question can be answered with a single word, and we can then move on to the next question, Let's see if the question is answered correctly and the conversation is moved forward, or not.







* Eschatology and soteriology often overlap in scripture and, allegorically speaking, all temporal salvation can be understood as an allegory on salvation from sin. If the covenant people of God's city of peace will humble themselves, repent, and return to the obedience prescribed to them, empowered within them, then they will be spare the wrath of God He metes out through the Assyrians or the Babylonians, or the Romans, or whomever God to uses in this episode or that episode. They will be spared from God's judgement, the judgment He metes out using a pagan army, or a pagan king (upon who He almost always also metes out judgment when He is done using them). If, on the other hand, the people living within an already-existing monergistically-initiated covenant God has already empowered do humble, repent, and obey in the power of God - because the flesh avails nothing - then they will be saved. The temporal reflects the eternal. BUT it is always necessary to correctly exegete the eschatological from the soteriological. Many of the OT prophecies are couched in the context of "the latter days," or when the anointed one of God comes. It is completely inappropriate to ignore those timestamps.
.

 

[Arial]

Romans 10:9-10
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

That is a particularly horrible pair of verse upon which to base faith-precede-regeneration because there are multiple contexts that preclude such an interpretation. MULTIPLE!!! All of them ignored in the original assertion of those two verses as a "Reformed independent" view of faith precede regeneration.

I realize this is going slightly astray of the conversation you are having with @ReverendRV and with @Dave, but I wanted to point out something that I zeroed in on when I was reading that passage, and within its full context, this morning. It does however go to the argument that faith precedes regeneration, that has been on going in this thread and in a couple of others where posters insist that faith comes before regeneration. (Both parties doing this, if I am not mistaken, use this isolated passage as proof of their view being the scriptural view.

Even in isolation it is stating exactly the opposite. It isn't from faith that one confesses, or from our minds that one believes-- but from the heart one believes and then with the mouth confesses. How is a heart turned away from God and at enmity with him then able to believe (have faith)? Are our minds able to change our hearts? (As one person has said, because of the evidence.)

That would undermine the entire Gospel by making it possible for man to save himself, either by his own reasoning and choices; or if grace is acknowledged to be necessary in order to believe, God only making it possible for man to do so, and that is as far as grace goes, and helping him to arrive at salvation himself. It would make salvation synergistic when his word declares that only God can save, and that Jesus (alone) saves to the uttermost those he died for.

Back to Romans 10:9-10. This belief is from the heart. And again the Bible shines a spotlight on who changes a heart, who alone can change a heart. "I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and write my laws on it." "Unless one is born again, born of the Spirit, no one can see or enter the kingdom of God." "Those who are born from above, not of flesh, or blood, or the will of man, but the will of God he gives the right to be children of God." (Scriptures paraphrased.)

 

[Josheb]

Back to Romans 10:9-10. This belief is from the heart. And again the Bible shines a spotlight on who changes a heart, who alone can change a heart. "I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and write my laws on it." "Unless one is born again, born of the Spirit, no one can see or enter the kingdom of God." "Those who are born from above, not of flesh, or blood, or the will of man, but the will of God he gives the right to be children of God." (Scriptures paraphrased.)

Yep. The belief of Romans 10:9-10 is the belief of the brethren, the saint and NOT that of the unsaved, unregenerate non-believer. And the John 1 text is just one of the many verses that explicitly assigns causality to God and not the sinful flesh of the unregenerate. There's a huge pile of whole scripture that's been neglected in these ops.

And now that I have been asked to repeat already posted inquiries (and comments) I've deliberately chosen one of the most basic, fundamental, foundational matters: Is it appropriate to ignore the contexts in which a verse is written?

Is it appropriate
to take verses written about the already saved and already regenerate believer,
the saint,
and apply them to unsaved, unregenerate non-believers?​

I say no. It is never appropriate to do so and all such occasions where that occurs should be corrected and the practice extinguished. Let's see what @Dave says (or if the question will be answered at all).

 

[brightfame52]

Sure, why not?

To say otherwise will be saying the Bible is written only for the Unconditional Elect. Though we were Unbelievers before we were Saved, we were Unconditionally Elected for Salvation by God before we Believed. Adam's Lone Law of God was written for everyone who lives; Atheist and All. It's why we're Condemned Already...

All scripture is written to the regenerate, they the only ones having the Spirit to spiritually discern the things of the Spirit of God. Its writtent to bring the regenerate elect to believe and build them up in the faith Jn 20:31

But these are written, that ye [The Sheep]might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

1 Jn 5:13

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

Remember Christ was only to give some eternal life given Him by the Father Jn 17:2

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

 

[Carbon]

Don't permit the switch. The word "about" is not the word "to."

What?

 

[Josheb]

Post #134 asks...

Let's start with the most basic: Do you recognize that taking verses written about the saved and regenerate believer and applying them to the unsaved unregenerate non-believer is inappropriate?

The fact the epistolary was written to the saints mostly about the saints has been observed (and ignored) in all of @Dave's recent threads. I am highlighting the "about," not the "to." There is already an explicit acknowledgment of the "to," but the "about" is being neglected (or willfully ignored). @ReverendRV responded to Post 134 with,

​

Yes...

​

How are you determining who a Verse is Written to? The Ten Commandments are Written to Some, and to All; on every heart...​

​

It is a worthy question, but it has no bearing on the question asked in Post 134 and the "to whom was the verse written," is not a point in dispute. @Dave has already acknowledged the epistle - and the verses he's employed from the epistolary - was written to those who are all already saved, regenerate and believing. What is not being addressed is the about; the fact the verses taken from the epistolary to support the position faith-precedes-regeneration are about the already saved and regenerate believer, not just to the already saved regenerate believer.​

​

to AND about​

​

Identify the original audience is usually very easy to do. Identifying who the application of the text is about sometimes takes more effort than merely identifying the audience or readership. Paul was always writing to the saints but sometimes he wrote to them about the unsaved, unregenerate, non-believers who exist outside a Christological covenant with God. Those portions of the epistolary are few.​

​

The same set of principles apply in the gospels. Sometimes Jesus was speaking to different audiences. Sometimes he was speaking about different groups of people regardless to whom he was speaking. Sometimes he spoke to the twelve about the twelve. Sometimes he spoke to the twelve about his disciples (which was a much larger group of followers). Sometimes he spoke to the twelve about those who weren't disciples but were Jewish. On a few very rare occasions, he spoke to the twelve about non-disciples who were also not Jews. Proper exegesis of the gospel texts should always start with the author, the author's original intent, and the identification of the audiences he used to serve that purpose. The purpose of Matthew's gospel is to highlight a much different aspect of the gospel than John's (or Mark's or Luke's). There are reasons the audiences are identified. The regenerate are different from the unregenerate. A Sadducee may be different than a Pharisee. A Jew is different from a Samaritan, and both are different than a Roman.​

​

@ReverendRV asked me about the "to," not the "about". Great question but that is not what I am asking @Dave. I am asking Dave about the "about."​

​

​

Is it appropriate
to take verses written about the already saved and already regenerate believer,
the saint,
and apply them to unsaved, unregenerate non-believers?​

​

​

​

If the answer is "Yes," then we need to help @Dave (and any other poster who agrees with the "yes," how and why that is incorrect. If the answer is "No," then several positions asserted in these recent threads have to be corrected, the method used has to be discontinued, and the proper use of scripture has to replace the mistaken methodology that begets the faith-precedes-regeneration position.​

​

Or @Dave has to prove his position using sound, proper exegesis that never takes verses written about the saints and applies them to the unsaved unregenerate.​

​

Either way, we're going to start with a few of the basics. It looks like he's been out of the forum since Friday before I posted Post #134, So I'm being patient until he returns.​

​

​

That make sense now?​