Cheryl Schatz

Mark, you said:

Thanks for the replies. I want comment extensively until you finish dealing with the exegetical issues i have raised in Eph 2.

Well thanks a bunch. That should help me to catch up before I get the next barrage. I wanted to get through all of the posts as soon and if I get too many back right away, I won’t get finished but get distracted again, so I thank you for being kind to my mind 😉

Also, alot of your comments about what i believe confused me. Can you state what it is you think i am saying about Eph 2.

Sure.

In Ephesians 2:1 I understand that you believe that before we are believers we were completely dead in our trespasses and sins so that we cannot respond to God or do anything spiritually good including loving God, fearing God or believing God.

In verse 2 I understand that you believe that the sins that we were dead in were ones that were from satan the god of this world and it is that spirit that works within the reprobate called sons of disobedience.

In verse 3 I understand that you believe that the elect were among the reprobate living only by our own lusts and doing only what we wanted to do (which is only bad choices following our sinful nature). In this state you believe that the elect that had been picked unconditionally by God from eternity past were by nature the same as the children of the devil. You believe that we were all subject to God’s wrath.

In verse 4 I understand that you believe that God alone decides the time when He will show us His mercy and it is because He loved us from eternity past and picked us to be the elect.

In verse 5 I understand that you believe that while we were helpless in our sins and unable to do any spiritual good and unable to respond to God or fear Him, God brought us to life by unconditionally making us born again which brings us to life spiritually so that we can hear the gospel and believe and experience salvation.

In verse 6 I understand that you believe that God raised us up with Christ and “in Christ” seated us in heaven as part of the body of Christ and all this is a gift of God without any faith of our own but only through the gift of God that assures that that we will believe and continue to believe.

In verse 7 I understand that you believe that in the future ages that God will show the elect as the ones who were unconditionally picked by Him and this unconditional election will bring God great honor and show His sovereignty.

In verse 8 I understand that you believe that we are saved by God’s sovereign grace without our participation of responding to God with our own faith but rather that the grace and God’s faith given as a gift and salvation are all called a gift of God.

In verse 9 I understand that you believe that salvation is not by man’s faith or man’s works by chosing to respond to God but is solely caused by God through God’s choice and this is so that God’s Sovereignty will be praised and no man will get any glory that belongs only to God.

So do I understand you properly or have I misrepresented you in any way?

Finally about the issue of ‘conditions’ that i raised in relation to John 6. You said very clearly that people had to be like A or do A before the Father ‘gives’ them to Jesus. Now you agreed that the passage is saying that all the Father gives ‘come’ to Jesus- that is they believe. So ‘giving’ comes before believing according to the verse. So if you say there are conditions for giving, it inevitably means condiitons have to be met before believing (since giving comes before believing).

What you are missing is that I said that these conditions are met for all who are given to the Son but the ones who are given to Christ are not the only ones who can be saved. But the ones who belong to the Father and are given to the Son have received God’s promise that they will participate in the covenant without fail. They have listened and learned from the Father and they will listen and learn and respond in faith to the Son.

So while you see from chapter 6 that only the ones given by the Father to the Son will receive salvation, the Scripture doesn’t say that. The passage is specifically only talking about one group of people who already belong to the Father.

So you need to reconcile for me how that is not works based, because these conditions are not just faith. They are conditions that need to be met before ‘giving’, thus before faith and before coming/believing.

The Bible makes it clear that there are means of grace. Praying is a means of grace where we can communicate with God and have our heart changed, but prayer as a means of grace is not a work. Every promise of God is a means of grace.

Matthew 7:7–8 (NASB)
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
8 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

Jesus said to ask, seek and knock therefore asking, seeking and knocking are not works if they are combined with faith.

James 1:6–8 (NASB)
6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

In fact anything that God commands if we obey Him in faith, it is not a work. Thus fearing God is not a work. In the Scriptures “works” are in opposition to faith and these kinds of works are called “dead works”.

Hebrews 6:1 (NASB)
1 Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

So when Abraham believed God and obeyed Him in going to the country that God called Him to, this was not a dead work but an act of faith. Believing God, fearing Him, praying to Him – all of these things are not dead works, but acts of faith. God cannot command us to fear Him and then condemn us when we fear Him calling it a “dead work”.

Thanks

You are welcome!