God still chooses.

[YourTruthGod]

:shake:



Arsenios

 

[FredVB]

God is sovereign in choosing what will happen. Yet God leaves some things to our choice, and allows consequences to happen from our choices. That God says to choose in places in the Bible means that we really do choose in things. It is not even just the redeemed who are given choice in things. That choice may be made with which there is curse, shown to the people of Israel, as the redeemed will not be subject to a curse from God, shows that unredeemed also are given choice.

That Yahweh can bring good out of every thing that those who love God will go through shows God's sovereignty with unlimited knowledge, with this not meaning that there were none choosing anything with consequences that those who love God go through.


Now God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). If God ever overlooked this, he would overlook it now if people everywhere had no chance, but it is required, they all do have opportunity to come to this.

Context is really always needed for interpreting any meaning of passages, certainly when doctrine would be made of it. This applies to 2 Peter 3:9. Though the context involves other things, the context has nothing at all to define the passage not meaning it is of all people, and that it does mean all people is consistent with other passages in the Bible.

Jesus preached repentance with which there is justification, such as in Luke 18:14. There is response that must happen where God said to choose, even where it was to those among whom there were many who perished. The choice is from response to God.

It is the gospel statement to repent. And there isn't basis to say God does not provide for that to some, even if because they never sought God ever before.

Those that are elected, which means those who are chosen, are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. That does not mean that Yahweh does not choose those who respond with repenting, that would be added meaning and not biblical meaning with basis.

"Any" means any. The context in 2 Peter 3 is saying this is why God is waiting this long time, not meaning it is with inaction, but when God's grace is enough to bring in all that ever do respond and are justified (which actually means being in Christ who bore everything that we live in Christ's righteousness).

Scoffers will come in the last days, in other words, "skeptics" (miscalled as such when they don't really look at any evidence that would conflict with their own ideas), doubters, and others who disbelieve. They will satisfy their own desires with their ideas. Some such would say that there shouldn't be faith and hope of Christ's coming for us, all things just continue as they are, they always have, after all.

It is purposely disregarded that the global catastrophe with the worldwide flood was destructive to everything in the world then. Likewise there is coming destruction to this world with fire that will be in judgment for the unrepented wickedness among humanity against Yahweh the one God, and against God's creation. But Yahweh is patient in the extreme, a thousand years making no more difference than a day with God, who would have opportunity for all, which fairness, with love and compassion which is not limited, involves.

Just as when the Lord Jesus will come for taking those of us who are believers suddenly and unexpectedly, so ultimately when all the world will be exposed to the intense heat to do away with all the corrupted creation remaining to have it replaced with new creation without any corruption, in which those who have repented and are redeemed, and the innocent, are included, it will be sudden and unexpected.

We should be earnest and diligent for Yahweh to find purity without compromise, living to be in peace. Yahweh is extremely patient and longsuffering, for the sake of salvation to those who would come to repentance, which Yahweh leads any to, which we should consider. We shouldn't consider what twists the meaning of scripture passages, to not be led astray.

Grow in grace and knowledge.

 

[FredVB]

This has been one of the hardest points on this forum that I have ever encountered to make...
I mean, most here claim to be Bible Christians...
There are four Gospels...
EACH of the four has Christ's beginning of John's baptism of repentance...
That's the Gospel Truth, period...
John was even conceived before Christ - Gospel Truth!
The plain ontological meaning is the need for repentance prior to Christ coming to you...
"The voice of one crying in the Wilderness:
Prepare the Way of the Lord!
Make straight a highway for our God!"
And finally you come along!
I mean, it took you long enough!!
I have not had anyone covering my 6 here on this issue...
IF one does not preach repentance, one does not preach Christ...

The Jews were prepared by the Law - At least those who kept it...
All they needed was the Call to Repentance...
To turn their repentance inward...
To purify the heart of its evils...

The Gentiles needed the same thing...
But they were not prepared by the Law...
Yet they are still called to repentance from sin...
And this Way is the Way of the Cross...
It is denial of self...
Then taking up one's cross of suffering in self-denial...
And following Christ in poverty of spirit...
The narrow and hard and obstructed Way of the Cross...

Many are called to this Way...
Early Christians were called the People of the Way...
Few are those who find this Way...
Few are those Chosen...

So thank-you for being here...
For standing in the truth...
For establishing repentance as the proper response to God's Call...
God's Call to Repentance...

That is God's Truth!

Repentance is an essential thing, with which there is coming to Christ in faith for salvation and through him being restored to Yahweh God. There are such who just come to superficial faith, that is confessed, without the repentance, who then would be ones Christ would say, "I never knew you", they are ones recognized as such when they fall away from Christian faith, and say so, in later times with discouragement from it. They could know the gospel, and a number of "Christian phrases", well enough, and pray some kind of prayer, but still not with real faith that is essential.

 

[Lamb]

Repentance is an essential thing, with which there is coming to Christ in faith for salvation and through him being restored to Yahweh God. There are such who just come to superficial faith, that is confessed, without the repentance, who then would be ones Christ would say, "I never knew you", they are ones recognized as such when they fall away from Christian faith, and say so, in later times with discouragement from it. They could know the gospel, and a number of "Christian phrases", well enough, and pray some kind of prayer, but still not with real faith that is essential.

You're right that no prayer can bring a person to faith in God. That's God's job to bring someone to faith and He does so by His Word. Repentance is God convicting someone of sin and then turning them to Him in faith, giving them the forgiveness of the cross.

 

[FredVB]

You're right that no prayer can bring a person to faith in God. That's God's job to bring someone to faith and He does so by His Word. Repentance is God convicting someone of sin and then turning them to Him in faith, giving them the forgiveness of the cross.

Right, I do mean repentance this way. Still, repentance is not a one time event, such that there are those thinking that believers can fall away from faith and so would lose salvation, while really believers do remain forgiven. Real repentance which God means in the Bible is a change itself, to live to no longer have the same sins but to choose holy ways of God. Only God can help us in that, with Christ who came for that and whose power in our lives enable us to live resisting the nature of our old selves to go back to sinful ways. And it involves ongoing development, which happens in real believers, changing to right living with being shown more that we should turn from in our lives, for godliness.

 

[JPPT1974]

It is a lifelong thing over to repent and ask for forgiveness. Jesus is the First and Last, Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and the End!

 

[Confessional Lutheran]

Amen. God and God alone chooses those who are His and He births and maintains faith by His people hearing the Word proclaimed and having the Holy Sacraments administered to them. We do have a loving God who in fact wants all people to be saved, but we, tainted as we are by Original Sin, are completely dead and in need of the Holy Spirit to revive us, so we can produce fruits of the Spirit.

 

[atpollard]

MennoSota,

We can use any scripture and it be truth.

[Mat 27:5 NIV] 5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
[Luk 10:37 NIV] 37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

There is truth, and then again, there is TRUTH. Context IS important.

 

[FredVB]

It is a lifelong thing over to repent and ask for forgiveness. Jesus is the First and Last, Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and the End!

Throughout the life of any believer who is in Christ, there are necessarily the times that forgiveness is asked for, and this is with repentance, which is needed. But with really being such believer who is in Christ, there is repentance at the start in coming to Christ from life of sin, which we need deliverance from. This repentance is to keep us away from the same sins, and is with it lasting in a believer's life to turn up from sins later, which still happen with the fallen corrupt nature we still continue with, the connection with which we are supposed to die to, according to God's will for us.

 

[FredVB]

God and God alone chooses those who are His and He births and maintains faith by His people hearing the Word proclaimed and having the Holy Sacraments administered to them. We do have a loving God who in fact wants all people to be saved, but we, tainted as we are by Original Sin, are completely dead and in need of the Holy Spirit to revive us, so we can produce fruits of the Spirit.

Does God choose without basis? Is there not basis God does have for who God chooses? And why does God require of us that we choose? Does God require something that is meaningless? God does want all to be saved, God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance, that they will have the faith. So there is necessarily basis to God not choosing some.

 

[FredVB]

If there was nothing but arbitrary whims for basis of who God chooses, letting others perish in eternity, God would not be good, but God is good.

 

[Particular]

If there was nothing but arbitrary whims for basis of who God chooses, letting others perish in eternity, God would not be good, but God is good.

What whim?
If God was only just and showed no grace, every human soul would perish in hell and God would be good to do so.
What you think is unfair is that a just God is gracious only to some and not to all.

 

[FredVB]

What whim?
If God was only just and showed no grace, every human soul would perish in hell and God would be good to do so.
What you think is unfair is that a just God is gracious only to some and not to all.

God is good, and because God is good, God is just, God is loving, God is caring, God is merciful, and God is gracious. All that God is, is without limit. God is never unfair. But what you believe is not fair. God has basis, and God says in revelation what is needed from us..

 

[Particular]

God is good, and because God is good, God is just, God is loving, God is caring, God is merciful, and God is gracious. All that God is, is without limit. God is never unfair. But what you believe is not fair. God has basis, and God says in revelation what is needed from us..

There is nothing we can do to earn God's grace. Therefore, you call God a liar when he says he chooses, elects and predestined. Instead, you demand that God save you by your works, despite the fact that all your works fall pitifully short and you die in your sins. That is the revelation of God, that you and I are hopelessly lost and only God by his gracious choice, by no merit of our own doing, can find us and save us.
Please stop making salvation all about your own works.

 

[Andrew]

I'm just going to leave this here if y'all don't mind