Johann
Well-known member
I'm not denying it-the Perfect Tense makes this very, very clear.
Favoritism in Unconditional Election
- Thread starter praise_yeshua
- Start date
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
It obvious that it doesn't matter if you insist you're right yet openly contradict Christ.
The Rogue Tomato
Well-known member
I was expanding on it, not trying to correct you.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
He will not answer. Just like he will not answer about contradicting the obvious grammatical construct of what Jesus said in
Joh 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a Calvinist do this.....
The Rogue Tomato
Well-known member
No, I will not answer. This is about scripture, not about me or you.
civic
Well-known member
Love to ask questions but seldom if ever return the favor. We on the other hand answer their questions.
Double standards
civic
Well-known member
What good is the Bible if it’s not practical and only theoretical ?
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
You have no "skin in the game". You are disconnecting yourself from your answers. It is so obvious why.
You position denies that you were ever judged a sinner. You know it does. Just admit and claim you've never been a sinner even though you were an Atheist that hated God.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
He was personally when he shared that he was an Atheist.
They don't mind doing it when it fits their narrative at the time. If it proves their large narrative is untrue, then it never happened.
The Rogue Tomato
Well-known member
I'll answer in the third person. All people who are saved were once sinners. John 3 identifies those who never have and never will be believing ones as having been judged already.
he who is not believing (permanent continual state of being) hath been judged already (a present state of being judged in the past), because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Johann
Well-known member
No problem brother-some are quoting verses in Greek and Hebrew forgetting what really matters-the Morphology. I speak a couple of languages and have taught myself to read my Koine Greek Bible and busy with the Hebrew language-Modern Hebrew. A gift, since I'm a left hander.
Guess one day I will join the Messianic community-God willing.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
You're limiting the obvious.
Were you not believing? If you are actually judged "not believing", then what you said above can't possibly be true.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
Just FYI. Morphology means very little without etymology. You know that Hebrew has an exaggerated etymology.
The Rogue Tomato
Well-known member
No, I didn't believe yet. See the parable of the sower. When the seed falls on good soil, it takes root and the person becomes one believing (a continual state). Some may believe (a temporal state) but do not become the ones believing, for various reasons described in the parable.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
They will not accept you unless you become just like their sect. You should know that by now.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
So when did this "judgement take place"? Please do tell. Please be exact.
You're not basing what you just said upon predetermined foreknowledge.
The Rogue Tomato
Well-known member
I can only answer from what is in scripture. Scripture does not give a date when the judgement took place, only that it took place in the past and is permanent.
praise_yeshua
Well-known member
In the past in...... before you were born?
Why did you ignore what I wrote about your confessed belief in predetermined foreknowledge?
God hated the man Esau.
- The Bible clearly declares that God hated Esau, while loving Jacob (Mal 1:2-4; Rom 9:13).
- He hated Esau for his sin nature from Adam, not his profane sins (Rom 5:12-19; 9:11-12).
- If these verses speak of nations and not individuals, then the point is even stronger.
- If these verses use hate and love just to mean some relative relationship, then what of “world.”
God does not love those who are not His children.
- The Bible tells us that clearly and emphatically that God chastens all those He loves (Heb 12:6-8).
- But it also tells us that He does not chasten all, for some are bastards and not sons (Heb 12:6-8).
- To not chasten a child is to show hatred to that child, and God does not chasten bastards (Pr 13:24).
- The love of God is for His family, which Paul identified as the boundless love of Christ (Eph 3:14-19).
God does not love those He doesn’t know.
- At the last day, the Lord Jesus Christ will profess to many He never knew them (Matt 7:23).
- These words do not mean He did not know of them or about them, but He never loved them.
- For the word “know” can mean factual knowledge or an affectionate relationship (Amos 3:2).
- These persons are “workers of iniquity,” the ones He hates, for they are still sinners (Ps 5:4-6).
- God knows and foreknows His elect, which foundation is sure (Rom 8:29-30; II Tim 2:19).
- His foreknowledge of the elect resulted in their predestination as sons (Eph 1:5; I Pet 1:2).
- He knows His sheep, and He loves them (John 10:14). He knows them, not about them.
God does not love those who will be separated from Him in hell.
- When God loves a man, it is impossible for that man to be separated from Him (Rom 8:38-39).
- Many will be separated from God in the last day by the words, “Depart from me” (Matt 7:23).
- Since the wicked in hell will be separated from God, it is sure that He never loved them at all.
- It is idiocy to say God loves those in hell just as much and in the same way as those in heaven.
- If you say He stopped loving them at some point, how will you prove He is so changeable?
Christ does not love others in the way He loves His Church.
- Jesus Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it for very specific results (Eph 5:25-27).
- If Jesus Christ loves all men without exception or distinction, then what do these words mean?
- Paul appeals to Christ’s love for His church, His bride, to exhort men to love their wives.
- If Christ loved all men without exception, then husbands should love all women the same way!
- The Lord Jesus Christ, sent from the Father, loved the church – only – and gave Himself for it!
- If He loved and gave Himself for others, without helping them, how does that build marriages?
God’s love results in eternal salvation.
- God’s love is inseparably connected with the giving of Jesus Christ (I John 4:9; Rom 8:32).
- In many places where God’s love is mentioned, so is the giving of Christ for His people.
- It is due to God’s love that He in wisdom designed the means by which He would save them.
- Those in the Lake of Fire will suffer for their sins, as they were never paid for nor forgiven.
- He that spared not His own Son for the elect, those He loved, will give everything else also!
God loves righteousness and those who are righteous.
- God cannot and does not love sin or sinners, but He does love the righteous (Ps 11:7; Heb 1:9).
- Look at any angle or perspective of God’s love you wish, He can only love righteousness.
- His divinely perfect character cannot and will not ever approve sin affectionately. He cannot!
God’s love is inseparably connected with Christ’s intercession.
- Jesus sits at God’s right hand interceding for all the Father loves (Rom 8:34-35; Heb 7:22-25).
- Jesus does not plead for the wicked; He endures them in longsuffering (I Pet 3:20; Rom 9:22).
- And He will save all His elect to the uttermost without losing a single one of them. Glory!
God’s love is revealed to its objects by the Spirit of God.
- The Holy Spirit reveals and communicates God’s love to all those whom He loves (Rom 5:5).
- But the Spirit is only given to those who are sons, as God does not love bastards (Gal 4:6).
- The Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance for the elect only (Eph 1:13-14; II Cor 1:22; 5:5).
God is angry at the wicked every day.
- The Bible declares rather plainly that God is angry at the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11).
- He burned in His wrath toward men, when He drowned the entire planet in a Flood of water.
- And He will be angry again toward men, when He burns up the planet with fire in the last day.
- God’s anger toward His elect brings kind chastening; His anger toward the wicked brings hell.
God taught David to hate all those who hated God.
- David hated all the enemies of God, who hated Him, with a perfect hatred (Psalm 139:21-22).
- He was the sweet psalmist of Israel, who was also the man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22).
- David also admitted his hatred of sinners in other places, but they are ignored (Ps 26:5; 31:6).
- How are we to believe God loves all the wicked, but the man after His own heart hated them?
- God did not inspire David to write things carnal or disagreeable; his hatred was holy and good.
God’s love for sinners is not a part of scriptural evangelism.
- It is a popular delusion that Bible evangelism is to spread the news that God loves sinners.
- The world’s most popular tract, “The Four Spiritual Laws,” declares confidently for its first and most important law, “God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life.”
- Bumper stickers and smiley faces grin everywhere with the words, “Smile, God loves you.”
- Some have said that John 3:16 is the gospel in a nutshell, the most important verse in the Bible.
- Which would you have hung on a banner from the ark? The first spiritual law or John 3:16?
- But if we read the Acts of the Apostles, we cannot find even one reference to the love of God in any of the thirteen conjugations and forms of love used in the New Testament. Amazing!
- But we can read about God’s judgment – over and over again (Acts 10:42; 17:30-31; 24:25)!
- Consider how he opened with Cornelius and his household of Gentiles (Acts 10:34-35).
- Something is clearly wrong! Either the apostles were wrong, or modern evangelism is wrong!
- Jesus Christ and the apostles focused on our love for God (and neighbor), not His love of us!
- When Stephen faced the Jews in Acts 7, why didn’t he tell them about the love of Jesus?
- When Peter faced the first Gentiles in Acts 10, why didn’t he tell them about the love of Jesus?
- When Paul faced the philosophers in Acts 17, why didn’t he tell them about the love of Jesus?
- When Paul faced the Jews in Acts 28, why didn’t he tell them about the love of Jesus?
But … does not the Bible teach that God loved the world?
- Yes, the Bible teaches that God loved the world in John 3:16.
- This is the “gospel in a nutshell,” many say. They say, “This is all I need and all I want.” But it is merely one verse out of 31,173. Every word of God is pure, and helps explain the others.
- But this oft-quoted, never-understood verse does not say that God loves every single human without exception so very much and so very badly that He had to send His son to try to save them all, with the overall project being a colossal failure in that most are not saved at all.
- The whole issue with this popular corruption of the verse is the definition of the word “world.” But what of 12:19; 14:17; 15:19; 16:20; 17:14?
- First, if we force world to mean every single descendant without exception or distinction, then we have a serious contradiction with all we have already read and studied in the perfect Bible.
- Second, if we force world to mean every single descendant without exception or distinction, then we create a whole basket full of absurdities and contradictions elsewhere in the Bible.
- Jesus is speaking to a ruler of the Jews and laying heavy doctrine on him. He has described the new birth that blew his mind, now he points out a dying Messiah, who would die for Gentiles.
- Whomever God loved, He gave His Son for them, meaning the elect (Jn 6:39; 10:11; 17:2-3).
- And true to John’s purpose for writing, believers only can know eternal life was purchased for them (John 20:31; I John 5:13).
- Jesus had already made crystal clear that sovereign regeneration had to precede any belief, which is granted only to the elect (John 1:12-13; 3:3,8).
- There is a sermon and extensive outline explaining John’s own interpretation of John 3:16.
But … does not the Bible teach that God is love?
- Yes, the Bible teaches that God is love in I John 4:8 and I John 4:16.
- But these words do not prove (1) God is only love, (2) God loves all men, (3) God loves any man, (4) God loves you, (5) how long God loves, or (6) just about any thing else you imagine.
- It simply and only teaches that one characteristic of God is that He loves, and He does love.
- But He is also holy and righteous, which John introduced first in this very epistle (I John 1:5).
- While God is love, God cannot love sin or sinners, as we have clearly proved in other places.
But … does not the Bible teach that God loves us as sinners?
- Yes, the Bible teaches that God loved us when we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).
- However, in what sense(s) we were still sinners? This is the key, for we were already in Christ.
- When we read the personal pronouns “us” and “we” in context with God’s love and Christ’s death, we are not to understand a letter written from heaven to the whole human race!
- We were still sinners vitally and practically before our regeneration and conversion, when Christ died for us. But we had been loved eternally long before the cross of Calvary.
But … particular love makes God unfair, cruel, and a respecter of persons?
- Paul knew long ago you would raise this objection. His answer? God forbid (Romans 9:14-24)!
- You do not even understand your own objection, for how is it respect of persons to choose to love someone for nothing in them whatsoever, but altogether contrary to what is in them?
- How does it make God unfair? Because He does not love all? Do all deserve love? We are sinful rebels, why must He love us? He is unfair by loving any, which is why it is called grace!
- If you are so concerned about the character of God, why not argue for God loving the devil?
But … I couldn’t and wouldn’t serve a God that doesn’t love everybody!
- Truly? There is another Jesus, spirit, and gospel with many preachers (II Cor 11:3-5,13-15).
- If you are so concerned about God loving everybody, why don’t you feel sorry for the devil?
- You are gravely mistaken to think there is anything about you worth loving at all.
- You are gravely mistaken to think there is something in God requiring Him to love you at all.
- If you are going to create a God after your own thoughts, He has a word for you (Ps 50:21-22)!
God’s love is only meaningful when His hatred of sinners is fully understood.
- If a prostitute told a thinking man she loved him, her statement of love would be worthless.
- In the same way, the love of God is not very meaningful when it is loosely scattered to all.
- What is so special about the love of God for me, if God loves everyone equally?
- What is so moving about the love of God for me, if many He loves are already in hell?
- The love of God is not a promiscuous love of all men, but an efficacious love of the elect.
- How does God commend His love? By loving us when enemies and giving Christ for us?
- Paul sought for the Ephesians to know the full dimensions of God’s love, which knowledge could fill them with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:14-19). But how can universal love do this?
- What saddens the righteous and confirms the wicked (Ezek 13:22)? The universal love of God!
- Now the words of John make sense, “We love him, because he first loved us” (I John 4:19).
God’s love for us should constrain us to serve and fear Him.
- When we rightly understand the love of God, it will powerfully move us to devoted service.
- If God’s love is universal without distinction, and it accomplishes nothing for sure, there is hardly a motive for service at all. That is why there are so few truly dedicated Arminians.
- The more the love of God is bandied about, the greater the carnality and weakness of hearers.
- Isaiah was moved to instant service by God giving a specific sacrifice for his sins (Is 6:1-8).
- When Paul reasons, “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love …,” he is arguing from the overwhelming sense of debt and obligation we ought to have (Phil 2:1).
- Paul was constrained to serve God by the life-giving love of God in Christ, and he understood that this sacrificial and saving love should cause all saints to be new creatures (II Cor 5:14-17).
- It should be easy to tremble before Him and His word, when we see His love in truth (Is 66:2).
- We should also find it easy to worship Him with reverence and godly fear (Heb 12:28-29).
- We should understand that there is forgiveness with Him that He might be feared (Ps 130:4).
- Our prayers should be quite different from those who think He’s a hand full of cotton candy.
- How can we sin easily, presumptuously, or repeatedly, if we are standing in awe (Psalm 4:4)?
- This doctrine should cause us to walk humbly and justly before our God in holy sobriety.
Conclusion:
- This is surely not a popular subject, but neither was a universal flood by Noah or a round earth by Columbus.
- You cannot know the blessed God of heaven apart from His detailed revelation in the Holy Scriptures.
- All the feelings and opinions of men are profane folly, for their hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.
- The personal issue for you is not whether God loves you, but whether you fear and love God with all you are.
- God is not obligated to love any. His love is by His sovereign choice, which He did to His elect (Rom 9:15).
- How can we benefit by answering the question? Worship God in truth (John 4:23-24), serve Him with reverence and godly fear (Heb 12:28-29), understand the Bible without confusion (II Tim 2:15), bask in our glorious salvation (II Cor 9:15), see through the fallacy of an offer of salvation (John 6:38-39), see the commendation God gave His love (Rom 5:5-8), be motivated to extreme service (II Cor 5:14-17), know we can never be separated from it (Rom 8:38-39), and be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:14-19).
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