a question on calvinism...

[stantar]

I was wondering, if God created us to voluntary worship Him and reflect His glory, how does predestination come in? If we are predestined, we do nothing voluntary and thus we are pointless... I dont mean to flare people up as any talk of Calvinism does, but I really wanted to know how we could voluntarily worship under predesination....

Thanks, Brian

 

[eldermike]

We have a purpose to worship God but it's not designed in feature. Apart from God we can't worship God. If left to us to decide to worship God, would we? The bible says that apart from God you can do nothing to please God. Does that make sense?

 

[Calvin]

I was wondering, if God created us to voluntary worship Him and reflect His glory, how does predestination come in? If we are predestined, we do nothing voluntary and thus we are pointless... I dont mean to flare people up as any talk of Calvinism does, but I really wanted to know how we could voluntarily worship under predesination....

Thanks, Brian

We can't! Adam and Eve lost it for us. Now we are lost and slaves to sin. We can't change back to freely worship Him any more. In Timothy it says that satan has us bound to always do his will and if God grants us repentance we can then come to Him. Christ came down to save those whom His Father gave Him, and He will lose none of us. Christ set's us free!

That includes our wills. Our will's are not free and the rest of us enslaved. We are totally enslaved including our wills. But we really want to sin, our enslaved wills love to sin. We can't worship God freely because we don't want to. Christ set's us free, then we want to. He changes are "wanter!"

This is the wonderful Gospel and the true meaning of GRACE.

 

[Reformationist]

I was wondering, if God created us to voluntary worship Him and reflect His glory, how does predestination come in? If we are predestined, we do nothing voluntary and thus we are pointless...

It's a common misconception that because we are predestined that we either have no will of our own or that every action we commit is coerced by God. It is not nearly that simple. The first step in understanding predestination is understanding our nature. We are, by nature, desire driven creations. When we were created we were created with ONLY the desire to serve the Lord in obedience. Now, I don't plan to address what changed that desire but I will acknowledge that it changed. After the Fall we are STILL desire driven creations, it's just that our desires after the Fall are ONLY evil continually (Gen 6:5). God does not force us to be evil. We are evil in deed because we are evil in our desires, ALL of them. In essence, we are evil because we WANT to be evil. We WANT to rebel against the Lord. All God does is to NOT restrain us from acting according to our sinful desires. That, in actuality, is the epitome of "free will." Our every thought and deed are self determined. The obvious problem is that we selfishly determine them to be sinful.

Now, as Adam and Eve's nature was changed from desiring ONLY to obey the Lord to desiring to rebel, so too are God's elect's desires changed from desiring ONLY to rebel to desiring to obey. He does this by sovereignly regenerating us from the bondage of our sinful, deceitful hearts.

Only when we understand that God graciously regenerates us apart from our desire to be regenerated will we ever understand that His work of salvation is truly grace. Only when we understand that our desire to obey Him is the direct result of His monergistic work within us that we may heed His sovereign call will we ever truly appreciate the selfless love that the Lord has shown us, thus instilling in us a desire to serve Him in obedience.

I really wanted to know how we could voluntarily worship under predesination....

Thanks, Brian

You see Brian, we can voluntarily worship our Lord because He sovereignly gives us the desire to do so. He, in His omniscient wisdom has deemed it prudent for us to struggle in our sanctification, so we can only acknowledge that the often opposed duality of our desires is the method by which the Lord has deemed that we will be conformed to the image of Christ.

God bless,
Don

 

[CSMR]

Great post, reformationist.

 

[Reformationist]

Great post, reformationist.

Thank you very much for the encouragement.

God bless,
Don