Posted on 09/03/2016 8:24:21 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
I may be wrong, but I don’t sense you’ve even wrestled with this at all. It doesn’t seem as if you’ve considered the opposing position to any extent. Instead it seems as if you, like far too many, support doctrine to suit yourself by cherry-picking verses and reading out-of-context. It seems as if you just know what you believe, that’s the position you like, and you don’t want to change. I could be wrong, but that’s how it seems. In the end it doesn’t matter what doctrine we are comfortable with, we must deal with God as He presents Himself in the Scriptures. Properly understood, the sovereignty of God in all things, including salvation, is extremely comforting to the believer.
About ten years ago a friend was in town from Toronto and I gave him a stack of sermons and audiobooks for his trip home. Most of it was material defending limited atonement and the Doctrines of Grace. He’s a well-educated and mature Christian in his 60’s but he’d never been confronted with TULIP, so he was eager to understand what it was all about. After a day of driving he checked into a hotel and sent me an email letting me know he didn’t agree with any of what he’d heard and that he had better things to do with his time and would never get around to listening to the rest of it. The tone was clearly one of anger, which disappointed me. Then again I understood because I knew his long held presuppositions had been challenged and his pride bruised. I sent him an email back and apologized for upsetting him, but he didn’t respond back. After he was home I made a few attempts to reach him but he ignored me. I presumed I had lost a friend over my understanding of what the Bible teaches about God and the way of salvation. Oh well.
One day 6-8 months later I got an email from my Canadian minister friend. He wanted me to know that he hadn’t been able to forget what he’d heard. For months the Lord hounded him until he started listening and studying the matter again because his desire for the truth overcame his wounded pride. With Bible in hand he’d gone through my materials over and over again until he understood and couldn’t argue with them. He was writing to let me know he’d already gone to the other leaders in his church to let them know he was now a Calvinist. He was both excited and overwhelmed. One problem he had was isolation. He didn’t know a single person who shared his understanding, so he made several trips back to see me so we could sit and discuss the Bible. We were reconciled, our friendship much stronger than before.
That’s all I’m saying on this, so I’ll simply end with God bless.
Proverbs 18:13
Faith is only as hard as we make it.
It’s a work of God in us and incredibly simple when we remain in fellowship with Him. By daily intake of His Word, God the Holy Spirit takes the Word circulating in our thinking to slowly sanctify our souls from past scarred thinking.
Once we know the material, it’s simple.
TULIP is a nice acronym, though I find the L to be better expressed as a U to remain consistent with what Christ provided on the Cross.
In some respects, it might be a moot point for those who are believers, but the more I study the roles of the different persons of the Godhead, the more unlimited atonement is consistent with the work of Christ.
Conversely, I have met some who study theology, but have never really believed in Christ. Instead, they are tempted to focus on human good as a substitute panacea for faith in Christ and what He provided at the Cross. Accordingly, they will be most rigorous in academic study and tend towards legalism, insisting upon avoiding sin in order to be ‘good’ and obedient to His Law, even to the point of renaming His Law as His Word, but still not following Him through dimple faith alone in Christ alone.
Limited Atonement is a natural course for that type of thinking which fails to simply place faith in Him. Instead there is a tinge of arrogance in it, seeking to justify the condemnation of those who don’t believe and separating God and His blessings from them.
Man might not live up to God’s standards, but God remains faithful and true. His judgment upon sin was never wrong. Likewise, those who haven’t received salvation because they reject Him, are already condemned. He doesn’t have to have any further justification for their condemnation. Meanwhile, no man can claim God hasn’t also afforded all men the opportunity of salvation.
Indeed, it is the elect who are saved, but this merely amplifies His Plan, predestination, and the logistics of His Plan in our lives.
I am not sure what you think support your opposition to Scripture, for it is one thing to engage in a optional practice that is supported in principle in Scripture, that of a use of means of communication, and another thing to oppose and attack a practice that is clearly commanded and advocated. And it is also another thing to make as binding belief something that has no support and is contrary to what is shown. Thus you attack what Scripture commands and are an unScriptural priest in a church that makes as binding doctrine things which are nowhere seen in Scripture by believers, and is contrary to what it does teach.
I don’t believe in “new study” findings. They are nothing more than opinions with facts twisted around them. To show how stupid this study is compare America or Europe penal system to say the Middle East. They don’t hesitate to use the death penalty or offering stiff punishment for crime whereas America and Europe are constantly wringing their hands over incarceration. The evidence is in who has the lower crime rate.
To say there are no benefits to punishment, including spanking, is nothing more than liberal garbage.
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