Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

I agree that God is rich in mercy- none of us deserve to be saved, we have all fallen short of the glory of God have we not? But still only a limited number of people are saved. Even you believe this because you are not a universalist. You can’t discredit Calvinists because they believe that a limited number are saved. Any evangelical believes that, reformed or not.

I will agree that there are few who are saved, but this is because few put their faith in Christ and accept God’s free gift. It isn’t because God has predestined the majority to be created unconditionally to go to hell without the price paid for them by Jesus on the cross. But to charge God with deliberately and willfully and unconditionally creating people to go to hell, is not the God of love and the God who is filled with mercy to the many.

If we say that fearing God saves us and that it is in our own strength, then yes it is works based.

I have already told you that we cannot save ourself. Our fear cannot save us and our faith cannot do the work of creating a clean heart and giving us eternal life. Only God can save us as His work alone saves. However God who has free choices, has the freedom to give His free gift with a condition of faith. Claiming that faith is a work in this instance is akin to claiming that cashing a welfare cheque is work! One who cashes their welfare cheque is accepting a free gift and they cannot claim that they have worked for the money.

David is a great example of all this. He was a God fearing man, he worshiped God, he loved God. Yet he continually asked that God would enable him to do this.

David didn’t ask God to “enable” him to fear or “enable” him to worship or “enable” him to love God. Rather he asked God to teach him, given him understanding and lead him. The passage that you quoted does not say that fear is a gift. Instead David says that the ungodly don’t fear because of their own sin, not because God hasn’t “gifted” them with fear.

Psalm 36:1 (NASB) Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; There is no fear of God before his eyes.

God acts so that all may fear Him, but never does the Scripture say that God drops fear as a gift in a person’s heart. Fear is what we do as a response to what God does.

Psalm 67:7 (NASB)
7 God blesses us,
That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.

David didn’t trust in his own fear or faith or ability.

No one is saying that we are to trust our fear. What I am saying is that our fear shows our obedience to God and it is not a gift that God drops into our heart without any repentance on our part.

He knew all these things were the gift of God.

David never says that his “fear” is a gift from God.

He prayed to his Father that God may continue to bless him with those things.

The thing that David is asking God to bless him with is God’s promises.

This is the reformed position in a nutshell.

So the reformed “Calvinist” position is that the fear of God is a “gift”? How sad that although Scripture never says God gifts people with fear, that we are expected to wait for fear to be dropped into our heart as a “gift” instead of responding of our own free will. I have never seen such a system in Christianity that read so much into the words of Scripture in order to prove their own doctrine. It sure does remind me of Paul’s words to the Galatians in Gal. 3:1. I wonder how many books they had to read to believe in the additions to the Scripture? I am not trying to put you down at all. I am just amazed at how “gift” can be read into anything without so much as the word being used in the passage or the thought expressed. And where else is this “gift” of fear expressed? What man of God in the Bible ever called the fear of God a gift?

But we dare never look to our own strength and ability nor should we think we know who God bestows his gifts too.

God has clearly spoken that He has paid the price for all for salvation is an unmerited “gift” offered to all who will accept His condition.

Anyway I need to take a break. I’l let you catch up before I comment again.

Thanks! You must have more time on your hands these days as it has been difficult for me to catch up to you. I want to finish shortly and then start John 6 and we can stick with it until we are done.