Robin Tomlinson

Cheryl, I’m somewhat surprised. It seems as if you are saying that people must first come to the Father before they can come to the Son. If that was true, then Paul would have said to the jailer, “Believe on the Father, and then also believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Regardless, there’s still the infamous Lydia passage that’s always tossed about. Here was a woman who believed in God (the Father), yet it is particularly pointed out that God “opened her heart” so that she heeded the things spoken regarding Jesus. The million dollar question is, Was it a necessary component in Lydia’s salvation for God to open her heart, or was God just being particularly nice to this lady, although He doesn’t do this in all cases? Surely many Jews believed in a living God, believed in the things Moses wrote, believed in a coming Messiah, but didn’t believe in Jesus. Their hearts were not opened by the Lord… I’m still thinking this one over. There does seem to be some Scriptural support for the idea that spiritual knowledge must be directly communicated by God. For example, Peter was a disciple, but Jesus told him it wasn’t flesh and blood that revealed to him that Jesus was the Son of God, but the Father had. If the natural man doesn’t receive spiritual things, then wouldn’t it actually take a supernatural act of God to communicate truth in a way that can be understood – whether it’s first to believe in a living God, or in Christ Himself? As to an example of someone who hated God but became a believer in Jesus – well, anyone whose mind was once governed by the flesh was at enmity (hatred) with God. We once all hated the light because we loved darkness. We couldn’t serve God and mammon because we’d hate the one and love the other. I would think it would be proper to say that all unbelievers, while in that state, hate God.