lukethreesix said:
"no one seeks God, no not one" "mans heart is deceitful above all things" "you dont choose me, I choose you" " you are saved BY grace through faith that is NOT of yourselves but it IS A GIFT from God."
We are dead (spiritually) without Christ. a dead person can not repent. a dead person can not do anything unless he is first made alive. God does the changing of hearts, God awakens spirits. Salvation comes first, then we have the power to repent.you can not ask a dead guy to walk, (only God can do that).
How did the prodigal son repent?
How did the people of Ninveh repent?
It is a deception to believe that one must be born again before one can repent as it gives an individual an excuse to keep on sinning.
God told Cain to rule over his sin and Cain did not heed God's advice. All human beings has the ability to do good or evil and of course it is through the grace of God because the light of conscience is given us directly from God.
This notion that people have to wait for some kind of grace which offsets human inability before they can forsake their wickedness is nonsense. Both the Old Testament and the New command people to forsake their evil ways.
Wormwood said:
Once again, faith is not a work. Such thinking is counter to everything written in the NT. Classifying faith as a work by which people strive to receive merit is completely foreign to anything taught in the NT.
Scriptures that show that faith is not a work.
Scriptures that show the necessity of faith to receive grace and salvation.
1Th 1:3 Remembering
without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;
Paul called faith a work!
An obedient active faith has nothing to do with "meriting" salvation. It is merely a condition which must be met for a genuiine salvation experience to take place.
Noah did not "merit" his salvation from the flood by obeying God and building the ark, he simply cooperated with the methodology of God. If there is no "working together" with God then the grace of God is received to no effect. The "working together" with God is faith.
2Co 6:1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.
When the Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith it means that we are saved by yielding ourselves to the lead of God whereby the light of God manifests through us bringing a total transformation. This is why the Bible states that God is the author of the salvation of those who obey Him. Faith is an active dynamic, it is not passive trust.
Hebrews 11 clearly depicts faith as an active dynamic. Genuine faith is exhibited by doing hence faith without doing is dead.
By working together with God (2Cor 6:1) we are "made the righteousness of God in Him" (2Cor 5:21) and it is this dynamic methodology which produces a total transformation which is the gift of God.
The lie in modern theology is that salvation is an abstract position disconnected from manifest purity of heart. Thus under the lie people are deceived into believing they are saved when they are in fact still inwardly wicked. Satan wants people to come to an assurance that they are saved without them having truly repented of their rebellion. It is the very first lie repackaged for the modern age, "Ye can sin and not surely die." That lie is preached almost universally and millions upon millions of people have bought into it hook, line and sinker.