has the father chosen you?
Although the topic of divine election is not a point of salvation, it can effect your entire life and the way you live. It can cause stress in your life, or give you joy; it can make you an evangelist, or a hermit. All in all, it can make you live life the way God intended, or make you miserable and timid.
The Christian life should be one of joy and happiness, which come from a trusting faith in God. However, if you believe as the Arminian do, they believe that you have to be constantly doing righteousness to keep your salvation. This goes against two doctrines, the doctrine of security of salvation, and the doctrine of assurance of salvation. Although the words are close in meaning, their differences are huge in belief. Assurance of salvation is God's promise to us that once we are saved, we remain saved. So that no matter what we do, we will still remain saved (Romans 6:15-22). The doctrine of security of salvation is that once we are saved, we can never become unsaved again (John 10:21). These two doctrines can greatly impact the joy of your life, mainly because without these doctrines, you would life in constant fear of losing your salvation.
The doctrine of divine election has been controversial since at least the 1600's at the synod of Dort, which refuted the beliefs of the arminians. They spent 7 months pouring over scripture to see if anything they believed was even scriptural. The document that they wrote up against it was later referred to as the doctrine of Calvinism.
Arminians believe that man is only sick with sin and that God calls man to himself, but that man must in fact go to God. They believe that God chooses people based on foreseen faith, not on God's own choice.
Calvinist believe that sinners are dead to sin, totally depraved, and can do nothing righteous without God saving them and then working in them to be righteous (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10) Calvinist believe that God chooses people to be saved not based on anything but his perfect plan. For Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (Romans 9:10-13).
A true Calvinist must believe that there is no such thing as freewill, for if we are free to do anything, then we could take the glory for that instead of giving it to God. All good things we do is done by the power of the holy spirit moving us. All wickedness we do is done because of our sin nature and the temptations from Satan and his demons.
Now you may say, "but I can do what ever I want, no one tells me what to do." Well, that is true in a sense, God is all powerful, He is totally sovereign and in control of everything, He knows the future and past infinitely, He orchestrates it all; so everything that is done in the world is in him plan and he allows, for He can not sin. Now, we do not know the future, we are not sovereign, we have no real power in this world. We only know the past and what we have done. So, to someone who only knows that past and is living, it seems to him as if we have a choice in what we do, but we really don't, God has worked it all out, everything that is going to happen. So, to our finite minds, we have freewill, but to God, it is all planned out.
So, with this said, what about evangelism? Do we just do nothing? Absolutely not, we must preach the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mt. 28:16-20). Some believe that since God is in totally control, that means that we don't have to witness and spread the word, it is a dangerous mind set, for is Acts 1:8, "but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." So I challenge you, go through out all the earth, "walking and leaping and praising God" (Acts 3:8) spreading the word and making disciples of every nation.
The Christian life should be one of joy and happiness, which come from a trusting faith in God. However, if you believe as the Arminian do, they believe that you have to be constantly doing righteousness to keep your salvation. This goes against two doctrines, the doctrine of security of salvation, and the doctrine of assurance of salvation. Although the words are close in meaning, their differences are huge in belief. Assurance of salvation is God's promise to us that once we are saved, we remain saved. So that no matter what we do, we will still remain saved (Romans 6:15-22). The doctrine of security of salvation is that once we are saved, we can never become unsaved again (John 10:21). These two doctrines can greatly impact the joy of your life, mainly because without these doctrines, you would life in constant fear of losing your salvation.
The doctrine of divine election has been controversial since at least the 1600's at the synod of Dort, which refuted the beliefs of the arminians. They spent 7 months pouring over scripture to see if anything they believed was even scriptural. The document that they wrote up against it was later referred to as the doctrine of Calvinism.
Arminians believe that man is only sick with sin and that God calls man to himself, but that man must in fact go to God. They believe that God chooses people based on foreseen faith, not on God's own choice.
Calvinist believe that sinners are dead to sin, totally depraved, and can do nothing righteous without God saving them and then working in them to be righteous (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10) Calvinist believe that God chooses people to be saved not based on anything but his perfect plan. For Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (Romans 9:10-13).
A true Calvinist must believe that there is no such thing as freewill, for if we are free to do anything, then we could take the glory for that instead of giving it to God. All good things we do is done by the power of the holy spirit moving us. All wickedness we do is done because of our sin nature and the temptations from Satan and his demons.
Now you may say, "but I can do what ever I want, no one tells me what to do." Well, that is true in a sense, God is all powerful, He is totally sovereign and in control of everything, He knows the future and past infinitely, He orchestrates it all; so everything that is done in the world is in him plan and he allows, for He can not sin. Now, we do not know the future, we are not sovereign, we have no real power in this world. We only know the past and what we have done. So, to someone who only knows that past and is living, it seems to him as if we have a choice in what we do, but we really don't, God has worked it all out, everything that is going to happen. So, to our finite minds, we have freewill, but to God, it is all planned out.
So, with this said, what about evangelism? Do we just do nothing? Absolutely not, we must preach the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mt. 28:16-20). Some believe that since God is in totally control, that means that we don't have to witness and spread the word, it is a dangerous mind set, for is Acts 1:8, "but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." So I challenge you, go through out all the earth, "walking and leaping and praising God" (Acts 3:8) spreading the word and making disciples of every nation.
posted by hellfire at 2:32 PM
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