Quote:
Originally Posted by Esaias
I think "we" have NOT come to THAT conclusion. I do not believe in "gracious ability", as taught by Arminians and (some) Calvinists, which is the idea that all people have a natural inability to obey God's moral law, and that only through a supernatural or "gracious" impartation of Divine power is a person actually able to fulfill their moral obligations.
1. If a person has a natural inability to obey God, then they are not a subject of moral law, and are not a moral agent, and are not capable of having moral character. Moral law is law that commands what a person OUGHT to do, which necessarily implies that the person COULD do what is commanded. You cannot possibly "ought" to do that which you strictly and naturally "cannot" do.
2. Following from 1, if people are thereby not moral subjects, then there is no moral basis for Judgment. But the Bible everywhere speaks of the Judgment as distinctly moral, it is a matter of "right and wrong". People are judged for not doing what they ought to have done, and for doing what they ought not to have done. They are not judged for what they could not possibly have done.
3. If the only way a person COULD obey God is through a divine impartation of grace, a "gracious ability", a "moving of the Spirit", then all who die sinners do so specifically because God chose not to empower them to be obedient. They would have the ultimate excuse upon Judgment day, and the result is the same as predestination to damnation: God is the cause and enabler of their sin, He ensures they continue in sin, He ensures they do NOT obey, He makes certain they DO sin, precisely because He FAILS to "empower" them to obey.
4. The idea of a gracious ability, or that "people cannot obey God unless the Spirit of God empowers them", confuses natural law and moral law, natural ability and moral ability, and natural inability and moral inability. Moral law concerns voluntary action (choices), and therefore by definition those choices must include a natural ABILITY to make those choices. People do not disobey God because they CANNOT obey, but because they WILL not obey. The moral work of the Spirit is not to impart a natural ability that did not previously exist, but rather to LEAD (motivate) to faithful obedience.
When the Scripture speaks of the work of Spirit in circumcising the heart and causing Israel to walk in God's commandments and statutes and ways, it is not speaking of a supernatural impartation of NATURAL ability, but rather it is speaking of the MORAL work of the Spirit in softening the hearts of His people, leading them into a voluntary faithful obedience to His will.
Sin, and obedience, are voluntary:
Romans 6:16-19 KJV
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? [17] But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. [18] Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. [19] I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. So whatever we are to make of the distinctions between the old testament saints and the new testament saints, one thing is clear - the difference and distinction is not and cannot possibly be one of natural ability to obey God. |
When I speak of needing the Spirit, I speak of the continuous correction of the Spirit in your life teaching you, giving you understanding, of God's will and his word. The same prayer you see in
Psalms 119, for example. I'm not speaking of a black and white system where if you don't have the Spirit guiding you, all you can do in life is evil.
Anyways, I just read this:
[
Galatians 3:1-5 NKJV] 1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you:
Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4 Have you suffered so many things in vain--if indeed [it was] in vain? 5 Therefore
He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, [does He do it] by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?--
When you read stuff like that, and Acts, and the first chapters of Luke about OT saints walking with God, and the Spirit moving so much in their lives, sometimes I wonder if we are putting too much emphasis on the wrong thing. It looks too me that the NT saints point of view about the coming of the Spirit difference between the OT and the NT has to do more with the
greater works and
abundant prophecy than with the assistance to walk right. It is like the closeness with the Spirit is a given, and the ability to keep God's commandments is a given, but the "Spirit coming" means power, and the prophetic.
However, when you read Paul's epistles, you also come to the conclusion that receiving the Spirit has a covenant sealing meaning as well. So, yeah, it is empowerment for greater works as a group but also a covenant promise that seals.
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