ECT Can God's grace be earned, merited or deserved?
- Thread starter musterion
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revpete
New member
Well I would say an emphatic no because the doctrine of grace stands in stark contrast to the law. Also of Paul's teaching in Rom.11:6 and loads of other places.
Pete
musterion
Well-known member
Well I would say an emphatic no because the doctrine of grace stands in stark contrast to the law. Also of Paul's teaching in Rom.11:6 and loads of other places.
Pete
Thank you, please vote accordingly.
way 2 go
Well-known member
musterion
Well-known member
Where did I say I was trying to decide anything? My purpose will become clear when some of the honest 'yes' posters start to vote. Stay tuned.
And please vote.
If it is by grace alone through faith and that not of ourselves
...how can any say it was their freewill, freewill doctrine IS the dirt river from whence flows it's tributaries conditional and probationary salvation.
See, if salvation be not grace, that is God's doing alone, if you take out the grace doctrine, then you have to find another reason why God would save us.
Hence the works doctrines.
...how can any say it was their freewill, freewill doctrine IS the dirt river from whence flows it's tributaries conditional and probationary salvation.
See, if salvation be not grace, that is God's doing alone, if you take out the grace doctrine, then you have to find another reason why God would save us.
Hence the works doctrines.
musterion
Well-known member
Why ask us? We believe salvation is by grace SO MUCH that we also believe in UESIC without works.
Perhaps you should go ask your fellow Calvinists who preach Lordship Salvation -- like Paul Washer and Johnny Mac. They say the amount of sin vs the amount of good works in a believer's life is an indicator of whether they're actually saved. THAT'S conditional and probational salvation. THAT'S the denial of grace.
Johnny mac ? what is that a whiskey? Paul Washer?
Why don't you rather get your doctrines from the bible? Most Pentecostal/Charismatic folk belong to the Freewill camp. It is just a historic fact that Pentecostalism came up through the holiness folk.
I don't approve of that but I can hardly blame them can I? as long as they do believe in the fundamental doctrines they's good saved brethren, I wish they had better theology and in fact a very great many of them are learning the Grace doctrines....praise God, let's keep plugging away.
I am a Free Grace believer
Why don't you rather get your doctrines from the bible? Most Pentecostal/Charismatic folk belong to the Freewill camp. It is just a historic fact that Pentecostalism came up through the holiness folk.
I don't approve of that but I can hardly blame them can I? as long as they do believe in the fundamental doctrines they's good saved brethren, I wish they had better theology and in fact a very great many of them are learning the Grace doctrines....praise God, let's keep plugging away.
I am a Free Grace believer
There is also the issue of the erroneous belief in blessings from God based on some sort of "be good" condition the saint s supposedly under after he or she has trusted Christ (if he or she was even clear on what the gospel of their salvation is, to begin with).
Right here is where many end up "worthy of" Paul's words in Galatians 3:
1. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
2. This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
3. Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
You trust what Christ did. The Spirit then places you in Christ (1 Cor. 12:13) only for you to conclude you can add to that towards God's acceptance?
Conditional blessings are this same error also. The error that grace is merited.
That passage believed in would shut down the entire, conditional, material blessings movement, in all its shapes and hues.
I've even known MADists who have erroneously held to that in some form.
Right here is where many end up "worthy of" Paul's words in Galatians 3:
1. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
2. This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
3. Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
You trust what Christ did. The Spirit then places you in Christ (1 Cor. 12:13) only for you to conclude you can add to that towards God's acceptance?
Conditional blessings are this same error also. The error that grace is merited.
That passage believed in would shut down the entire, conditional, material blessings movement, in all its shapes and hues.
I've even known MADists who have erroneously held to that in some form.
I see exactly what you are saying, you can turn it inside out and say the material blessings so clearly promised to us in the gospel are to be got in EXACTLY the same way salvation was got... by grace alone through simple faith. Hence it is that often times it is folk who the church generally disapprove of who are the recipients of God's blessing sometimes.
They are the same characteristic...they come to God with no pretence, no excuses, no righteousness of their own and say
"Look here God, You have made very many and great promises, I need those promises, now therefore do those things which You have said."
....and He does.
Sometimes we smack of spiritual pride....physical and material needs and desires are so beneath us to ask God for. Jesus taught us to pray for bread and to believe God for clothes.
Don't you understand that if our spirits are so precious then the vessel which contains the spirit need to be cared for . If our inner person is holy then the outer is holy too.
....here come the armchair Pauls, in their silk dressing gowns and slippers...
lol I am not against armchairs and certainly not against Paul
....but people talk about his beatings, his privations, nakedness etc [with the supposition that this is to be the Christian's lot] yet they are sitting in their silken gowns and slippers while they post.
Paul like his Lord became poor to make us Gentiles rich.
....but people talk about his beatings, his privations, nakedness etc [with the supposition that this is to be the Christian's lot] yet they are sitting in their silken gowns and slippers while they post.
Paul like his Lord became poor to make us Gentiles rich.
musterion
Well-known member
And you're not?
“For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge,” Rom. 10:2.
Beauty being in the eye of its beholder; believing a thing is so, does not necessarily make it so, other than in said beholder’s own mind.
This, in contrast to what Scripture asserts this side of Israel's (temporary) setting aside (Rm. 11:23-29) - that in Christ dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead Bodily; that the Believer is Complete in that in Christ, and that his material deliverance is at the Lord's Blessed Hope, Col. 2:9-10; Philippians 3:20-21; 4:11-13; Titus 2:13-14.
musterion
Well-known member
I'm not sure if you were agreeing or not with MacArthur's answer there; but that is one no answer at all answer, on his part.
The Charles Stanley (same as New Ager Wayne Dyer) endless rambling as an answer - that is actually based on an intuition uninformed but by their own reasoning right then and there.
These guys make this stuff up on the spot. And because "it feels right" to them, they conclude it is.
And because it "sounds wise" (in the absence of sound doctrine), their followers, follow them down their same "still small voice" ... "Spirit's leading" notions.
Solution against their error?
2 Corinthians 4:
13. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;
Why was Paul's such an unwillingness to rely on intuitions not based in a solid grounding in that which is written?
14. Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
In short, Colossians 3:
16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
17. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
Verse 16 allows verse 17 to be in accordance with verse 16.