As the first act of grace, God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 1:1). That verse has great significance and many meanings. It means both the lofty and the foundation, the space and the matter, and also the spiritual and the physical realms.
The first act of grace was revealed by Paul:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will… (Ephes 1:3-5)
Calvinists take that as God elected some human beings to be Christians and rejected others. “Election” is for those who were chosen by God. His ability to choose is His regality as King of kings and LORD of lords (Rev 19:16). Whoever anyone is, God is the Sovereign of everyone. He selects, elects, and makes all things possible (Mat 19:26).
There is no question that God is Sovereign even to kings and lords. However, most kings and lords have rejected the Sovereignty of God. Agrippa was almost persuaded; he was almost convinced. It was exercising his will with no force from Paul. Calvinists proudly think that they are the only people who believe that the LORD, Jesus, is Sovereign. They make God, not a Sovereign, but a “Dictator” who mandates Heaven or Hell.
God did choose all things. Israelites were God’s chosen and peculiar people (Deut 14:2) and to this day most of those that He chose are still not Christians. Then God chose the Gentiles (1 Pet 2:9) and they remain unconvinced. There are only two races of people in scripture: Jew and Gentile, according to the viewpoint of God, and over time He chose them both.
John revealed God’s Sovereignty, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The world in this passage kosmos in the Greek. He loves the heaven and the earth, the space and the matter, the spiritual and the physical, the soul and the flesh. Why so? Because it was not just “very good” (John 1:31) but literal perfection. Adam and Eve were both made perfect. Hence, Christian “perfection” is only obtainable at death when the world is no longer an impedance. That too is gain — to be originated back to the original state (status).
The Status of God is Creator. As man was only made in the image of God, man is subservient and dependent on God. From the beginning, God has been the Sovereign and man only an image. There are three “images” in which mankind was made, and Jesus revealed them: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mat 22:37). Those are the three images: heart, soul, mind; representing the flesh, the spirit, and thought. The “heart” therein is kardia in the Greek and means not only the organ, but the human will and emotions (BLB Institute 2021).
The Bible is the “Last Will and Testament” of God. It is His written Will for everyone — the “whosoever” in John 3:16. All things are His to give because He is Sovereign — Him alone possessing supreme power.
Mankind has virtue as well as substances, to love God “with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30). God is Almighty but people are mighty because they are the images of God. Thus, humans have less power than God but some power. God created mankind with some degree of power, not God but “as God” (Gen 3:5).
Although God is Sovereign, people are not powerless. People were meant to share virtue in that the “dress and keep the Garden” in scripture is literally to serve and preserve the souls symbolized by the trees of the Garden.
God is the Husbandman, Jesus is the Vine, and people are the “branches,” some good and some not (John 15:1-3). God can and does cut off the worst branches, but before He does so, God picks which branches would even be on the tree. The world would cause some of the branches to wither, and those God would cut off.
Election is selection. God selected the supranatural to be symbiotic with the natural. Eve was the “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). “Living” was the process of symbiosis and another meaning of Eve’s name; it means “the intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship especially” (Merriam-Webster 2021). Living therein would mean that the two dissimilar substances were the flesh and spirit, or the soul.
Although God created both, Eve helped. Not that God could not have created Cain without Adam and Eve but He chose, or Willed, not to. God gave them limited power to create a person (Gen 4:1). She did it for the “lord.” Appreciate it or not, but the human will is one of the “images” of God. God is Sovereign and whatever He Wills is to be done (Mat 6:10).
Eve willed that Cain be born, and God gave her limited power to be the vessel. God, as Sovereign, chose the soul and body for the symbiosis, but Eve was the symbiotic one. God remained Sovereign but Eve had much power. God delegated some of Hs Virtue to her to do good or evil, and apparently Eve chose evil as Cain was of the Wicked One (1 John 3:12). God, as Sovereign, allowed her that.
If God was not Sovereign, then He would not make allowances. He allowed Eve to do good or evil. To eat or not to eat was her choice. God could have made her an obedient woman (a “Stepford Wife”), but He provided for her a will, a soul, and a mind to use in strength. God made her in that image as well as Adam and they became as God, not God (Gen 3:5). They were mighty but not Almighty. They were noble creatures but not Sovereign.
God did all the creating but Adam participated. Eve was from Adam. He shared the heart, mind, and soul that he had assumed from God and shared it with Eve. God remained Sovereign but Adam helpful. Then Eve became Adam’s helpmate (Gen 2:18).
Hence, to this day, God remains Sovereign and people his helpmates. Some do not mind serving, but others do. Their will, due to sin, became symbiotic to God’s and more like Eve’s who had a mind and will of her own.
So, the “election” is God choosing which soul is symbiotic to which body and not Eve. She birthed the son, but God chose which living soul to place in which body. Thereafter, Eve birthed a “whosoever” and whosoever (Cain) seeded another “whosoever” and so on until the Promise Savior was born.
People chose the intercourse, but God matched the souls to the persons. All souls were good as God said. Because of sin, none of the fleshes of man were good. That is symbiotic as well.
It was the Will of God that mankind be endowed with the faculty of the will of their own and much like His. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, their “loss” was good will, or agape love. Disobeying God was the first “loss of function” because it was contrary to God’s Will. Thus, the good will with which they were created became ill will, and the selection process was turned over to the two individuals.
God remained Sovereign but endowed them with their own will. Their will in the beginning offered no choices since they lived in virtue. After sin, they had the choice of virtue and evil, and they became prone to evil because of pleasure.
Sovereign God created the faculty of the will for man to use. Calvinism steals that Virtue from God in that He created something that was of no utility. In other words, rather than creating very good things, God also created a useless thing when He provided the ability to choose which way they shall go (to which tree) and what they will allow into their flesh.
You may think that the “Serpent” did that, but he did not. The Serpent was nothing more than a stooge who was handing out the “test papers.” As Sovereign, God created the “Tree of Choice,” and Lucifer was no more than a “worm” in the fruit (Isa 14:11).
Because He is Sovereign, and Him alone, God created the faculty of the will, and it was created for man to use freely. “Born again” is looking at just who is Sovereign and seeing the Serpent with a dead image, and also understanding that God did that (John 3:14). He is the One with the strength and power to defeat Satan in the womb of Judas, and the Israelites did nothing but look. They could have continued to look at what they were doing but chose to look at the lifeless serpent in his “tree” as dead, for he would soon be!
The Israelites did no work and God remained the Sovereign. He remains Sovereign to this day as “King” in all the languages of that time and place, and “King of the Jews” as the sign said.
What is it that people do to be born again? They look at what Jesus has the power and authority to do as the Flesh of the Sovereign One. “Looking” is sensory. The eyes go where they go because the person wills that they look there.
Seeing is not work. It is an accomplishment (katergazmai) without ergon work. That is working out your own salvation (Phil 2:12). The Sovereign God still does the saving, but the individual still does the looking and evaluating until he is persuaded.
Of two choices, God does not choose the Way, but He allows the person the levity to choose the Way he shall go. That is free will (Deut 1:33). God shows the Way anyone should go, but they have the freedom to reject or accept the Way. That does not demean God’s Sovereignty, but Calvinistic “predestination” undermines the power of the Almighty of designing the faculty of the Will. Thus, Calvinism does not truly exalt God according to His Sovereignty, but all the while always focusing on a weak God that could not create a faculty of the will!
You must be born again. God does the processing, but the sinner recognizes that God has the Power and Authority to do as He says.
Rebirth is recognizing that God alone is Sovereign. Of course, He is whether it is recognized or not, but rebirth is contingent on that mindset. Hence, rebirth is not of the flesh but of the mind, and the new person is the Spirit of God and being, not Christ, but in Christ.
In Christ is servanthood (helpmate) to the Sovereign King of the Cosmos — the Creator of the heaven and the earth, and your own Creator and Re-creator!
The Greeks sought out Jesus when they approached Philip and asked of him, “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21). They would see Jesus as would the Israelites, who were saved, saw Jesus. They would see that Jesus is the Sovereign LORD GOD and the only one who could put Satan in his place, and that turned out to be Gehenna — the valley of death.
They sought Jesus, the LORD GOD because they understood His Sovereignty. They did no physical thing except recognize even before they saw Him that Jesus IS God! Their walking and looking was the calling of God, but them recognizing was of their own free will, given the choices of Jesus as Sovereign or not.
With that said, Jesus knocks but sinners must answer: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20). Opening the door is metaphorical. It is answering the call and taking the opportunity to either allow Jesus in or to leave Him outside the door of opportunity. Supping is eating with that person, having the nourishment of the Body and Blood of Jesus; being in Christ and Christ in them.
God does the “birthing” at rebirth and not the mother as in natural birth. It is Him that is Symbiotic when He combines the unlike substances of Spirit and Flesh and makes a living, functioning soul!
Removing the free will of the individual lessens God. It is as if saying, God is not Almighty enough to create that “image” of Himself in His creatures. The faculty of the will is unseen but is manifested in what people do. Those in Christ behave as Christ and think like Christ.
The functioning of faith begins when the sinner recognizes that Jesus is Sovereign and not themselves. God already knows that He alone is Sovereign and relayed that to Moses when He said, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exod 3:14). Scripture says that He is not just “lord” (Gen 4:1), but “LORD GOD” (Gen 2:4) — the Maker of the heavens and earth. That God — the Almighty Sovereign God who gave you the Image of His Will be done!
Born again is exchanging the natural will inclined toward sin for the supranatural Will away from sin. You only thinking that is the only Way to salvation and eternal life does not take away the truth that God provides salvation and eternal life. Ironically, even the “elect” shall be deceived (Mat 24:24) with a false doctrine, and it is likely about election!
(picture credit: weebly.com; "Jesus Christ; Our Sovereign King")
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