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@selah-chelyah

Hey! I really appreciate what you have to say here, and I’m not pushing you to claim the Calvinist side at all, but I’d like to clarify what Calvinism says, in interpretation of God’s word:

It starts out with the total depravity, which says that the only good man can do is by God’s working in his life. Man is dead in his trespasses and has no inherit strength to follow the Law, nor bring salvation upon himself. On top of that man is born into sin. The original sin is passed down to us. Now at this point, it’s important to note that the Covenant Of Works instituted for Adam is still in effect… it is not gone. Instead we have a propitiation, that fulfilled the Covenant Of Works, so that all who trusted in Him might be counted as fully righteous, having perfectly stayed in the Covenant Of Works.

This Covenant Of Works still lives on, and those who don’t trust in Christ as their Lord and Savior are still punished because they broke the Covenant. Now… God instituted the Covenant Of Grace in Genesis 3:15. This Covenant Of Grace lives alongside the Covenant Of Works, because Jesus fulfilled the one of works by being perfectly righteous, and then he died to cover our sins and take the eternal punishment for us (not that he is still in eternal punishment… he died once and rose again).

Now… Calvinism takes no responsibility away from man. Man is still responsible for every single sin, and will reap the punishment. Man is still responsible to accept God’s grace, but he only does with the strengthening of The Holy Spirit. Being dead, man must have something else to raise him up, so that he can and will accept the salvation. If his eyes are not opened and the Holy Spirit doesn’t work in his life, he won’t. He can’t. But just as he is still held responsible to accept, and held responsible not to sin, even though he can do neither of those things, when we do accept by the strength given of God, he still accounts it to us by his merciful grace. We are held responsible in the first place… thus he punishes us… or when he brings us up, he still lets us accept! It’s a beautiful thing.

So Calvinism doesn’t deny man’s responsibility, but instead that he has not the strength to accept God’s grace, unless held up by The Holy Spirit, thus having had to be chosen by God. Man alone cannot accept.

I hope that was helpful, and maybe will give a groundwork from which to understand my position (if I ever open my mouth again)… but I wanted to make sure it was clear.

*takes a step back*

Oh! One other thing… I’m not asking for debate on that post… we can just leave it be… you can say agree or not… but I’d rather not debate over it… well… Actually I’d love to, but I don’t have the time. The time I took to write this out took time from my writing time. Thanks… 🙂