What is God's role in salvation?

Lämmchen said:

Your response doesn't make the gift any more true. Do you see that? If God pours rain on your head, your response to that doesn't make it any more true. You can run inside to get away from it but you can't make it rain.

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What does that have to do with any of these things being discussed? Can you explain how it relates? Where is accountability? There is no accountability we have for whether it rains on a specific day. But how do any people perish and be damned with no accountability? They would just need to repent and be in Christ, to not perish. But they do perish because God would not have them do that?

FredVB said:

What does that have to do with any of these things being discussed? Can you explain how it relates? Where is accountability? There is no accountability we have for whether it rains on a specific day. But how do any people perish and be damned with no accountability? They would just need to repent and be in Christ, to not perish. But they do perish because God would not have them do that?

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1. Just because one is able to ask questions (even reasonable ones) but NOT mean that ergo that questioner is to answer their own question and then demand God agrees with them. Truth is what God reveals.... it's not necessarily how some individual answers their own question.


2. Christianity is distinctive and founded entirely on this point: JESUS IS THE SAVIOR. Which means, Jesus is the SAVIOR and you are not. Jesus does the saving and you don't. If one is saved, it's entirely, solely, completely for one and only one reason: JESUS saved them. If you persist in arguing that the reason one is saved (heaven-bound) is because THEY (that individual) did or thought or accomplished something, then you are saying the reason they are saved is because of themselves; Jesus MAY have had SOME role - possibility maker, helper, teacher, inspiration - but He would not be the Savior, He would be the Possibility Maker ("Jesus opened the door to heaven but you gotta choose to go through it and then do that") or Helper ("God helps those who help themselves" "God helps those who seek that" "No one can be saved without out Jesus' help") or teacher ("Jesus shows us the way but each has to then pursue the way"). Ask this: Who is the Savior? If you answer Jesus, then Jesus is the reason you are saved, Jesus does the saving. If you answer me ("I chose Jesus" "I gave Jesus the steering wheel of my life" "I gave Jesus my heart" "I.... I.....I.....I.....I....." "Me.... me.....me...." if YOU are the kingpin, if YOU supply the very thing on which salvation hinges, then you are the Savior and it's a lie to call Jesus the Savior.


3. Only very radical, extreme Calvinists argue that God causes some to go to hell. 99% of Christians (100% before Calvin came along) say what the Bible does: If we go to heaven, it's because Jesus saved us. And we stop RIGHT THERE. God desires all to be saved.... Christ died for all..... but not all have faith so not all are saved. Those who have faith have ONE to FULLY CREDIT - God ("Faith is the free gift of God") but if they don't, they have only themselves to blame. Now, if that leaves you with unanswered questions.... then you have unanswered questions; that possibility does NOT make God wrong, it does not make the Gospel wrong, it does NOT mean Christianity is a lie and Jesus saves no one (each saves self), it simply means you have some questions (maybe even reasonable ones) which God has not answered (God is not mandated to answer questions).. "Humility is the foundation of all sound theology" - sometimes we need to have humble faith, not the ego of insisting because I'm smarter than God, God has to agree with the answers I give to the questions I ask.





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Lämmchen said:

People are damned because they refuse the forgiveness that was won for them. It isn't God's fault.

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Yup.

It might be considered that "damned" is the "de fault" position. That is changed by God - who supplies THE (one and only, all-sufficient) SAVIOR (not just helper or teacher or inspiration or possibility-maker) and who supplies the Holy Spirit (who is the Lord and giver of faith and spiritual life) which together results in a changed reality: salvation.


Soli DEO Gloria!



Josiah





,

Good Day,

All of Salvation is of God

He adopts his children
He gives them to Christ
He removes their heart of stone
He gives them a heart of flesh
He puts His Spirit in them
He causes them to walk in His ways, and obey his statues
He makes them His own, and he becomes their God
He grants them Faith
He grants them repentance
He declares them Just
Christ dies for them
Christ turns away the just Wrath of God against them
Christ does the will of the Father and raises them up on the last day
Christ looses none of them
Christ mediates peace between them and God
Christ is their righteousness
Christ transfers them from the darkness to light
Christ intercedes on their behalf
Christ is their High priest
Christ knows them, and calls them



In Him

Bill

Lämmchen said:

People are damned because they refuse the forgiveness that was won for them. It isn't God's fault.

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You got that right.

Josiah said:

1. Just because one is able to ask questions (even reasonable ones) but NOT mean that ergo that questioner is to answer their own question and then demand God agrees with them. Truth is what God reveals.... it's not necessarily how some individual answers their own question.


2. Christianity is distinctive and founded entirely on this point: JESUS IS THE SAVIOR. Which means, Jesus is the SAVIOR and you are not. Jesus does the saving and you don't. If one is saved, it's entirely, solely, completely for one and only one reason: JESUS saved them. If you persist in arguing that the reason one is saved (heaven-bound) is because THEY (that individual) did or thought or accomplished something, then you are saying the reason they are saved is because of themselves; Jesus MAY have had SOME role - possibility maker, helper, teacher, inspiration - but He would not be the Savior, He would be the Possibility Maker ("Jesus opened the door to heaven but you gotta choose to go through it and then do that") or Helper ("God helps those who help themselves" "God helps those who seek that" "No one can be saved without out Jesus' help") or teacher ("Jesus shows us the way but each has to then pursue the way"). Ask this: Who is the Savior? If you answer Jesus, then Jesus is the reason you are saved, Jesus does the saving. If you answer me ("I chose Jesus" "I gave Jesus the steering wheel of my life" "I gave Jesus my heart" "I.... I.....I.....I.....I....." "Me.... me.....me...." if YOU are the kingpin, if YOU supply the very thing on which salvation hinges, then you are the Savior and it's a lie to call Jesus the Savior.


3. Only very radical, extreme Calvinists argue that God causes some to go to hell. 99% of Christians (100% before Calvin came along) say what the Bible does: If we go to heaven, it's because Jesus saved us. And we stop RIGHT THERE. God desires all to be saved.... Christ died for all..... but not all have faith so not all are saved. Those who have faith have ONE to FULLY CREDIT - God ("Faith is the free gift of God") but if they don't, they have only themselves to blame. Now, if that leaves you with unanswered questions.... then you have unanswered questions; that possibility does NOT make God wrong, it does not make the Gospel wrong, it does NOT mean Christianity is a lie and Jesus saves no one (each saves self), it simply means you have some questions (maybe even reasonable ones) which God has not answered (God is not mandated to answer questions).. "Humility is the foundation of all sound theology" - sometimes we need to have humble faith, not the ego of insisting because I'm smarter than God, God has to agree with the answers I give to the questions I ask.

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False issue. We are accountable, we are not damnable without it we

FredVB said:

We are accountable

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Correct. "For ALL have sinned...." "The wages of sin is death." Yup... we are accountable, so if your ego allows you to say to God, "Treat me as I deserve! Do with me as my life suggests!" Then hell's population will increase.

However.... God permits us to point to CHRIST INSTEAD. "He committed no sin." Christ came to RESCUE us from what we deserve. Which is why Christianity proclaims that Christ is the SAVIOR, this is what makes Christianity Christianity... this is what makes Christianity different than every other false human religion... Christianity insists the Christ SAVES us from what we deserve, pagan religions say you get what you deserve.



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