Krissi

At this point, I simply look away when I read accounts of, or debates about, predestination and freewill. I don't understand it. I don't think I ever will. What I want to know is if God answers my prayers for the salvation of others. Will He change His mind? Does he bend His ear toward me and grant my desire that my father, for example, who is now very elderly and dying, accepts Him before his near death? If our "fate" is set in stone, predetermined before we are born, then why evangelize ... why struggle to tell people about Him? Why preach the good news? I want to know if God answers prayers for the salvation of others.

I don't know how the Spirit works in Christians after they're saved. I know this happens, but I don't know how it happens. One of Oswald Chamber's major themes is that the Spirit forms Christ in us. In Oswald's interpretation, I become less me and more Christ as Christ "takes over" my mind and body. This is sanctification or the working out of salvation. Dying to self and allowing Christ to take over is not easy. I'm not even sure how it happens. So many times I toss around phrases like "dying to self," without really thinking about what this means. Does the Spirit cause my self-death? Am I responsible for killing the self in me? Something in-between? I don't think that we should judge whether a person is a Christian (or not) by observing his/her behavior. God takes His time with sanctification. Small changes occur inside before becoming visible to others. Some of these changes aren't even discernable to the Christian as he/she is experiencing them! Only in retrospect can we see that God has worked in us.

I'm grateful for this lesson because it set out the problem of unbelief more clearly for me. I neither know how the Spirit prepares some people nor do I know if the Spirit works in ALL people, though I hope so. All I know is what I see with my eyes, that some people seem dead-set against faith, adamantly so, and refuse to even consider the possibility of God's existence. Either they never received the Spiritual tugging or they rejected it. If the Spirit had been drawing these Seculars toward God unsuccessfully, He didn't pull hard enough. IF the Spirit draws some of us toward God, which I believe, then why doesn't He pull harder on those who resist Him? He pulled hard on Paul, after all. Paul's salvation was dramatic. The Spirit pulled Paul by blinding him and then sending him into the desert for several years. If faith is a gift of God, I want to know why everyone doesn't have faith. This goes beyond free will and, in a way, goes beyond the "irresistible" nature of salvation of which Calvin speaks. Here are the options. The Spirit successfully drew a person toward God. The Spirit unsuccessfully drew a person toward God -- that person rejected the Spirit. The Spirit never drew a person to God to begin with -- he or she was not elected. He or she didn't get the gift of the Spirit therefore had no tugging of the Spirit to ignore.

I think the reason why works-righteousness is "ingrained" in people is that Christian faith has an ethical component, not just a salvation component. Even salvation has a "work" element to it -- the saved person must ASK to be saved, HUMBLE himself to want God, and have the FAITH of a mustard seed. In other words, there are behavioral and intellectual preconditions to salvation, which the concept of grace slides over or ignores. It is true that the faith in itself to be saved comes from the Spirit, so in a sense, it's all from God -- the faith to ask for salvation as well as the gift of salvation. But there has to be a human element in salvation, if only the willingness to be saved, otherwise humans would not be responsible for their sin or for asking to be saved. It's that responsibility ... that volition ... that makes grace such a difficult concept. So, it's not that people are trying to be "good enough" to get to God, but rather that they're unwilling to do the minimum to be saved. They're unwilling to bend, to admit fault, and to cede self-authority to God. They're not saying they're "good" but rather acknowledging, without knowing it, that God's election has passed them up. Exactly how do the concepts of grace and election coexist? Salvation by grace does not "change the picture" of the CHRISTIAN who feels uppity because of his/her good behavior. That's a separate issue, in my opinion. Pride, self-righteousness and social or comparative self-elevation are simply sins apart from and subsequent to salvation. These sins don't negate grace.

We are rescued from our own proclivities. Some of us are rescued without knowing we were in trouble. I have a pretty good idea what I would have been like had I not miraculously -- by His grace! -- become a Christian, which is what everyone else in my family is like, unbelievers all. So, for reasons I do not understand, God plucked only me from this family ... He rescued me even though I didn't know I needed rescuing. If you're drowning and subsequently plucked out of an ocean, you necessarily feel gratitude and thankfulness, but in my situation, I was drowning but didn't know it. My rescue was entirely His doing. I didn't ask to be rescued; I didn't want to be rescued; I didn't know I needed to be rescued -- but I was rescued. Amazing grace.

Jesus is the final “animal" sacrificed for sins, the ultimate sacrifice, God’s lamb. As a man, he allowed himself to be murdered like an animal – his blood, like the blood of an animal, pleased God somehow. Salvation has a “yet … not yet” quality to it. I am certain of my salvation: when I die I will not go to hell. But before I die, in my everyday life, my salvation isn’t complete. That statement is not quite right. Let me try again. My salvation, as I live this day, is complete, but it’s effects within me are limited. I’m saved from sin in a theoretical/otherworldly/next-life sense, but on earth, there’s sin all around me as well as inside of me. My thoughts are not totally pure. I’m still a sinner even after salvation. Furthermore, though my sins are forgiven in a judicial sense, the consequences of sins persist, as does the tendency to sin. That tendency lessens with spiritual maturity– and with the Holy Spirit’s persistent involvement in my life -- though consequences of past (and future) sin were not removed at the cross. I’ve had a difficult time understanding this for many years.

I know in my head that I've been redeemed from "slavery" which is the same as my sinful nature and sin itself, but often I don't feel very redeemed. In this sense, I'm still a slave to my own sinful character. Yes, I still sin. At times, I even want to sin. At times, I don't want to sin but sin anyway. The price of being freed was paid by Christ, but my freedom is in process. I'm as free from sin as I am sanctified. As I write, the war in the Ukraine is raging. In the midst of this war, combatants from both sides are exchanging prisoners, a gentle and humane act in the midst of war's barbarism. In a sense, that's what Jesus has done -- He's exchanged Himself for all of us in a gigantic prisoner swap. We are rescued from our place of slavery ... returned home. He took our place. The analogy isn't perfect, but it gives part of the truth.

The predominate evil in humanity is one of the biggest stumbling blocks toward accepting Christ many secular people seem to have. Most secular people believe that people are pretty good, if left alone or raised correctly, and that any "sin" is a result of a bad environment, not something that wells up from within. As Christians, we know better. We know, or have been shown by the Spirit, that we are totally corrupted, that no one part of us is free from the tendency to sin.

Jen, upthread, stated our situation well, "... He did not understand the heart issue that his very thoughts condemned him. He did not understand that he needed to be cleansed on the inside. He was rich, a ruler and outwardly righteous and good in men's eyes. All the things that people see but God looks at the heart. These deceitful old hearts of ours." "Mr. Perfect" -- the rich young ruler -- was young, rich and powerful. He had won life's lottery. On top of this, he was genuinely a nice guy. And even he couldn't be saved??? The ruler represents the best we could imagine ourselves to be by our own effort or by birth -- Jesus takes our best to a new level and in doing so makes our best look like nothing. If salvation is contingent on perfect belief/thoughts not behavior, then we're all condemned. Implicit in this parable is the idea that would be possible to behave very well, even perfectly, but not possible to think perfectly. Our minds/hearts are corrupted to such an extent that the virtue of self-discipline will not control our inner or most real selves. Given this situation, that our minds are corrupted, we need a way out of this morass. Most seculars simply say to themselves that it doesn't matter, that they're good enough or that they don't care or need salvation. They don't need grace because they don't want it. As Jen said, "He did not understand ..." Increasingly, I'm seeing that God calls us to salvation. He plants the seed. He waters it. He makes people willing to come to Him. Without His initiative, no one would know God. Are my prayers for the salvation of people I know or love heard by God? I think so. Will He answer them affirmatively? I don't know. He chooses and beckons as He does.

Jesus "promise" to the man that he would be with him in paradise is definitely a statement of salvation. The thief didn’t say he expected to be in paradise – that would be a statement of faith – but that he wanted to be “remembered” by Jesus who would surely be in paradise. His faith was in Jesus' character and Jesus' future in heaven. The man admitted his guilt. There was, then, a confession of his sin or sinful past. He knew that Jesus wasn't guilty though I'm not sure he understood Jesus to be God. In his mind, Jesus was able to remember him when in paradise. -- Question: Didn't Jesus descend into hell straightaway after he died? I'm Anglican. In every service we recite the apostle's creed which describes how Jesus ... "... suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried; he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven ..."

The father in this parable is like so many fathers/mothers who have wayward kids and pine for their restoration, salvation and return. (I pray often for my children who are much like the prodigals of this story.) Is God like this with us? Yes. But God's Spirit pulls us toward Him, closer to salvation. We are saved because God the Father didn't passively wait, as we must with our prodigals, but actively searches for us. That's where the analogy breaks down. The son's sincere repentance is the part of the story I find most touching for it's difficult to truly repent. There's often a wee bit of holding back, or self-justifying, but not in this story. This boy was truly repentant, so much so that he asked to be restored not as a son but as a servant. Where is the grace in this story? In the father, of course. He loved his son without hesitation or doubt. He didn't question him. He didn't seem worried that the son was truly repentant. He wasn't concerned that his son would take advantage of him, once again. He just loved the kid. That's the point, I suppose, that we to love our own prodigals unquestioningly, without doubting their motives for returning or the sincerity of their repentance, leaving that to God to work out as well as to protect us.

In Mt 18.27 the king shows grace by having canceled his debt, wiping away his IOU. There does not appear to be any conditions on the debt forgiveness. In the two extra verses that Pastor Ralph gives, however, grace seems qualified. To receive God's grace certain preconditions must be met. First, in Mt 18.35, God's grace is contingent on our forgiving others. To word this in the negative, a person who has not forgiven other will not receive God's grace. This worries me. Have I truly forgiven people who have hurt me? Is there some lingering anger within me? Second, in Mt 6.12f, A verse about temptation and deliverance is sorta wedged in between two verses about grace. But, in this case, God delivers us -- we don't do anything EXCEPT ask him to keep us from temptation and deliver us. So grace, again, is contingent upon our asking to be delivered from Satan. -- The idea of grace is getting murkier in my mind. Yesterday it was close in meaning to love -- today it's close in meaning to forgiveness. Grace may be unmerited, but it's not freely given. It's contingent on truly forgiving others as well as asking God to help us fend off temptation.

Many if not most people don't feel a part of a community therefore don't have "neighbors" in the sense this question implies. I've been living in a very dense city for the past few months. Here, my "neighbors" include anyone I don't know or don't associate with often, which is pretty much everyone! Though I meet few people, I pray for those that the Lord brings to my attention. This not direct grace -- the grace of the Samaritan -- but an indirect grace -- mercy from a distance. I think of indirect grace as that of the biblical stories in which Jesus wept for people he didn't know or contact, including all those within the city of Jerusalem. (I may be confusing grace with mercy and love, however.)

I remember, many years ago, hearing John 3.16 for the first time and not having a clue as to what it meant. I think my problem was the word "begotten." At the time, I pulled that word apart into BE+GOTTEN, a combination of being and getting. In a way, this is what grace is. God graciously be-got his son -- He was given being and we "got" Him. We didn't deserve Jesus. We didn't ask for Him. We just got Him. He assumed the form of a "human being" so we'd be able to recognize, then accept, the gift of Him. (When seculars hear the gospel for the first time, or even subsequent times, their minds don't gloss over words that people within the Christian orbit seem to have imbibed.)

Bonhoeffer speaks to the lukewarm, the spiritual mediocrities that unfortunately fill most churches today. His "cheap grace" is the state of being satiated with the comfort of salvation and the knowledge that no matter what one does "nothing will separate from Christ's love." Cheap grace take the truth of eternal security and twists it, making it all there is to the Christian life. The attitude of satiation, that the life I'm living is good enough, that God will reach down to pull me close to Him, that my responsibility is to passively wait, just wait, or just stand there in my armor without fighting so Christ fights for me ... these are passive attitudes that MAY have some truth to them, but if made all truth, they're spiritually deadening. Dual agency. God has done, and is still doing -- I am now obeying affirmatively, by living out what I believe He is asking me to do, be and think.

Of course there are good deeds and thoughts in all humanity. Many secular people do good, noble and selfless deeds every day. But their goodness, like that of Christians, is tinged with badness -- there's no "pure play" among us, saved or secular. Sanctification is a process. It's not instantaneous ... not at all. With the Holy Spirit's indwelling power, Christians battle their own tendencies until they die. This is the "deceitful heart," the part of us that we may not be aware of, but that emerges into awareness when we do or think things that are shameful. One of the fault lines between secular and Christian people is the idea that people are essentially good. Seculars will always assert that people are good -- in their minds, society, global warming, bad parenting, political policies or whatever cause people to do and think bad things. They believe the innermost core of a person is malleable which is why they propagandize, "educate" and manipulate. Christians become increasingly aware of their own deceitful heart, as they mature spiritually. This troubling self-knowledge does make us wary, not only of others, but of ourselves. Christians will never assert that people are essentially good. They know better. They know themselves.

Since everyone I know and love is an unbeliever, the idea that they're God's "objects of wrath" hits me hard, yet I know it's true. They are vulnerable to the secular world's allures as well as propaganda because they have no external rock or referent on which to stand. All they have is inside of them, which is malleable and weak. Even my secular father, who is a very strong individual, has a sort of fluctuating situational ethic. Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit within, the only boundaries are social and legal, and even these loose, low hedges are being mowed down. When we pray for the salvation of people, including loved ones, God often tarries. Years pass without any visible signs of inner awakening. Yet, I believe -- perhaps, just hope -- that God honours these prayers. I wanted to add this verse, as it describes so well what it's like to be secular: "I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold." I think this is from the 69th or 70th psalm.

I spoke, last night, to a lovely young man from Africa who had been raised a Christian and yet abandoned his faith more than a decade ago. He did not see his current situation as "powerless," he did not think of himself as "ungodly," and though he admitted he had sinned, he did not think of himself as a "sinner." I don't know why only we -- Christians -- receive insight into their own depravity but not others. Obviously the Spirit illuminates our mind and heart; quickens our spirit so we turn toward Christ. But this fundamental insight in Romans, that we are sinful and separated from God because of our sin, isn't intuitively obvious to most people. Like this young man, they simply don't or can't see themselves in this way. Christ died for people who refuse to see their need for His death as well as those who acknowledge their own sin.

The "state of grace" is the continuing condition of grace within us. We get to this condition-of-grace via faith. Faith justifies us, as did the faith of Abraham, so that God sees us as righteous. I suppose the opposite of peace with God would be not having the condition of faith or the justification of faith that makes us righteous before God. This verse is confusing.

God "chose" Hosea to marry a girl he did not know or love, had a horrible reputation and probably didn't want to be married to him. Was Hosea's life sacrificed to make a morality allegory for future generations? Hosea seems like a good man and faithful prophet so why has this happened to him? The allegoric parallel between Hosea and Gomer and God and the Israelites is clear, and it's lovely that God tells Hosea to re-find Gomer and bring her back after essentially buying her. The idea that Christians are purchased with the blood of Christ comes to mind. Hosea was gracious toward this woman just as God is gracious toward us.

God forgives all sins but only after a person repents of these sins, specific ones. The sin of rebellion is the human condition. It's the original sin in the Garden, the sin that precipitated all other sins. Humans are born rebellious. They spend their life "working out their salvation," that is, doing what is humanly possible to further the process of sanctification, though sanctification, in the end, is a divine work. I no longer think about what will happen to people who do not repent and surrender -- my family. It's upsetting and gets me nowhere. Those of us who have prayed for a particular person's salvation or even that of an entire nation must leave the answering of that prayer to Him. Why some never choose God is His mystery, not mine -- why God chooses some is also His mystery.

I always thought that Moses was speaking about God in this passage; it was not God self-revealing His own character -- I was wrong. It's odd, though, that God announced Himself by name as He passed in front of Moses -- "Yahweh ... Yahweh ..." Surely, Moses knew it was God! Yet God made certain that Moses didn't have any doubt or second thoughts about His presence. Another mistake I have made is to think of the OT as law and the NT as grace, as if they were separated dispensations. Having said this, grace is a much bigger concept -- a more frequent word? -- in the NT. If God progressively revealed Himself in biblical history, Christians, perhaps, should not read back into the OT the NT idea of grace. But this, too, could be wrong. Since we know God is grace/gracious, why not read this later revelation back into earlier ones? It's accurate, after all. Just thinking aloud ...

How does grace (Greek charis) differ from earning wages? From earning favor by being good? What is a helpful working definition of Biblical grace? In what way does grace characterize “the God of all grace”? I desperately want to understand grace, but the definition -- unlimited favor -- doesn't take into consideration the great suffering that some Christian experience in their lifetime. Obviously, we can't earn grace, but can we ask for it, or it grace something that God Himself bestows at his pleasure. Is it right to pray for grace or has this already been factored into our lives? I hope this study answers some of my heartfelt questions.

For most of his life, Elijah was a herder -- that was his mission, what God chose him to do. Then his mission changed. He became a prophet. So, Elijah's life was split between two missions: herder and prophet. Slowly, God filled Elijah's life with people. His first mission, as a herder, was solitary. Too, sitting by Cherith was an isolating experience. But then, his life expanded to include the widow and her son. In time, Elisha became his constant companion. And in the end, he was among a "company of prophets." Missions are not always to people. Sometimes we're called to be isolated in prayer, writing, art, thought ... surrounded by rocks, sheep or even a library of books -- but not people. It could be the case that for most people, such isolation ends with a change in mission. Isolation could be a time of preparation and inner change, an essential part of the mission. It took years of isolation to ready Elijah to approach the king to deliver his stinging message. It doesn't appear that he feared this assignment or found it difficult. Remarkably, he developed boldness when alone. So success in this mission wasn't sudden but rather a dot in a linear progression of spiritually maturing. I tend to focus on the great moments in Elijah's life without seeing the long periods between them in which success, too, is measurable. This was success -- Elijah successfully submitted his wandering spirit and inner-strength to God when alone. Note that the final years in Elijah's final life are barely mentioned in scripture. Perhaps Elijah should be seen as having three stages in his life -- herder, prophet to power, administrator. The last years of his life were spent setting up a prophetic school and administrating it. This was his mission. I assume he was successful at it. The entire process, his life in itself, was his mission, not merely the glory moments. Still, I think it's important to have goals, to work toward goals and enjoy achievement. I confess to have a excel spread sheet of personal goals that I daily assess. I see some success as measured by this yardstick. God may not notice my markers, however. His yardstick may not be the same as mine. It's sad that we don't know more about Elijah, that the textual evidence for his life is so thin. Though the bible has page after page of genealogies that are so dull my eyes glaze over, there's only a few paragraphs about this amazing man's life. When I get to heaven, I'm going to talk to God about this!

What keeps me from being used effectively, asks Pastor Ralph. God can use anyone in extraordinary ways. He can even speak through a donkey if He so chooses. But will He choose to use me ... you? That's up to Him. What keeps me from being used effectively may be God Himself. The Elijah story shows how God chose an individual who went on to experience both moments of great faith as well as those of tragic despondency and despair. I am strangely comforted by His choice of Elijah because I know I don't merit His attention and will never have enough faith or belief to warrant being used. God uses individuals who are not up to His calling. My calling, to the degree I receive one, will be based on His ability, not mine. I don't think it's the degree of my belief that makes me usable. It's not like I can muster up more faith/belief through prayer. Belief, itself, is a gift. Faith is His gift. Thus, I cannot choose to be used. That choice is His. He is absolutely sovereign. Hope is continuing to anticipate God's good response even when nothing happens. Hope begs to be used, then waits.