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utunumsint
Guest
Interesting answers Sanduski and Linkowski. I need to study up more on this subject.
Thanks again,
Ut
Thanks again,
Ut
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utunumsint
Guest
I agree that this is a profound mystery, and that it cannot be solved in a satisfactory way. Paul really doesn’t give an answer to the problem either. He just says, “who are you to question God?” which in my opinion, is not a copout. It is just a fact. We are not God. We are not omniscient and omnipotent.
But that word…predetermined or predestined really applies to God’s knowledge and power only. Since God is outside of time, all time, past, present, and future are one to him. When he created the world, he created it all at once. We are living in it in time. So in a sense, every free action we do, is known and caused by God, without diminishing the freedom of our actions. So Pharaoh cannot really say, God made me do it, because God’s causality is really on a level we cannot approach or fathom.
However, we who live in time and space, must relate to God in time and space. We cannot relate to the wold in the way God does to us. So predestination, for human beings, is irrelevant, unless you can know ahead of time that you are one of the elect.
So the question is, how can you know, infallibly, that you are one of the elect?
Ut
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Linkowski
Guest
Someone who had a kind of outward righteousness but has not yet submitted to the righteousness of God in salvation, yes. Especially if they know a great deal about the gospel…have been to church for years…and they fall away. Those people usually turn into a sinful wreck…“go and sin no more lest a worse thing come to you”. The more involved they get, the worse they are after they fall away. The ones who never do anything…they usually stay in church, do nothing, and become more and more numb to the gospel call to the point of becoming indifferent. They all did not hear properly…
Luke 8:18 “So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.”
They merely “tasted” the gifts and were enlightened and had intellectual knowledge.
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Linkowski
Guest
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
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Linkowski
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We have passages like this…
1 John 2:2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
1 Timothy 2:6 KJV 6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
But then we have…
John 10:11 KJV 11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
John 10:15 KJV 15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
His death was sufficient for all…efficient for some (the sheep).
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NotWorthy
Guest
I think Sandy and I were talking about this in the context of Scripture.
Does Scripture ever relate that God hardened someone’s heart, who had up til that moment been considered righteous? I’m still scratching my memory banks (and no, I don’t sit on my memory banks, you smart-alecks!) trying to find an example.
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onenow1
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Quote=OneNow1 In my comment I meant to say just the elect .
"
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:3-4).
“We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed [literally: “justified”] from sin” (Rom. 6:7-8).
“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
“Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).
“You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23).
“*f we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
These verses tell me,we indeed choose to follow Christ.
And this verse only makes sese if all can be saved:
Luke. 16: 15, And he said to them go out into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to all creation.
Comment: Sounds like we are all the elect, with a choice.
Peace, OneNow1
Have a nice day !*
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sandusky
Guest
There aren’t any listed in the scripture. In the NT, some references to hardening are quoted from the OT; some are statements about people having hard hearts; some questions, “is your heart hard,” and some admonitions “do not harden your heart.”
I don’t think we’re reading more into than there is. God specifically states the reasons for hardening:Exodus 9:16
“But, indeed, for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth.
Exodus 14:4
“Thus I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
Exodus 14:17
“As for Me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen.
Romans 9:17
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.”Note the reasons for God’s hardening. God endured Pharaoh’s insolent resistance (it took time for Pharaoh to let Israel go), but ultimately displayed His wrath on Pharoah and his army and destroyed them—no mercy.
In Romans 9, Paul says God mercies whom He will, and hardens whom He will, and that God, as creator—the potter—has the right to make vessels of wrath, and vessels of mercy, and to do with them as He pleases. Notice also, that the vessels of wrath, and mercy, are from the same lump—there is nothing organically, or intrinsically different between the vessels from the lump. The difference between them—wrath, and mercy—is determined by the Potter.
Paul continues:Romans 9:22-23
If, and God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,This is what God did with Pharaoh—a vessel of wrath prepared for destruction—He demonstrated His wrath; made His power known; endured him with much patience. He did this to make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy prepared beforehand—Israel.
Paul says God is now doing to Israel, what He did to Pharaoh, to make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy prepared beforehand—the gentile Church (vv24-26).
As he continues, he assures Israel, and the Gentiles, that Israel is not completely forsaken, but that when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (Lk 21:24; Rom 11:25), Israel will be “grafted back in” (Rom 11). (This is why I’m a premillenialist).
In this Romans 9 passage, we see as well, and we see again, the order of things concerning God’s dealings with history, and men—the Potter, and the clay.
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utunumsint
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Couldn’t it be argued that Paul is not talking about individuals here, but the hardening of Israel, and the softening of the gentile hearts? So Romans 9 is about Israel as a whole and the gentiles as a whole, but not about individuals? I mean, there were still many Jews who did convert, and many Gentiles who did not…
My question is, are we over emphasizing Romans 9 by not keeping it in context? This question of the Jews versus the Gentiles would have been a important one for the Christians in Rome where there were many Jews. You don’t find Paul talking about these things in Corinth where they were mainly Gentiles.
Ut
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utunumsint
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Aren’t these believers he is talking to? Don’t these quotes presume an effective free will? Don’t they also presume that something can be lost (e.g. election, or salvation, or justification)?
Ut
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sandusky
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Yes, it is about conversion, repentance, justification, regeneration.
You are leaving out a very important part of that verse:John 6:44
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; ***and I will raise him up on the last day.***The drawing, and giving of the coming includes the raising up of the coming on the last day by the Lord—it is His responsibility (cf Jn 6:39).
Can you give scriptural support this?
Where does this assumption that election is a “free ride” come from?
The “ride” is not free; the cost of the ride was high, and it was paid by God Himself:Acts 20:28
“Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
The work of conformity to the will of God, and to the image of the Son, is the work of the Spirit:2 Corinthians 3:18
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
**are BEING [a present, passive] transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
Philippians 1:6 (NASB95)
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
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Michael_Howard
Guest
Absolelutely, no one seems to be concerned with the full context of chapters 9-11, I think you are absolelutely right:thumbsup:
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sandusky
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Michael Howard:
Yes, re-read what I said:
I continually point this out to Catholics who attempt to say that Romans 11 says an individual can lose his salvation when the context of Romans 11 is the Jews, and the Gentiles church. Paul begins in Chapter one speaking of “the Jew first, and then the Gentile,” and chapter two, “the Jew first, and then the Gentile,” and so on, and so on.
That said, in Rom 9, individual salvation is in view, with the election of Jacob over Esau (v13), and the use of the singular verb for running in v16, and the use of masculine, singular pronouns—whom—in vv15, 18, and the hardening, and destruction of the singular Pharaoh, and then moving into the national mercy extended to Israel, and into the national hardening of Israel, and the mercy extended to Gentiles.John 5:24
“Truly, truly, I say to you, HE who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Galatians 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, **who loved me and gave Himself up FOR ME.There are other verses, but these suffice to make the point that NT salvation is exclusively individual, and intensely personal.
Israel was God’s elect nationally, and within Israel were those elect to eternal life, but OT salvation mainly had to with the deliverance of Israel from her national enemies; in the NT salvation, there is no elect nation; Gentiles are not a nation, but non-Jews from all nations; salvation in the NT is individual.
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utunumsint
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I think there are many passages, especially in Paul, where he talks about the corporate fate of his nation. This would be an intensely important and personal issue for Paul. I don’t debate that salvation is a personal matter, but it can also be seen on a corporate level. I mean, God talks to the nations and individual nations all the time in the prophets.
I don’t know… I think it could be said that Jacob (wasn’t he called Israel by God?) and Pharaoh are prophetic models for the corporate fate of Israel and the Gentiles?
I have to go…I have a two year old who wants my attention.
Happy fathers day to all fathers!
Ut
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tabcom
Guest
**Yes, Indeed.
The ‘all’ does not mean every man, woman, child that ever lived.
I remember when I first tried to get a hold of this concept I used a pizza as a metephor. All of the pizza is cut into individual slices. The slices have jewish and gentile toppings on top of the crust (bread). Within the gentile slices, there are red, yellow, white, black toppings. The jewish slices have different topping representing the 12 tribes of Israel. God has not finished adding the toppings to the pizza. He has an exact number of toppings to add, until it is complete. **
**
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.
The word love in this verse does not mean have an affection for.
It is agapao (ag-ap-ah’-o). It is conditional.
Joh 14:15
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
same word – agapao
also . . .
2 John 6
And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.
**
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sandusky
Guest
Why the difficulty with individual salvation?I think there are many passages, especially in Paul, where he talks about the corporate fate of his nation. This would be an intensely important and personal issue for Paul. I don’t debate that salvation is a personal matter, but it can also be seen on a corporate level. I mean, God talks to the nations and individual nations all the time in the prophets.
I don’t know… I think it could be said that Jacob (wasn’t he called Israel by God?) and Pharaoh are prophetic models for the corporate fate of Israel and the Gentiles?
I have to go…I have a two year old who wants my attention.
Happy fathers day to all fathers!
Ut
You have a two-year-old child; I assume your child is baptized; when the priest baptized your child, did he baptize your child as a nation, or did he baptize your child as an individual?
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utunumsint
Guest
I am talking about the context for Romans 9. That’s all. It doesn’t mention baptism at all. I have no difficulty with individual salvation.
What I have a problem with is predestination to damnation and irresistible grace. Both of these concepts seem to negate human free will. I also find it hard to swallow that my son might be predestined to hell by God. I find it easier to swallow that God might predestine Israel as a nation towards the rejection of the Gospel for the sake of the Gentiles. What does vessels of wrath mean anyway? Does it necessarily mean individual hell and damnation, or maybe it means the destruction of the temple and the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Ut
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utunumsint
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Thanks for this Tabcom. I like this metaphor.
Ut
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tabcom
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:tiphat:
**Predestined is associated with the believer. Not with the vessels of wrath.
Romans 9:22 – What if God willing to show his wrath, and make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath afore prepared unto glory.
- vessels - Greek: Skeuos (skyoo’-os) - Paul is using it figuratively like a piece of pottery.
- anger, the natural disposition, temper, character
- movement or agitation of the soul, impulse, desire, any violent emotion, but esp. anger
- anger, wrath, indignation
- fitted - Greek: katartizo- to complete thoroughly; fit; frame; arrange; prepare
Col 3:8
But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Jas 1:19
This you know , my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;
Jas 1:19
This you know , my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;
To name a few.
**
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tabcom
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