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But over the years, I've learned that debates are less meaningful than proceeding with the Mission--which is not under dispute. When all is said and done, there won't be any benefit to have argued a strong debate over the years...but there is benefit to have proceeded with the Mission.
But that isn't the conclusion Paul reaches at the end of the chapter. Paul speaks of faith, not works, as being the key. He makes no mention of such faith being the preserve of a select few.
Without explaining to unbelievers what Jesus really stands for then one can't deliver an ingenuous Gospel. It's no good telling all and sundry John 3:16 unless you tell them that God elected whom would believe (if that indeed is your understanding of Romans 9).
False.
Romans 9 is not necessary for a person to come to belief in Christ. Romans 9 is not written to unbelievers, Romans 9 is to believers.
Why is Paul talking to the Romans about this at all?
Paul is talking to real people in a real congregation going through real life-stuff as a congregation.
Back around 41AD, the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome. That included Jesus-believing Jews like Priscilla and Aquilla, who already had a mixed Jew-Gentile Christian congregation going in Rome (this expulsion is also why there were no Jews in Philippi when Paul visited that city). In 53AD, the new Emperor Nero permitted the Jews--including Priscilla and Aquilla--back into Rome. They went back to a congregation that had been all Gentile during their absence.
That is the setting for Paul's letter to them, a situation in which the Jews and Gentiles had to re-integrate into a cohesive congregation. That's why Paul speaks about the mechanism of salvation, first to the Jews so they understand the Gentiles are not second-class citizens, but have the same first-class ticket the Jews have because the ticket is not procedure or bloodline, but faith. Then later, Paul has to specifically address the Gentiles so that they understand they are not superior to the Jews, either.
The bottom line is that Paul is explaining to the Jews that by God's sovereign choice, He certainly can choose to bring Gentiles at that late date into the same salvation that the Jews have available, regardless of all the prior history He has with the Jews.
It's not Paul's point that God's sovereign choice can leave people out, Paul's point is that God's sovereign choice is to bring more people--the Gentiles--in.
False.
Romans 9 is not necessary for a person to come to belief in Christ. Romans 9 is not written to unbelievers, Romans 9 is to believers.
That is an assertion that they didn't observe the law.
No. It also says that the Jews need to do whatever the Pharisees told them to do, that is, they need to observe the 613 laws.
But your assertion was that Jesus acknowledged that the Pharisees observed all 613. Jesus merely urges the Jews to do what they say and not what they do.
I never said that. Just as the verse itself shows. The Pharisees preached but not observed. Jesus on the other hand asked the Jews in general to observe, unlike the Pharisees who only preached but not observed.
Ok, but Jesus does not say anyone successfully observed the law. On the contrary...for all have sinned..........
It's generally true at the time of Jesus, with a few exception though. Paul can be that exception. However he sinned as a murderer of Christians.
?
Apart from Jesus all have sinned - so nobody successfully observed the law.
Yet one can be saved as long as he can abide by a covenant granted, say, by observing the 613 laws if he's a Jew.
It would be incumbent on a Calvinist to declare that not all persons he preaches to can necessarily come to Christ when the Gospel is preached.
Unbelievers should know what it is they are being enjoined to believe in.
Thanks - I had heard about the enforced exile.
Were Esau and Pharaoh without recourse to salvation because God predetermined that they would not be?
If I, as an unbeliever, am not certain about what it is I am being asked to believe in (whether God predetermines those that will have faith or makes salvation available to all) then I can't really exercise informed faith can I?
I don't know, nor does it matter for evangelism.
So if God does turn out to be "the Calvinist God," do you have another option?
I'm not sure there is any such thing as "informed faith." That is, IMO, merely "intellectual agreement," which is not faith at all.
It actually doesn't matter. It really doesn't.
How much of this did Cornelius know?
Or the Philippian jailer? Look carefully at that situation. Had the Philippian jailer gotten a thorough discourse of Romans 9 before declaring, "What must I do to be saved?"
What I'm pointing out is the very real phenomenon of "enabled by the Father," by which persons say, "What must I do to be saved" without first having all those extraneous theological issues resolved..
So if God does turn out to be "the Calvinist God," do you have another option?
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