Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You quoted me and then commented:

“God doesn’t demand that people come to Him for forgiveness and then refuse to give them what they need to obey Him.”

Here is your wrong assumption again that God is obligated to us. Yes God does demand them to repent, yet while they are still in their sinful state they will never do it. God bestows mercy on whomever he wills and leaves the rest in their own sinful condition. This is again grace. Grace is undeserved mercy, not deserved mercy for my ‘good works’ or ‘conditions’ I have met.

I am not assuming that God is obligated to us. But while God may not be obligated to us, He is obligated for His own sake and for His own Name to redeem His own image. God has placed within us His own image and if He refused to provide an atonement for us, His own image would be rejected and devalued as worthless.

Isaiah 43:25 (NASB)
25 “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake,
And I will not remember your sins.

Isaiah 48:9 (NASB)
9 “For the sake of My name I delay My wrath,
And for My praise I restrain it for you,
In order not to cut you off.

Isaiah 48:11 (NASB)
11 “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act;
For how can My name be profaned?
And My glory I will not give to another.

Ezekiel 20:9 (NASB)
9 “But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them by bringing them out of the land of Egypt.

So God acts and deals with our sin for His own sake. A God who refuses to provide atonement for His Own Image has refused to act for His own sake. I believe that it is very clear in the Scripture that even though we do not desire God acting on our behalf, He remains faithful to His own name and He has provided that His own image in man has been redeemed in the atonement.

Those who see God as creating millions and billions of humans who God refuses to redeem the Image of God within them must provide Biblical evidence that God has no problem failing to redeem His image. In Isaiah 48:11 God says it twice “For My own sake” as a double emphasis that the ultimate and highest reason that God can act is “For His own sake”.

“But the election was not unconditionally for salvation. The election was for an earthly purpose as God’s representative on the earth.”

Nonesense. “Not all Israel is Israel”- individuals? Mercy on whom he will- mercy is grace- individuals.

I did not say a word about not being individuals. I said that the election was not unconditional for salvation. But let’s leave this one until we come to Romans 9, okay?

“However but His ultimate knowledge of what Pharoah would do is never done until Pharoah first hardens his own heart.”

Does Exodus 4 and 7 say “God foreknew what Pharoah would do and therefore after Pharoah does harden his heart, then I will harden it”, or does it say clearly “that God will be the one who hardens Pharoahs heart”. The verse is not passive and observatory. Dance all you like, but the text speaks for itself. Again please be consistent with you interest in ‘precise grammar’.

I would love to answer this one too, but that would get us into the issue of Romans and that should be where we go next after we are done John 6.