The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum ORIGINAL SIN-Jim_M

And probably the only true way to love God is by loving others.
Forgive me for not understanding you on predestination and original sin but i really do want to, not that i will agree with you but i would like to at least understand where you are coming from. Could you go to the story of Adam and Eve and explain to me how you understand it in terms that a child could comprehend? I have read R C Sprouls book, Chosen by God, at least three times and I just can not grasp it. THANKS

Jim,

Here's what I used with our children--who knew from their earliest thought that they could not stand in the presence of the Lord--and who by the grace of God in Christ were given faith to not only understand it, but to believe it as well:

Not quite. "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Matt. 10:37). If the only true way of loving God is to love others, then this statement of Christ is utterly impossible.


I can hardly do better than Paul's response with the Catechism for Children.

Thank you Paul_S

I did not say to love others more than God, i said we love God by loving others, why do you twist what is said? You make it hard to have a meaningful dialog.
Just out of curiosity, do you believe the Jews were all saved or will be saved because they were chosen by God?

I wasn't twisting what you were saying. You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm saying there are other ways to love God than by loving others.


Not all of the Jews are "chosen."

"But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants, but: 'Through Isaac your descendants will be named.' That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants" (Rom. 9:6-8).

And what makes one a child of the promise?

Rom. 9:9-18.

ROMANS Chapter 9:
The following is a quote from a book by Moses E. Lard:
In choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau, God both chose and rejected with exclusive reference to time, and with no reference to eternity. As to the final destiny of the children, the choice
and rejection, had no known effect upon it. It left each as free to pursue those things which would save him, and to shun those that would condemn him, as though it had never been made. Had each changed place with the other, it would not, in the slightest degree, have altered his prospects for heaven. What men wilfully do, not the divine choice, determines their final doom. God's choice, it is true, rendered the outward, temporal circumstances of Jacob and his posterity far superior to those of Esau and his; but, at the same time, it so increased responsibility as to leave the balances of justice level, and the chances of salvation equal.
The passage in hand has had assigned to it a very notorious conspicuity in theories of election, and, in my judgment, has been greatly abused. It was not penned in the interest of dogmatic Calvinism, and therefore does not countenance its offensive tenets. Interpreted as it should be, it teaches nothing contradictory of other portions of holy Writ, and shocking to our human sense of justice. In it God stands out still in a lovely light, and not as the arbitrary, inexorable Judge, who appoints one man to heaven and another to hell, not only without reason, but in defiance of it, so far as man can see. As I do not feel called upon to hunt up and notice all the various abuses to which the passage has been subjected, I shall leave that task with those who imagine that they can derive any profit from it.
12. The elder shall serve the younger. We have no account of Esau ever having personally served Jacob. The ref- erence then must be to their respective posterities; and with this agree the facts of history. For in 2 Sam. viii: 14 it is distinctly said that "all they of Edom [Esau's posterity] became David's servants." Indeed, the Edomites were long subject to the kings of Israel, the latter often slaying them in great numbers. But the Edomites frequently asserted their independence; and at such times they became most barbarous and cruel. They seem to have taken especial pains to cultivate Esau's ancient hatred of Jacob; and they never let pass an opportunity to display it. About the time Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, they seem to have disappeared as a separate people. After this we hear no more of them.
13. As it is written: I loved Jacob, but hated Esau. This quotation is from Mal. i: 2, 3- The extent to which God

loved Jacob was shown in preferring him to his brother; and the extent to which be bated Esau, in rejecting him from being one
of the heads of his cbosen people. More than this, the words need not be supposed to mean. Hatred, especially, we may assume to be used in the bold exaggerating sense so common with the prophets. It denotes not so much positive hatred, as not love.

SUMMARY.
Is it not unjust in God to choose one and reject another, as in the case of ( Jacob and Esau? Not at all; for in doing so, he acts according to his own avowed principles of conduct, which must be assumed to be right. Accordingly he says to Moses, I will make my own sense of right my rule in showing mercy. It was on this principle that he set up Pharaoh to be king. But all these choices create mere worldly distinctions. They are not choices to eternal life. But If God makes men what he pleases, why does he still find fault with them? He does not do so. He finds no fault with them for being what he makes them, but only for their own voluntary wrong. Again, in these choices, God's creatures should not presume to question him. They must take for granted that he acts justly. He has the absolute right to do what he does. and as he can do none wrong, he must not be questioned,

[color:"FF0000"]A DEFENSE OF CALVINISM AS THE GOSPEL[/color] by Prof David J. Engelsma



William <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />


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Tell me Jim wasn't Moses E. Laird a Campbellite? Do you also belong to the Church of Christ?