......during our bible study when we discussed about Salvation from the Reformed perspective. Initially, she said Christ died to form a connection between God and Man. God is the "power supply" and in order for man to tap on this "power supply" they must have faith. She claimed that after Christ formed the connection, man must exercise their faith in Christ in order to be saved.
My questions to Mic were:
1) If Christ merely died to form a connection between God and man, it means that Christ just provided a means for people to get saved (only made man savable), but did not get anybody saved?
2) Mic said Christ died for "the world" (everyone). I asked her whether the world means "God's elect" or "everyone" (whether Christ died for everyone including the Canaanites, the wolves and the son of Perdition Judas Iscariot). After thinking a while, she said no.
3) Can man have the ability to believe in God by himself? What do we mean by God "drawing" people to him? Does God's role merely end at "drawing", and after that it is still up to man to exercise their faith? Or is it a on-going thing in which God will be the finisher for our faith?
We also discussed the book of Romans about God saying that he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and that the potter has power over his creations. I told Mic that the reformed perspective is that all man deserved death, but God is gracious enough to extend his grace to his church (the elect). The elected were elected unconditionally and the rest were "bypassed".
Mic claimed we must look into the context of the book of Romans. I agreed with her, however, but I still think these verses in the book of Romans tell us a lot about God's sovereignty. We concluded that election is a mystery.
More to be discussed next time......
Any comments?
2 comments:
Sounded like an interesting bible study! :)
Haha......thankfully we never kill each other :p
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