"Regenerate" to "Natural Man" in 1 year!!!

[Zurich]

To consider what God may have done is moot because it is clear from the Scriptures that God has decreed that the soul that sins shall die.

Umm, Yeah. This is the part I disagree with. I don't believe that God has instituted some like of lex talionis in the moral structure of the universe whereby sins are met with penalties, wrongs are requited with grief. It's not that I don't believe God has the RIGHT to do such a thing, but rather that vengeance is not in his hand or his mind.

Rather, I believe that God's judgment is corrective for the sinner who has the good fortune to find himself the object of it. "He will break no bruised reed, nor quench any smolderin wick, but render judgment unto victory!" The end of God's greatest anger is the correction of the guilty. This is the only way evil is put an end to.

This will no doubt be a terrifying thing, but the terror of God is the other side of his love -- it is love outside that would be love inside.

 

[mlqurgw]

Umm, Yeah. This is the part I disagree with. I don't believe that God has instituted some like of lex talionis in the moral structure of the universe whereby sins are met with penalties, wrongs are requited with grief. It's not that I don't believe God has the RIGHT to do such a thing, but rather that vengeance is not in his hand or his mind.

Rather, I believe that God's judgment is corrective for the sinner who has the good fortune to find himself the object of it. "He will break no bruised reed, nor quench any smolderin wick, but render judgment unto victory!" The end of God's greatest anger is the correction of the guilty. This is the only way evil is put an end to.

This will no doubt be a terrifying thing, but the terror of God is the other side of his love -- it is love outside that would be love inside.

Or, in other words, you are not willing to bow to the Scriptures.

Edit: This statement is not intended as a flame nor an accusation but a simple statement of fact.

 

[strengthinweakness]

C.S. Lewis, who also believed in a soteriology of transfiguration by wrath -- that God punishes for amendment purposes only -- contrary to Reformed theology, answered the question this way:

"If "good" means "what God wills" then to say "God is good" can mean only "God wills what he wills." Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan."

"If God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our “black” may be His “white,” we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say “God is good,” while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say “God is we know not what.”

"The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible."




​

The Bible says that God is virtuous. Once that has been said, you have the opportunity to believe that he enforces his law by (a) teaching, or by (b) penalizing. But do not claim that your interpretive choice of (b) was overdetermined by the Biblical witness, because it is not.

You yourself have decided that it is a virtuous thing for God to enforce his law by rendering infinite penalties upon the non-believing sinner or Christ as his substitute, and you cannot then blame the Bible for your theories.

The problem with C.S. Lewis's reasoning here (and I say that humbly, realizing that he had a great mind, but also recognizing that as a fallible man, he could be wrong at times) is that he assumes that the doctrines of the goodness of God, and the inerrancy of Scripture, conflict-- and he assumes this, using his fallible, fallen reasoning. The Bible clearly teaches that God is good. It also clearly teaches that Christ endured God the Father's wrath on the the cross for sinners. Again, read Isaiah 53:5 and Romans 5:9. The Bible teaches both doctrines-- God is good (perfectly good, in fact), and He willed that Christ would suffer His wrath, in the place of sinners who deserve it, on the cross. Just read the Biblical texts. The Bible is the inerrant word of God. Karl Barth was wrong-- the Bible is not valid only insofar as it leads us to Jesus, who was/is the "true" word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh, but the Bible is also still the infallible word of God, and all parts of it are equally inspired. When two doctrines that are clearly taught in it appear to conflict, the problem is with our imperfect, fallen reasoning-- not with the Bible, which is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) and which needs no "correcting" from the thoughts of fallible men.

 

[Zurich]

If it is virtuous for God to sentence people to punishments, then why don't you yield yourself to this sentence? If it's a good idea for God to do it to others, then wouldn't you regard it as a good idea for him to do it to you?

 

[mlqurgw]

If it is virtuous for God to sentence people to punishments, then why don't you yield yourself to this sentence? If it's a good idea for God to do it to others, then wouldn't you regard it as a good idea for him to do it to you?

If God sends me to everlasting destruction I acknowledge that it is right for Him to do it. I deserve it, I have done my utmost to earn it and I cannot blame God for my just desserts.

 

[mlqurgw]

If it is virtuous for God to sentence people to punishments, then why don't you yield yourself to this sentence? If it's a good idea for God to do it to others, then wouldn't you regard it as a good idea for him to do it to you?

Virtuous? According to whose defintion of virtue?

 

[Zurich]

It is not virtuous to enforce your law by rendering penalties for its violation (rather than by teaching sinners to leave their sin).

To regard any suffering with satisfaction, save it be sympathetically with its curative quality, comes of evil, is inhuman because undivine, is a thing God is incapable of.

The notion of suffering as an offset for sin, comes first of all, I think, from the satisfaction we feel when wrong comes to grief. Why do we feel this satisfaction? Because we hate wrong, but, not being righteous ourselves, more or less hate the wronger as well as his wrong, hence are not only righteously pleased to behold the law's disapproval proclaimed in his punishment, but unrighteously pleased with his suffering, because of the impact upon us of his wrong. In this way the inborn justice of our nature passes over to evil.

Although against evil, penalties for sin is but vain and wasted cruelty. There is no destruction of evil thereby.

It is no pleasure to God, as it so often is to us, to see the wicked suffer. God does not have any unwelcomed compulsions to render penalties upon sinners.

 

[mlqurgw]

I also am reminded of the fact that neither you nor I have the right to debate in this forum. We neither calim that we are Reformed and that rules us out in the rules.

 

[strengthinweakness]

If it is virtuous for God to sentence people to punishments, then why don't you yield yourself to this sentence? If it's a good idea for God to do it to others, then wouldn't you regard it as a good idea for him to do it to you?

As a sinner, I have rebelled against God and His commands in Scripture. God would have been perfectly just to send me to Hell. However, in His unfathomable mercy, God sent Jesus to this world of sinful, rebellious humans, to die in the place of sinners and to suffer the Father's perfectly just wrath on their behalf (Isaiah 53:5). If we repent of our sins, submit to Christ as Lord and Saviour, and trust in Him for eternal life, we are saved from God's wrath. At any point prior to our doing this though, we are still in complete rebellion against God, and He would be just to send us to Hell. His undeserved mercy is for the repentant, and His just wrath is for the unrepentant. Zurich, these things are so very clearly taught in the Bible. Sin is not merely "sickness" from which we need "healing." It is a form of sickness, but it is also willfull rebellion against God, and short of repentance, rebellious sinners deserve His wrath. However, the "Good News" is in Romans 5:9! We (believers in Christ) have been "justified by his blood" and "saved from God's wrath through him." What undeserved mercy to sinners from God!

 

[Zurich]

There is a difference between what we deserve and what God would see fit to do to us.

There is a difference between what God has the right to do to us and what God has the will to do to us.

In order to think clearly about these issues, the lines must be untangled. On this thread, the emphasis is on the nature of the operation of divine judgment upon the non-believing sinner; the means of law enforcement God has chosen.

 

[mlqurgw]

Honestly, i am not going to debate you here or any other place for that matter. I will leave it to God to convince you of truth. I have said my piece.

 

[strengthinweakness]

There is a difference between what we deserve and what God would see fit to do to us.

There is a difference between what God has the right to do to us and what God has the will to do to us.

In order to think clearly about these issues, the lines must be untangled. On this thread, the emphasis is on the nature of the operation of divine judgment upon the non-believing sinner; the means of law enforcement God has chosen.

Zurich, in order to think clearly about these issues, all parties involved must be willing to start from what the Scriptures actually say, end with what they actually say, and at all points, submit to what they actually say. Over and over, I have answered you with clear texts from the Bible which say, with no lack of clarity, that Jesus endured God's wrath on the cross in the place of sinners. Over and over, you have avoided directly dealing with these clear texts, Scripturally, instead "answering" them with the "non-God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16) thoughts of a fallible theologian or church father. I say this in sincere love for you-- I will not debate with you any longer. Instead, I will continue to pray, in real, genuine love for you, as I have been, that you will seek the wisdom and reasoning of the Bible, first and foremost, and allow your opinions of the words of theologians and church fathers to be shaped by what God's word, the Bible, has to say, rather than allowing the words of these fallible men to determine your understanding of the Bible.

 

[Zurich]

I can appreciate your perspective. And my perspective is this -- to bring the wronger to grief as a means of enforcing the law, is not divinely virtuous but is humanly cruel. Vengeance on the sinner, the law of a tooth for a tooth, is not in the heart of God, neither in his hand. God is virtuous.

The terror of God is the other side of his love, and thus I will yield myself to the operation of his infinite judgment, trusting that the sole end of his greatest anger is the destruction of evil -- remedial punishement.

So tenaciously do I cling to the trust that the operation of God's judgment is corrective, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, I would not be tempted to doubt a single syllable.

Instead, I will go before God in the eternal world asking him to consume me with his infinite wrath, as C.S. Lewis did. We meet the ultimate terror and find it good, as with Hwin, a talking horse in The Horse and His Boy:

Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion.

"Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."

"Dearest daughter," said Aslan, planting a lion's kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, "I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours." (193)
​

And this, my friend, is what distinguishes the natural man from the regenerate reformed Christian.