Understanding God’s election

[SwordOfTruth]

If He were to explain that only those He chooses will be saved,
the elect/called/chosen would not be so eager to respond.
There would be a hesitancy to respond.

Indeed, those among the "elect" with any shred of morals would recognise they had been following a complete imposter who is obviously neither all-powerful or all-loving. Some elect of course, the immoral pious pompous fools would be dead chuffed that they were "in the club" and everyone else was destined to perish, but then the world has always had its share of throughly immature unspiritual nohopers, most of them are in the secret societies loving the increased status and standing they think it gives them. Honestly your belief system is so flawed and full of holes I can't understand why anyone with an iota of critical thinking could possibly give it the time of day.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Obviously, God wants it to appear that anyone can be saved.

If not everyone can be saved, then that just makes God out to be a liar.

That gives the elect/called/chosen reason to respond positively to the Gospel.
If He were to explain that only those He chooses will be saved,
the elect/called/chosen would not be so eager to respond.
There would be a hesitancy to respond.

Because no rational person could easily understand that if only some people are saved, and not others, based on nothing but a unilateral decision on God's part, that God is therefore not worthy of love.

Again, you give the "unelect" the perfect exuse against God, "I was never chosen, because God didn't love me."

 

[JudgeRightly]

Indeed, those among the "elect" with any shred of morals would recognise they had been following a complete imposter who is obviously neither all-powerful or all-loving. Some elect of course, the immoral pious pompous fools would be dead chuffed that they were "in the club" and everyone else was destined to perish, but then the world has always had its share of throughly immature unspiritual nohopers, most of them are in the secret societies loving the increased status and standing they think it gives them. Honestly your belief system is so flawed and full of holes I can't understand why anyone with an iota of critical thinking could possibly give it the time of day.

@Dougcho This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Such a doctrine does not paint God as loving.

It paints Him as capricious, arbitrary, and spiteful, and gives opportunity to the wicked to mock not only you, but God.

 

[Derf]

The whosoevers are mentioned to provide people with hope of salvation.

The whosoevers are mentioned because they exist, and God loves them, you know...the world.

Being an evangelist, I know that people would not be interested
... if their free-will choice might NOT be honored by God.
Let's preach the Gospel and see who jumps all over it.

Yet that's exactly what Paul did. Some jumped all over it, and some jumped all over Paul.

The NT says it is not possible for those not chosen/called to believe.
The OP says it also (see points 1 and 2 for the reasons).

But they are chosen, as you already admitted, based on the fact they believe. Therefore your sentence is correct, but not before the foundation of the world.

 

[SwordOfTruth]

The whosoevers are mentioned because they exist, and God loves them, you know...the world.

So now you're suggesting that God loves all those people but he's not going to save them because they're not the "elect" or "chosen"

I can't help but feel you've chosen to worship a monster. You are surely in error.

 

[Dougcho]

millions of Christians who will tetsify that they have never received any kind of special calling or gift of faith.

People often don't know how they came to believe something.
Don't you know that the spirit world
can (and do) put thoughts in your mind ...
God and His angels, and Satan and his demons.
Are you related to the one-and-only R/D?

 

[Dougcho]

The whosoevers are mentioned because they exist, and God loves them, you know...the world.

The whosoevers are those who believe (e.g. John 3:16).
They have been given the faith necessary to believe,
which overcomes their total inability to believe
as per the 2 reasons at the top of the OP.

 

[Clete]

The whosoevers are those who believe (e.g. John 3:16).
They have been given the faith necessary to believe,
which overcomes their total inability to believe
as per the 2 reasons at the top of the OP.

Can you really not see that such a doctrine means that God is arbitrary?

 

[Derf]

The whosoevers are those who believe (e.g. John 3:16).
They have been given the faith necessary to believe,
which overcomes their total inability to believe
as per the 2 reasons at the top of the OP.

So you've said, but that's not what "whosoever" means. "Whosoever" means that salvation is available to those who choose to believe, not just to the elite group. That's why Gentiles were given the gospel, in spite of the Jews thinking it was just for them (the "elect").

 

[ttruscott]

Huh?? How does that make sense? Isn't our "lives" everything we do in our lifetimes, including birth, death, sin, faith, etc.?

Our LIVES started when we were sown, not created, into this world, Matt 13:26-39, but our EXISTENCE started before the foundation of the world which ALL the sons of GOD witnessed, Job 38:7, after we had each committed to faith in HIM as our LORD and saviour or in the complete rejection of HIM as a liar and a false god by our free will, uncoerced by any decree from GOd nor any enslavement to sin like on earth.

You think people were reprobated before they existed and before sin occurred?

ok.

No, that is the inevitable conundrum created by the hypothesis that we are created on earth and some are reprobated or elected to salvation with no free will decision of their own before their existence before the foundation of the world.

No, I believe that we existed before our lives on earth and during that time everyone made their decision of faith for YHWH or against HIM which is the base is for our election to salvation if a person who put their faith in HIM should ever sin while those who repudiated HIM as a liar and a false god were condemned on the spot as it says about every person on earth: believers, those with faith in HIM, are never condemned for their choices to sin while those who never believed are condemned already ! Jn 3:18! Already before what? Already before they are sown into this world!

 

[Clete]

So you've said, but that's not what "whosoever" means. "Whosoever" means that salvation is available to those who choose to believe, not just to the elite group. That's why Gentiles were given the gospel, in spite of the Jews thinking it was just for them (the "elect").

Quite so! The term implies the concept of "potential". The word "whosoever" in John 3:16 suggests an open, indefinite invitation rather than a predetermined or exclusive group. In the original Greek, the phrase "πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων" (pas ho pisteuōn) translates roughly to "whoever believes," which conveys a broad potentiality. Anyone who comes to believe is included based on that belief, not the other way around. They don't believe because they're already in the group, they're in the group because (i.e. if and when) they believe.