The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Neutrality of Man

Before we are saved, does God relate to all individual men and women as if they were neutral, objective, rational beings, much like judges, who are to judge the pros and cons of accepting God's offer of salvation before they come to faith?

Before we are regenerated, all individuals are condemned as cosmic traitors! The wonder is not that He shows mercy to some and justice to the rest. The wonder is that He shows mercy to anyone at all!

-R

Perhaps these few samplings of what Scripture says regarding how God views the unregenerate will suffice to answer your question, re: "neutrality":

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Job 15:14-16 (ASV) "What is man, that he should be clean? And he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his holy ones; Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight: How much less one that is abominable and corrupt, A man that drinketh iniquity like water!"

Psalms 5:4-6 (ASV) "For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: Evil shall not sojourn with thee. The arrogant shall not stand in thy sight: Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou wilt destroy them that speak lies: Jehovah abhorreth the blood-thirsty and deceitful man."

Psalms 11:4-7 (ASV) "Jehovah is in his holy temple; Jehovah, his throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. Jehovah trieth the righteous; But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. Upon the wicked he will rain snares; Fire and brimstone and burning wind shall be the portion of their cup. For Jehovah is righteous; he loveth righteousness: The upright shall behold his face."

John 3:18 (ASV) "He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God."

Romans 9:22 (ASV) "What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction:"

Ephesians 2:3 (ASV) "among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:"

There is a very large part of the Church today who reject the clear teaching of Gods Word on original sin and insist that each person has free will or the capacity to choose or reject the truth of the Gospel.

But this is not what the Bible (God's inspired Word) teaches. Scripture teaches that unless a person is regenerated by the work of the person of the Holy Spirit, then that person has absolutely no desire to know and understand God's truth.

But this is of course a very hard part of Gods truth for people to understand and accept, especially Americans who are all about "free will."