The Practical Implications of Calvinism

[Humble_Disciple]

Sorry. I disagree with none of them, unless they mean to say that their explanations are the only practical reasons for each one of their points.

Like a good Berean, I want to be corrected, with scripture, if something in the article happens to be untrue.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Throughout the New Testament, we are told that God's elect aren't just chosen to salvation, but also chosen to service and chosen to obedience. If you really believe that, it should influence how you live out your faith. If predestination has no practical significance to our daily lives, then we're interpreting it wrong.

Ephesians 2:10

10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Calvinism presents a cruel uncaring God. It prevents sinners from coming to Christ, shrouding the nature of God.

If Calvinism is true, when you preach the Gospel to someone and pray that they will be saved, you can have the assurance that God's irresistible grace can lead them to faith. Everyone is a Calvinist when they pray for the salvation of loved ones.

 

[Mark Quayle]

If Calvinism is true, when you preach the Gospel to someone and pray that they will be saved, you can have the assurance that God's irresistible grace can lead them to faith. Everyone is a Calvinist when they pray for the salvation of loved ones.

This is true. It is a remarkable thing I have noticed since childhood, that the prayers of the Arminian-leaning 'freewillers' of my relatives sound like Calvinists when they pray for others, including God accomplishing this or that, not that people would do the accomplishing.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

I can tell you, from my own personal experience, that I'm more incentivized to obey God if i believe that He chose me, as a unique individual, based on His grace alone, before I chose Him. Leighton Flowers never addresses things like this, the positive benefits of Calvinism.

 

[Humble_Disciple]

If Calvinism is true, we can be assured that God will use our preaching to draw His elect unto Himself:

The elect will be saved infallibly through the preaching of the gospel, for God determined that it would be so through the eternal covenant of redemption established among the persons of the Trinity. In his sovereign, gracious, distinguishing love, the Father has chosen certain people (Rom. 9:11-13; Eph. 1:4) whom he gave to his Son (John 6:37, 39; 17:6, 24), who, in turn, committed himself to accomplish their redemption by obeying the precepts of God’s moral law perfectly on their behalf (his active obedience) and paying the penalty due them for their disobedience to the law (his passive obedience). Thus God can be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Under the Trinitarian covenant, the Spirit is sent into the world by the Father and the Son (John 15:26; 16:5-15) to apply Christ’s saving work to the elect...

Knowing that the elect will be gathered by the second Adam (John 17:12; Rom. 5:12-19) makes Calvinists bold in evangelism. They also are patient in it, knowing that God will save sinners in his time and way through the priestly work of Christ (Isa. 55:10-11). They are zealous, knowing that God’s glory will come to be (1 Cor. 1:27-31), and prayerful, knowing that he alone will and can accomplish salvation as an ever-faithful, covenant-keeping Lord (Eph. 2:1-10).10 Nearly all the great and zealous evangelists of the church from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the early nineteenth century, before Charles Finney (1792-1875), were committed to definite atonement rooted in this God-centred covenant theology. Would anyone dare say that George Whitefield lacked evangelistic zeal in preaching the gospel? Would anyone say the same of Charles Spurgeon, William Carey, David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, or Asahel Nettleton? Each of these great evangelists professed a definite design in the atoning work of Christ and boldly heralded Christ as a freely offered and willing Saviour to all who repent and believe.11

Third, while we cannot fully grasp with our finite minds how to reconcile a definite, limited atonement with Christ’s all-sufficient blood and a universal invitation to believe, such is the pattern of Scripture and the way of God (John 6:37-40). Moreover, since the atonement is not limited in itself, though it is in its design, and since the promise is that all who by faith truly come to Christ for salvation will certainly be saved (Rom. 10:13), limited atonement is not inconsistent with a universal call to faith.
https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2009/defending-definite-atonement/

 

[FutureAndAHope]

If Calvinism is true, when you preach the Gospel to someone and pray that they will be saved, you can have the assurance that God's irresistible grace can lead them to faith. Everyone is a Calvinist when they pray for the salvation of loved ones.

Not at all. God said He was going to destroy the Israelites, and make a Nation out of Moses. But Moses intercessions changed God's heart. Here we see two pathways, no one fixed one. Again showing God, has more than one potential plan, we are not "predestined" to a single plan.

 

[Hmm]

Where do you get the notion that is the sole reason God creates those who go to the Lake of Fire?

Predetination, hence the noble Calvanist notion of the Reprobate - those for whom Jesus didn't die and who are therefore destined to hell. Appararently this shows by contrast how glorious is God's mercy and love which must be a big consolation.

This is standard Calvanist stuff wouldn't you agree?

 

[Humble_Disciple]

Calvinism is the antidote to theological liberalism. No one who rejects the infallibility of scripture, the uniqueness of Jesus as Lord and Savior, the sanctity of traditional marriage, etc. is a Calvinist, but many non-Calvinists do, while believing in their own free will to do so.

 

[JesusFreak78]

Do you not think a god who creates someone solely to go to ECT is cruel? If you don't, what act would you say was crueller than that?

I believe God has the right to do whatever He wants, an He will always be justified in doing so. Romans 9:14-24 is a good example of this.

 

[JesusFreak78]

A God who planned to send the majority of people to hell, planned out to send most men to hell, saving only an elected few, as a part of divine will, giving no chance of repentance to mankind is uncaring.

We shouldn’t dwell on why God “send some” people to hell but instead dwell on why He has decided to save some people. God has the right to make some for honorable use and others for common use, and we have no right in questioning His decision (Romans 9:14-24).

Firstly, God did not know how man would respond to him, as we see here:

Gen 6:6-7 And the Lord had sorrow because he had made man on the earth, and grief was in his heart. And the Lord said, I will take away man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, even man and beast and that which goes on the earth and every bird of the air; for I have sorrow for having made them.

The only way this is possible is if free will is true.

But God does give ALL people a chance of repentance:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

2Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

This is not true, since God knows everything that is going on. God sometimes uses anthropopathism to explain something, so humans can understand it better, but they don’t always give a perfect picture without comparing it to other verses. 1 John 3:30, Isaiah 46:9-10, Psalm 139:4, 1 Kings 8:39, and Acts 1:24 are some verses that tells us God knows all things.

 

[Hmm]

I believe God has the right to do whatever He wants, an He will always be justified in doing so. Romans 9:14-24 is a good example of this.

I'm glad I see God differently.

 

[JesusFreak78]

I'm glad I see God differently.

I'm sure you do, but as the Potter, He has the right to do whatever He wants with His clay, to form it into whatever He wants for whatever purpose He wants.

 

[Hmm]

I'm sure you do

I've just told you that I don't so do not tell me that I believe the way you do.

 

[JesusFreak78]

I've just told you that I don't so do not tell me that I believe the way you do.

I never said you believe the same as me. I said, I'm sure you see God differently than me.

 

[Hmm]

I never said you believe the same as me. I said, I'm sure you see God differently than me.

Okay, I misread your last post, apologies.

 

[JesusFreak78]

Okay, I misread your last post, apologies.

Apologies accepted.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Predetination, hence the noble Calvanist notion of the Reprobate - those for whom Jesus didn't die and who are therefore destined to hell. Appararently this shows by contrast how glorious is God's mercy and love which must be a big consolation.

This is standard Calvanist stuff wouldn't you agree?

No. In fact, if it "shows by contrast how glorious is God's mercy and love" then THAT would be the main reason for predestining the reprobate to hell. God did not make anyone merely for the purpose of condemnation, and Calvinism doesn't teach that he did.

 

[Hmm]

No. In fact, if it "shows by contrast how glorious is God's mercy and love" then THAT would be the main reason for predestining the reprobate to hell. God did not make anyone merely for the purpose of condemnation, and Calvinism doesn't teach that he did.

Predestining someone to hell is a strange way for God to show his mercy and love. The truth is that this is double speak that Orwell would be proud of.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Predestining someone to hell is a strange way for God to show his mercy and love. The truth is that this is double speak that Orwell would be proud of.

Not exactly. Predestining is the cold logical fact that works even if 'free will' is in play —even the Arminians claim that God knew before creating what would happen, yet created anyway. THAT predestines EVERYTHING to happen as it does, including predestining as many as choose hell to go to hell.