why do you commit a sin when someone else doesn't?

[onajourney87]

This is somewhat perplexing to me... perhaps someone has some insight on this.

A slight bit of background on me: I used to be a Calvinist, but due to various things, more or less turned away from it.


One of the most convincing arguments that I have heard for Calvinism more or less follows in this manner:

Why are you a Christians and someone else isn't?
a) you are smarter than them
b) you are both justly hell-bound, but God chose to die for you and save you

The implication is that the two options are the only possiblities, and obviously if you pick the first, then you have major problems because a person's intellect defines whether or not they will be saved (either God gives some people stupid intellects and is thus unjust, or people are merely a product of their society and can't help it if they can't understand the truth of God).


For some time, I have countered that classic argument via this reponse of mine:

Upon being saved by God, some people commit a sin while another doesn't, is this because:
a) one is smarter than the other
b) God caused one person to sin, but not the other
c) one submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to say no to sin while the other rebelled against God and did not submit and thus sinned

I see great similarities between the two; the exception being that most Calvinists (with the exception of those that would tend to be labeled hyper-Calvinistis) pick option C.

The implication is: if option C is valid for the second question, why can't a similar option be valid for the first question?

I'm truly not looking to argue here, I'm simply looking for a reasonable, Biblical explanation for why my reply to the classic argument fails.

 

[GrinningDwarf]

Great question, osmaker.

Let's start with statement c:

c) one submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to say no to sin while the other rebelled against God and did not submit and thus sinned

A Calvinist would ask "Why did one submit to the power of the Holy Spirit and not the other? Are we capable of that kind of submission while still in our regenrated state?" We would see scriptures that tell us

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14

The unregenerated man, the man without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, of his own free will does not accept what comes from God.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1:15

Those unregenerated, those unbelieving, those without the Holy Spirit still posses the corrupted nature inherited from Adam. Their free will is corrupted and is bent in only one direction...away from God.

...the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. Romans 8:7-8

The sinful mind, of it's own free will, is hostile to God. Nobody is forcing it to be hostile to God...it wants to be hostile to God.

Let’s think about this for a minute. The above verses and others say that the unregenerate person is sinful, wayward, lying, having every inclination towards evil, mad, loving of darkness, rejecting of the things of God, considering the things of God as foolishness, hardened, insensitive, corrupt, and hostile towards God. Why would such a person even want anything to do with God?

So anybody who wants to come to God before being regenerated by God will come. The caveat is that unless God regenerates a person's heart first, nobody would ever want to come.

John Owen called free will "corrupted nature's deformed darling." Sure...we can do whatever we want to before God regenerates us. But everything we want to do will be tainted by sin. That's what being a "slave to sin" is about. That's what being "dead in our trespasses" is all about.

 

[UMP]

Why will someone not commit a sin while another does ?

By the grace of God:

1 Corinthians 15:
[10] But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: YET NOT I, BUT THE GRACE OF GOD which was with me.

Why do I commit a sin when someone else does not ?

Because I'm a scumbag sinner and so are my parents and their parents and their parents, and so on and so on, while the guy that did not sin did so by the grace of God.

 

[heymikey80]

This is somewhat perplexing to me... perhaps someone has some insight on this.

A slight bit of background on me: I used to be a Calvinist, but due to various things, more or less turned away from it.


One of the most convincing arguments that I have heard for Calvinism more or less follows in this manner:


The implication is that the two options are the only possiblities, and obviously if you pick the first, then you have major problems because a person's intellect defines whether or not they will be saved (either God gives some people stupid intellects and is thus unjust, or people are merely a product of their society and can't help it if they can't understand the truth of God).


For some time, I have countered that classic argument via this reponse of mine:


I see great similarities between the two; the exception being that most Calvinists (with the exception of those that would tend to be labeled hyper-Calvinistis) pick option C.

The implication is: if option C is valid for the second question, why can't a similar option be valid for the first question?

I'm truly not looking to argue here, I'm simply looking for a reasonable, Biblical explanation for why my reply to the classic argument fails.

Because it too has an excluded middle. Probably the easiest way to see through these "option" schemes is to always mentally add, "some other reason." In the case of your options, "He committed the sin for some other reason."

The funny part about this is, Calvinism would also challenge the premise. Everybody commits sins. Talking about a specific sin presumes God's limiting sins quantitatively -- "not doing this sin is better" -- rather than redeeming them qualitatively by "What you intended for evil, God meant for God."

It's a subject for the mind-bending subtlety of Calvin's later thought on God's providence. But in brief (and ... with a nearby example) we often find that seeing the gravity of our sin and confessing it to God invigorates our faith instead of crushing it. It shows us as being closer to God when we can agree with Him on the sin that so easily ensnares us, than if we avoid the sins we see. Avoidance often makes us blind to othet sins "by trading sins for others that are easier to hide." (Derek Webb)

So by God's grace we're confronted with sins every day, that others may avoid, or ignore, or not even think of doing. Are we any worse than others? No. But if we don't repent, we shall also perish.