By what you are saying here, then, Grace (in our context, the grace of salvation) is given as a result of a precondition (in your narrative: 'obedience'). Then you contradict yourself by saying that grace is a free gift, and not earned.
Meeting the precondition on a free gift in no way earns the free gift. I gave examples from everyday life and from the Bible that proves this point.
Mark Quayle said:
You also have yet to show how it is even remotely possible for the dead to do an alive thing, such as obedience.
Those in Acts 2 to whom Peter preached to were lost, spiritually dead. Yet while dead they was willing and able to hear Peter's gospel sermon, able to understand what Peter was saying, be pricked in their hearts and obey what Peter commanded all while spriritually dead.
Mark Quayle said:
I don't remember if it is you or not, but there have been others, to whom I have tried to explain how I arrived at Reformed Theology. I do not defend it because I am entrenched in it, but because I came to it from a viewpoint resembling yours, but for one huge difference. As originally an Arminian-leaning Freewiller, I have always believed in the [Biblical' Sovereignty of God and slowly realized the many logical implications of Sovereignty, having been forced into that understanding by experiencing my utter inability, my weakness of the flesh, and by the undeniable love of Christ.
I've been a Christian, and, I believe, truly regenerated, long before I can remember, growing up a missionary kid. But I did not know Calvinism, except by caricature. It was only after I had already come to it by hard experience and many tears and LONG years of Bible study before I found out that what I had come to believe was so much like Calvinism / Reformed Theology.
Meanwhile, to your point in the verse, I repeat, we do as believers, WORK. I have never said otherwise. If we must see it as earning, even then we must work --but it is not earning, except in the sense of qualifying, as in passing a test --showing ourselves approved-- not CAUSING.
You say beleivers do WORK. Does that work earn God's free gift? No for it is a necessary precondition GOd has attached to His free gift. Without doing that necessary work the Christian would become unfruitful and be cut off. lost.
Mark Quayle said:
Here you imply again that we WORK to earn salvation, then turn around and deny it. There is, you know, a huge difference between 'condition' and 'pre-condition'. Again, "GRACE" is free --not earned. You pervert the whole Gospel with this nonsense. You sequence salvation backwards. It does not depend on anything I must do. It CAUSES what I must do.
What I have said, and the Bible supports, is that one must obey God's will in order to be saved for God has made obedience to His will a necessary precondition to recieve His gift. Again, it has not been shown by anyone from the Bible that obedience to God by anyone is said to have earned God's free gift.
The order of event as Paul puts them in Romans 6:16-18:
1) servants of righteousness
2) obey from the heart
3) then freed from sin/justified. servants of righteousness.
Paul put obeying BEFORE justification and nowhere is it EVER said one's obedience eanred that justification...EVER. The obedience is simply meeting a condition God placed upon His free gift.
Calvinism puts in backwards in trying to have one saved BEFORE one obeys. Those who are disobedient are lost and remain lost unless, until they first obey. God does not save those who disobeys Him for He will in fire take vengeance upon those who "obey not" 2 Thessalonians 1:8.
Mark Qualye said:
Again, placing belief and obedience before regeneration is 'nonsense', (to use your word). The dead in sin can do NOTHING to please God. The heart of flesh does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Yet somehow you suppose it is so, inferring from places that do not imply it, that God does some sort of work in them that sort of changes their thinking but no not changing them.
Your examples are fleshly:
BB: "go store, order--------------------------------in order------------------------------free ice cream cone
Noah built ark--------------------------------in order-------------------------------salvation of his house
Israel gathered manna----------------------in order-------------------------------free gift nutrition
Naaman dip 7 times-------------------------in order--------------------------------free gift of healing"
MQ: All these had physical hands, or otherwise the ability to obey the physical requirement. The dead in sin do not.
BB: "repent & be baptized-------------------------n order-------------------------------free gift salvation"
MQ: I suppose you get this from such places as "Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins." Take a good look at prepositions --they are funny things. Useful many ways. You assume causation, because that fits your ideology. You insist on somehow or other causing your own salvation. That is not Grace
That which I called nonsense was clearly demonstrated by those who try to have a person receive the free gift
BEFORE meeting the necessary condition. One does not receive the free ice cream cone
BEFORE meeting the necessary condition of going to the store for that truly is nonsense. Noah was not first saved from the flood that had not yet occurred
BEFORE he even built the ark. Therefore having one receive the free gfit of remission of sins
BEFORE meeting the necessary conditions of repentance and baptism is equally nonsensical as having one "magically' getting the free ice cream cone
BEFORE even going to the store and ordering. Again this is why Calvinism is wrong in trying to put the free gift of salvation
BEFORE the necessary obedience, it creates logical impossibilities.
Repent, and be baptized >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> for (eis) in order to receive the remission of sins.
Noah moved with fear, prepared an ark>>>>>>>> to (eis) the saving of his house.
Noah no more built the ark BECAUSE He was ALREADY saved from the flood no more then one repents and is baptized BECAUSE one ALREADY has remission of sins. Both are illogical to the core.
If those in Acts 2 were already saved prior to verse 38, then why does Peter tell them to "save yourselves" in verse 40? And if they were already saved prior to verse 38, saved prior to repenting and being baptized can you pinpoint the verse in Acts 2 tells us and proves to us when and why they were saved prior to verse 38?
Acts 2:41 "
Then they that gladly received his word were baptized:..." The logical implication of this is those who rejected Peter's words rejected being baptized, therefore rejecting being baptized is the same as rejecting the gospel.
in Acts 2:21 Peter quotes Joel's prophecy "
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Simple question: does one call on the name of the
IN ORDER to be saved or does one call on the name of the Lord
BECAUSE he ALREADY is saved????
Mark Quayle said:
You attempt to disembowel a strawman, here. Calvinism teaches that with God, there is no such thing as random. He chose whom he chose, not from a pool of possibles, but by predestination --logically, then he CREATED FOR THAT VERY PURPOSE each person he Elected.
Calvinism falsely says before the world began God already chose those whom would be elect. What basis did God use to choose one over another? If there was no basis then God's choosing would be totally caprcious? If you say you do not know the basis then how does one know he is of the elect or not. Calvinism has a dark gaping hole in its theology if it cannot tell me the basis whereby Calvinism can only make assumptions about things not able to give any proof.
Mark Quayle said:
Somehow you envision a supernatural being who rather than being omnipotent is only very powerful, but has granted mere Creatures the ability to make up his vacillating mind for him. Yet you fail to see how you have logically admitted to the authority of mere chance here.
Was God's mind "vacillating" in Jonah 3:10 when He repented of what he said he was going to do? Of course not, God does not have to change His mind but He obviously changes His course of action depending on whether men obey Him or not (Jeremiah 18:8-10). Nor did God cede any authority or sovereignty by repenting but was following His own predetermined course of action He alrady set in Jer, 18. God certainly will react to whay man does and change His course of action, everything certainly has not been set in sone by predetermination. So the 'mere creatures' of Nineveh, by obeying God in repenting, did bring about God to change His course of action.
Mark Quayle said:
I suppose you like the term, 'Corporate Election', as if it relinquishes one from admitting to God's particular, individual, Election. You will probably protest that you have not done so here, so tell me why you bring it up, as if it logically fits into your proofs.
There is a big difference between God forknowing a group to be saved and unconditionally foreknowing individuals to be saved for the latter makes God culapble for the lost and a repsecter of person when He has no such culpabilities.
God certainly forknew a group called Christian but God does not determine for men which ones will be in this group, God allows man to choose that for himself. Therefore those not in the foreknown group is due to their own culpability and not God's culpability for not choosing them as an individual.
Note that
nowhere in the Bible does it ever speak of individuals unconditionally saved separate and apart from the group. God foreknew this group would have the traits of being "in Christ" being "holy and without blame" and called "sons' Epheisans 1:4-5. Again there is
no such thing in the Bible of an individual possessing these traits UNconditionally separate and apart from the group for there is no salvation outside of the group. So NT salvation is all about man choosing to obey God thereby be in the saved, foreknown group and not about unconditional, capricious choices of certain individual apart from the group. apart from one heairng the word of GOd and obeying it.
Mark Quayle said:
Since to you TULIP in all five points are unbiblical, then, do you hold to the Five Points of Arminianism? TULIP, after all, is a direct answer to them. Or do you have an even more meandering style than the Arminian Five Points, which already presents a god who 'sort of' does what he does, and needs our help, or depends on causation attributable to mere chance. --Because that's what you've got.
I'm not Armenian for there are things about it I do not agree with.
Mark Quayle said:
Like me, I hope you become radically more aware of the absolute power and majesty of Christ than you do now. Because the God whose almighty power so tenderly, kindly, patiently, even sweetly, and even through weakness, and his own 'self-infliction' of our sin, shows his absolute control over all things, is OF HIMSELF, and NOT of us; we the recipients of his mercy being IN HIM, by grace. Not works.
AND, AGAIN, DO NOT TAKE THAT TO CLAIM I DON'T BELIEVE WE MUST WORK! (Nor that we have no will, as robots, nor that we do not really choose). We certainly must, but it is a result, not a cause, of grace. Of regeneration.
There is not one single verse that eliminates the obedient wok in boeying God in order to be saved. Calvinists have been caught time and again taking verse out of context (as Romans 4:5 or Ephesians 2:9) and ASSUME that these verses eliminate ALL works based nothing more than thelogical bias and nothing else. Paul, unlike Calvinists, would not contradict himself by eliminating ALL WORKS in Romans 4:5 but then later put obedience BEFORE justification in Romans 6:17-18.
You post "
we the recipients of his mercy being IN HIM" but do not explain why one person is in Christ and yet another is not. Is it just random luck of the draw for some? Can Calvinism give us the underlying reason/basis as to why one is in Christ and another is not? The Bible clearly gives the basis that basis being obedience for those who obey Christ in submitting to being baptized are baptized into Christ and put on Christ Galatians 3:27. Calvinism left in the dark not knowing what the basis is?
Do you think as some Calvinist that God has predetemined all that comes to pass? If so, that makes all men robots programmed to do only what God predetermined/preprogrammed them to do. And why would God ever need to repent (Jonah 3:10) if He has already predetemined all that happens?
