John 3:19-20
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
More teaching directly from the mouth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Men loved the darkness. If men love the darkness instead of the Light (and they do), and if they hate the Light (and they do), how can they choose to come into the Light?
They can’t. According to Jesus, the natural man, he who does evil, hates the Light and WILL NOT come into It. Some may try to say that Christians also do evil (sin). Yes but it is the result of falling short of the mark, we do not LIVE in it as the result of a dead spirit. If a “Christian” lives in evil and is not chastised by God leading to repentance, he is NOT a Christian regardless of what he claims.
The Light is Jesus Christ. Natural man HATES Jesus and will NOT come to Him. The Arminian can not claim something that is not in the Bible as fact - i.e. the Holy Spirit pricks the heart of a lost man and he then rejects or accepts the Truth. Sorry, that implies that the lost man has the ability to understand things from the Holy Spirit and that theory is disproved by 1 Corinthians 2:14. God’s Word says the lost man HATES the Light, and will always HATE the Light, he will always HATE Jesus. His heart must be changed FIRST and that is exactly what God does - and He does it for ONLY His Elect.
Please let me present an example out of God’s Word. Lydia in Acts 16:14 was lost even though she was a worshipper of God. Yet when Paul preached to her the Gospel, she could do nothing until God opened her heart so she could attend to the message Paul presented. How many hundreds or thousands of people heard Paul preach but God did not open their heart? King Agrippa appears to be one in that there is no evidence he was ever saved (Acts 26).
Please let me present an example out of God’s Word. Lydia in Acts 16:14 was lost even though she was a worshipper of God. Yet when Paul preached to her the Gospel, she could do nothing until God opened her heart so she could attend to the message Paul presented. How many hundreds or thousands of people heard Paul preach but God did not open their heart? King Agrippa appears to be one in that there is no evidence he was ever saved (Acts 26).
A sovereign God reaches down to one of His Elect, one of those He chose in Christ before the foundation of the World (Ephesians 1:4), and without asking him, quickens his dead spirit through faith, the faith God gives him (Romans 12:3, Ephesians 2:8). God simultaneously gives him belief (John 6:29, Philippians 1:29), and repentance (2 Timothy 2:25). Only THEN will he come into the Light (because he now WANTS to) and profess Christ as his Savior - AFTER God saves him.
Jesus raises up EVERY man God draws (John 6:44), NOT every man who “accepts” the drawing.
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