Live 4 The LORD

Mans will, Gods will, Gods love, reprobation, defect of evil, mystery of choice, & salvation

FREE WILL?

Human beings are incapable of changing themselves and require God to radically alter their lives sovereignly through the Holy Spirit. [SURRENDER]

The free will we have is: to say YES, I want to live for your glory, or NO I don’t want to live for your glory, but to do what I want with my life (that you gave me, that you have authority over, and that you have given me commandments to live fruitfully – which I am rejecting). 

 

GOD’S WILL: 

God wills that all be saved in the same way that a judge wills all men to be free and live, although given good reason, this will may be reversed (unless or until that one person is considered an extreme danger and menace of society by killing and raping others, in which case a good judge may will him to hang or be thrown in jail rather than live and be free).  But this does not destroy the “good will” of the judge; therefore, neither should it cause us to call into question God’s good will to those who are damned. 

Nothing can resist the divine will, so whether things happen necessarily or contingently, they happen the way God intends

1. From all eternity God has preconceived the idea of ordaining some to salvation. God chooses whomever he pleases and passes over the rest. The elect are not passive bystanders but active participants in the working out of their salvation. They are to be diligent in prayer and good deeds for in this way the effect of predestination is fulfilled. This is not achieved through self-effort – it is GRACE. The one infused with grace needs additional grace to live rightly. Even after one is justified by grace the recipient must ask God for the gift of perseverance to persist in good until the end. Daisy chains of grace. (SURRENDER)

2. God comes to us and sufficiently gives grace to choose yes or no to everyone. Grace is resistible. And grace is built upon grace, if you keep saying yes, you keep growing. If you fall you start again and may or may not build up again, or even get grace again.

 

DOES GOD LOVE EVERYONE: 

To love is essentially to will a person good. Nevertheless, there are degrees of love. In one sense God loves all his creatures “insofar as they exist, for their existing is his love in operation (he created them in love).” Divine charity extends to all men, “in that he wills some good for every one of them. But he does not will every good for everyone.

He does not love all equally. Members of his only begotten Son are loved more fully, not necessarily with greater intensity, but by the fact that God wills them the greater good of eternal life. This differentiation is not unjust. If every sinner received his due all would be condemned. God is under no obligation to extend grace to anyone.

 

REPROBATION: 

Reprobation, like predestination, is a part of providence since by God’s providence men are guided to their final destination. Reprobation is God’s “will to permit someone to fall into fault and to inflict the penalty of damnation in consequence. As a result of God’s dereliction people are left to themselves and eternally punished for their demerits. Those deprived of saving grace are said to be hated by God. Malachi 1:2 b, “I loved Jacob, but hated Esau.”

This has been ordained by God from eternity. God does not bestow on some the help for avoiding sin which He bestows on others. We should not inquire as to the reason why God permits some men to go their own way, for ultimately this depends on his “sheer will.” Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make of the same lump one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” (Rom. 9:21)

 

EVIL is a DEFECT: 

The proximate agent of sin is the human will. This defect is not from God who as the prime agent and source of all good can never be the cause of evil. Although one whom God reprobates cannot gain grace, nevertheless the fact that he flounders in this or that sin happens of his own responsibility. 

Sin does not originate with God. Indeed, it is impossible for God to cause anyone to sin. Just as the sun illumines all bodies but leaves them in darkness if encountered by an obstacle, so the reprobate are the cause of their own darkness by creating an obstacle to the illumination of God in the soul. God does not harden “by inserting malice, but by not affording grace.

 

MYSTERY OF GOD’s CHOICE:

Why God chooses one and not the other can only be attributed to the divine will and thus remains a mystery. God chooses some and rejects others to make his mercy appear in the elect and his justice in the reprobate. He does not permit men to fall into sin because he takes pleasure in damning the wicked, but for the manifestation of his perfect justice.

All deserve wrath and only some are afforded grace. God makes, “from the same spoiled matter of the human race” vessels unto honor and others unto dishonor. Ultimately, sinners are culpable for their present corruption which ends in judgment. Reprobation does not cause this condition, but it is “why we are left without God.”

 

SALVATION:

THE CROSS DID ALL THESE THINGS:

MORALITY: Saved from being Un-Christlike – Morality change by imitation of His whole life.

RANSOMED: Jesus Christ died as a ransom sacrifice, paid to God the Father. Jesus’ death then acts as a payment to satisfy the debt on the souls of the human race, the same debt we inherited from Adam’s original sin.

VICTORY: Jesus Christ died to defeat the powers of evil (such as sin, death, and the devil) to free mankind from their bondage. The cross defeated evil thereby setting the human race free.

SATISFACTION: Satisfaction is restitution, the mending of what was broken, and the paying back of a debt. Sin is an injustice that must be balanced. Jesus Christ died to pay back the debt of injustice of human sin and to satisfy the justice of God. 

PENAL SUBSTITUTION: Jesus Christ died to satisfy God’s wrath against human sin. Jesus is punished (penal) in the place of sinners (substitution) to satisfy the justice of God and the legal demand of God to punish sin.

 

T = Total inability (to please God without special grace)

U = Unconditional election (God chooses whomever he pleases and passes over the rest. The ones God chooses will desire to come to him, will accept his offer of salvation, and will do so precisely because he has chosen them)

L = Limited intent (for the atonement’s efficacy) (Christ intended to make salvation possible for all men, but he did not intend to make salvation actual for all men.)

I = Intrinsically efficacious grace (for salvation) Enabling grace is intrinsically efficacious and, consequently, that all who receive this grace will repent and come to God.

P = Perseverance of the elect (until the end of life). To have this perseverance man…needs the divine assistance guiding and guarding him against the attacks of the passions…After anyone has been justified by grace, he still needs to beseech God for the aforesaid gift of perseverance, that he may be kept from evil till the end of life.