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"Free Will" vs. Grace, part 5

A choice we make? Or a gift He gives?
(1) Does man choose to accept or receive God's gift of grace?
... A more proper question would be: can a man choose to accept or receive God's gift of grace? To that the answer is yes. In fact the first sermon preached after the resurrection indicate exactly that. Peter gives a sermon that takes the listeners through the life death and resurrection of Christ and a large amount of those who heard the story believed.
Scripture states that faith itself -- salvific belief -- bes a gift from God, not the work of man:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. ~Ephesians 2:8-9

Romans 10 takes up the question as to why some believe and some do not. It invokes a certain causal chain of precipitators which lead to faith, none of which mention human choice or "free will":
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ~Romans 10:17.
Moriah highly recommends reading the entire chapter to get the full meaning and impact of this statement, as the entire chapter deals with God's "chain of causality" in the soteriological process. For example:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! ~ Romans 10:13-15

Not one link in this chain points to the will of the individual nor his/her "choice" concerning anything. Instead, each link leads back further and further into utter helpless dependence upon the will of God Himself to move and intervene, clear on back to Him selecting and sending one to bring the good news.

Bottom line gets down to pride and arrogance. Only pride and arrogance prevent an individual from seeing his/her desperate, dire need of God and absolute helplessness to do anything to redeem himself or herself -- assuming of course a genuine awareness of sin has been bestowed by the Holy Spirit. Without this genuine awareness of the exceeding depths of filth and corruption resident in our mortal flesh and its power apart from God's intervention to wholly and utterly deceive, program, own, enslave, and consume us (with or without demonic enhancements), no one can even begin to appreciate how desperate his condition or how great his need of God.

For those well aware of this, and humbled by it into the dust, the news that salvation bes completely and entirely the work of a loving, intervening, delivering God, and completed in every respect in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, bes exceeding good news indeed. For those unaware, or refusing to have their pride and arrogance humbled by it, it bes a stumbling stone and a rock of offense, even as it bes written in 1 Peter 2:1-10 and Galatians 5:6-11. The latter reference mentions the "offense of the cross" which for too many has become falsely equated with the notion of someone sneaking in the "bad news" into the Good News: namely, now that you have been shown God's love, you'd better obey OR ELSE. That notion and that attitude bes an absolute vicious lie from the pits of hell and completely opposite of the true and original and real "offense of the cross" which bes the mercy of Christ and the LIBERTY to which salvation brings us, OUT from under the yoke of bondage to rules and laws and into the joyful dynamic of a relationship of LOVE.

(to be continued in the next post)

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