Cheryl Schatz

Seeking truth, welcome to The Giving blog! I appreciate you attempting to answer my questions as you believe a Calvinist would. Under your point # 1, I would recommend that you re-read my article as you seem to have missed the point. The point is two-fold, tht the condition for man’s coming is not in man, but within God and that those who do come MUST first be drawn by the Father so that the ones who are raised up are the ones who have been taught and have responded to the Father by learning from Him. There is nothing in the article that says a man can come on his own to Jesus. Under your point #2, the Bible does not say that God’s drawing mean He is IN us. It does mean that He is revealing Himself to us and teaching us. If He was already IN us, then John 5:25 would not show that we hear and then live, but we would have to rewrite it to say we live and THEN hear. I would rather just stick to the Bible with the revelation it gives us. In your point #3, the passage says nothing about God drawing us by changing our nature. The Greek word that is translated as draw NEVER means to give life to the person. If you think this would be a proper Calvinist answer perhaps you could point to a reputable lexicon that gives that meaning for the word draw. I have never seen it and the standard work BDAG does not list that meaning. I would be happy to interact with any findings tht you have. Thanks for dropping by!