<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]The last sentence about Christ as the second Adam, I would say He did die for the sins of all men and they are all redeemed and they all have the potential to have His righteousness imputed to them, if they but ask and receive.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>If they are all REDEEMED (i.e., delivered from sin) they all have His righteousness imputed to them, by definition. So the only way you can maintain yourself on this point is to be universalist.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Have you never seen a person come to Christ with fruit of repentance, joy of salvation, growing in faith, obedient to God out of love for Him, exactly as you see in your self, and then fall away? Has it never happened?</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>It's not something I can say that I have personally witnessed. However, only God knows the heart; there may well be some who appear to bear good fruit, but upon closer examination, their fruit had a rotten core.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Where I disagree with your statement is that you can not have faith when you are dead in trespasses and sins. Every descendant of Adam has faith. If you walk into a dark room and flip the switch on the wall it is an act of faith, you don’t know the light will come on but you believe it will. You pull the gear shift in your car to ‘R’ and look behind you because you have faith the car will go backwards. We have faith in each other in our relationships; child-parent, husband-wife, sometimes even brother-sister.<br><br>Faith in God is not different than the faith we use every day for all kinds of things. Our fallen nature has nothing to do with our ability to have faith any more than our personal IQ. There is nothing special or divine about faith (there is a spiritual gift of faith, I’m not talking about that). It’s when the faith of man reaches out to the gift of God that the miracle happens. <br><br>You ask, if I can have faith why not obedience without Christ? Faith is not works. Obedience is doing works and by works shall no flesh be justified. (Gal 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.)</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Faith is actively trusting on the promises of God. We cannot trust in God while we are dead in trespasses and sin, because we are opposed to God and in rebellion against Him in all our ways. Rather, we trust in ourselves and men. In order for us to have faith, the Holy Spirit must first work in our hearts.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Armenians do not expect that we have enough goodness to approach God. That is totally false and a gross misrepresentation. It would be against everything in the Bible to hold such a view. I suppose this comes out of your perception of faith.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Arminians (it is with an I, not an E) believe that man is not so totally lost in sin that he cannot do any good of his own power, or that he cannot do the good of trusting in God on his own. So, yes, Arminians do believe that man has enough goodness in him that he can approach God of his own power, though certainly they do not say he can go all they way.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Our salvation is dependent on the work of Christ on the Cross. Receiving salvation is dependent on our FAITH.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>You still put it ultimately on man. If man refuses to receive salvation, he is not saved. If man chooses to receive salvation, he is saved. In either case, God's will is trumped so that the man's will can resist God's. If God wills that we should be saved, we will not be capable of resisting it to our own damnation.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Responsibility for our salvation rests with us.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>No, it does not. Our salvation is not conditional upon any merit in us.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]If nothing we can do saves us, but only what God does, then the Calvinist view is the most compatible with Scripture.<br><br>If that statement were true, you would not need scripture. That is the contradiction, but you apparently don’t see it, do you?</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>There is no contradiction. Scripture is necessary as the means by which we hear the Gospel. You yourself quoted the following Scripture:<br><br><blockquote>So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17).</blockquote>

Kyle

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.