Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

No one will be born again yet reject salvation. Anyone who is born again is given a new heart.

This is another problem area for you. The new heart that is given is one that has been cleansed from sin. How is a person who has a clean heart not saved?

Psalm 51:10 (NASB)
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Acts 15:9 (NASB)
9 and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

When we are given that new heart from God, that heart is cleansed of our sin and it always comes by faith and it always means salvation has come. It is completely baffling to me with the amount of teaching in Scripture about the new birth and the new heart that one could claim that the person is not saved who has that new cleansed heart. But for some reason the “system” of Calvinism doesn’t work without the denial that this is the work of God saving us. It has to be denied. For me, I would rather just believe God’s word that the new birth and the new cleansed heart is God’s work of salvation just as it says.

their eyes are open, they accept Jesus as saviour and Lord. I think we would agree on that, and i equally agree with the passages you quoted from Peter- i’m not denying any of that.

The problem is that you are actually denying it. You have to deny that the moment that the person is “born again” and has been given a “new heart” that is cleansed from sin, they are not saved. They will be saved at some point, according to Calvinism, but at that miraculous moment they are not saved. Rather than give God glory for the saving work that He alone does in our heart, Calvinism forces one to deny that this is a saving work of God. I am talking about the right now act of the new heart. You say it leads to salvation, but the Scriptures don’t ever say that. You have to read it into the passage, but I don’t even understand how you can do that. Give God the glory for what He has done. His cleansing work of providing new birth and a new heart cleansed from sin is the act of salvation. I will never deny God the glory of His act.

Now where does it say that a new heart is not yet salvation? Why would God need to give further gifts to save a person when a heart cleansed of its sin has no ability to be reprobate?

I will carry on in the next comment.