I'm reading through Corinthians currently and came across chapter 2 of Corinthians, which is one of those passages that is difficult to accept from a human perspective. Many Christians who have accepted the truth of these passages often act as if they haven't. "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." (1 Corinthians 2:14) Who understands the oracles of God? Only those who have been shown them by His Spirit.
This is a difficult teaching to believe because it means that God controls who knows Him and who does not. Ultimately, no one can come to God unless He shows them the truth. Now, this leads to a common debate among Christian sects: who does God show these things to and how much say does the man who is shown have in his own salvation? Does God compel men to salvation (Calvinism) or does man see the choice and make it himself (Armenianism). I have a tendency to lean toward the Calvinist side myself because of passages like 1 Corinthians 1:26-29: "For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh...but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise..and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen...so that no man may boast before God." And also the oft quoted Ephesians 2:8,9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast."
If we believers were able to make the decision to believe ourselves, we would be justified in boasting, "I am better than the common unbeliever because I saw the truth and chose to follow it." The Bible tells us quite the opposite. In his letter to the Romans, Paul spends a great deal of time explaining the fact that no one is better than another, not Jew over non-Jew, not Greek over non-Greek, not believer over unbeliever. All are sinners and worthy of the death sentence they live under. A believer's only advantage is that God has chosen them to have blessed life after the holocaust rather than a life cursed.
This is a hard teaching. How can we both be responsible for our actions and be incapable of choosing salvation? Romans 9 answers this question: "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy...So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?' On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called..."
I think it is a hard one to accept, but I think the Armenian perspective seems too much like the belief I would prefer rather than the belief I find in scripture.
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