You were unable to answer the question. I will present it to you again.
Here it is my unbelieving friend.
If God has ALREADY reconciled us (humanity) and the world unto himself by Jesus Christ as it is taught in 2 Corinthians 5:18, 19 and also in Colossians 1:20-23, then what good is your Calvinist religion?
Please don't dissapoint us again with some other religious nonsensence.
Given your blindness about the inerrancy of Scripture it is no wonder you think these verses support your odd views.
2 Cor 5:18, 19 - The reconciliation of the world is that God's love in Christ extends to both Jews and Gentiles worldwide (compare Rom. 1:16). Then again, you refuse to attend church, and just think everyone is a minister, so I can see how you can be confused. Sigh.
The Corinthians can only appreciate Paul's apostolic work when they understand it as part of God's work to reconcile the
world, that is
Christ did not die for all men without exception, but for all men without distinction: people from every national, racial, and ethnic group.
If they want to see God's glory, they can see it most clearly in Paul's reconciling ministry to the world that requires self-sacrifice and inevitably results in suffering. This explains why this passage about God's reconciling work appears in Paul's defense (hence, the primary use of "us", meaning Paul and his associates, while not excluding to all who are believers to share the message of reconciliation). Drop down one more verse and it becomes clear:
2 Corinthians 5:20
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.
Col. 1:20-23 - You are just not reading what is being said, rather you are imposing your oddities upon the text.
"And you, that
were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled
...If
ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel..."
The readers of Paul's Epistle
were estranged
until granted spiritual life by God
through faith in Christ's active and passive obedience. All humanity is not reconciled, Robert. Of course, you deny Hell, so there is that heresy that prevents you from having eyes to see what the text is actually teaching.
It has been pointed out to you by many, usually with perspicuous attention to the teachings of Scripture, that your position is basically universalism in disguise. Your response is always to deny anyone has answered you and you just continue onward declaring you are correct and all others incorrect.
You are making no new claims in this thread. Rather, you are repeating the same basic theme over and over with every thread you start. You get plenty of responses showing you how you have been mistaken, but you simply declare your interlocutors lost, hell-bound, and sin-bent, moving on to create yet another thread with the same basic contents.
You simply refuse to be corrected or even consider the possibility that you have erred. Given your refusal to engage substantively, preferring to just assert this or that repeatedly, the only recourse you leave me and others is to remind you
just how far outside the camp your views are in hopes the casual bystander reading your flowery prose will not be taken in.
AMR