RE: [TruthTalk] Children of God?

[ShieldsFamily]

But where the Gentile is not necessarily rejecting Christ if he does not "believe" in him, this was not so for the Jews. To the Jew to not believe in Jesus was to not receive him, which was to reject him, which is to reject the right to become a child of God.   This passage is terribly misunderstood and misappropriated when it is torn out of its specifically Jewishcontext and made to be representative of all humanity. The Calvinists are as bad about doing this as you Arminians. They use verse 13 to bolster their doctrine of predestination -- in other words, people do not come to Christ by being born into a Christian family or by their free-will, but only by a sovereign act of God. And so, Izzy, if it makes you feel any better, their error is as grievous as yours :>)   Bill, the error is yours.  God does not have one method of salvation for Jews and a different one for the gentiles.  All true believers are descendants of Abraham; not just those born Jews.  Gal:328 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.       29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise. We are saved by “believing” in Christ, which is our choice—belief is never forced upon us:  Luke 8:11"Now the parable is this:the seed is the word of God.       12"Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved. Acts 15:  11"But we believe that we are saved through (AA)the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are." ________________________________________________   I John 3: 1See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. BT: The world does not know God. Hence the world does not know its ontological status in Christ; nor does it know us who do know and affirm that status. But their not knowing cannot negate the reality of who they are in Christ. The world believes a lie, Izzy. Our vocation as Christians is to confront that lie with the truth. Bill, this scripture was written to BELIEVERS, not to the lost who are NOT in Christ.  Theology which claims that everyone is saved, in Christ, don’t need to repent and obey, etc, is truly a lie against God’s word.  But such will not prevail; His word will endure.  Izzy, do you know if there is a way that you can set your email program so that it will allow others to change the font and color when responding to you? I think it must have something to do with your settings, as I do not have problems reformatting over anyone else. Bill Bill, I believe that if you repent of your erroneous theology the Lord may rebuke the demons from your computer.  I cannot help you in any other way than to give you that advice, as apparently my computer (and theology) will not bow to yours. J Izzy  (PS Switching from plain text to HTML might help in the meantime.)