WILL POWELL SAYS: “I’ve God More Questions Than They Can Answer

“I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” – Paul.

The determinately efficacious causality which God exercised by His work in the death and resurrection of Jesus is the Bible’s transcendent truth, yet Christendom denies to God the authority to save sinners with the consent of their “wills”.

The following questions demand answers:

[1] After insisting that God’s work in Christ could not have “automatically” saved sinners because this would be a violation of their “freewills,” precisely WHAT are we to believe-receive-accept when we come to Jesus for salvation? What is now the object of our faith if Jesus’ sacrifice had not saved us when Jesus said that His work was finished? Must we believe that our “response” to what Jesus did for us is the catalyst that gets the job done?

[2] Does God’s command to “believe in Jesus” mean we must believe that Jesus saved us, or must we believe that Jesus only “offered” to save us? Can His offer to save us save us?

[3] How could a sinner genuinely believe in Jesus while at the same time denying that Jesus saved him – 2,000 years ago—when Jesus cried “It is finished”?

[4] If God’s work in Christ did not actually save sinners—2,000 years ago—could God damn them to “hell” for rejecting something that never happened? Conversely, if God’s work in the cross actually saved sinners at the moment Jesus died for them, wouldn’t their attempt to reject God’s gift of salvation prove that Jesus’ death and resurrection was efficacious?

[5] Since within God’s timeless reality a man is either saved or not saved, doesn’t it follow that a sinner’s belief or unbelief –2,000 years “after” the fact that Jesus died for him –could not change his relationship with God?

[6] Doesn’t the concept of “hell” deny the determinate efficacy of God’s work in the death and resurrection of Jesus by subjecting it’s objective truth to the vagaries of man’s uncertain “willing”? Doesn’t “hell” necessarily imply a partial failure of God’s work in Christ?

[7] Isn’t true faith based solely on what God really IS and not on what we “believe” He is? Doesn’t the fundamental incompatibility of an unchanging, determinate Creator, with an universe that can change in response to His creatures’ “wills” rule out happenings over which God either has no control, or has relinquished control? Since God cannot change for better or for worse, and since He is unaffected by time progressions, how could He change his mind or cease to love the sinners He saved by His work in the cross – “before” creation?

[8] Johnathan Edwards said: “Nothing is more impossible than that the immutable God should be changed by the succession of time…there is no.. before or after in God… He sees all things by one..unchangeable view”.. Strictly speaking, there is no foreknowledge in God.. there is not succession in his .. judgment… all things exist to him.” If Edwards was right, how could there be a time or place for contingent, by-chance, man-generated events which subjectivize the objective efficacy of God’s work in the death and resurrection of Jesus? Wouldn’t our “belief” or “unbelief” occur too late to change the efficacy of Jesus’s work?

[9] Dr. Tozer said: “He appears at the beginning and end of time simultaneously. For Him everything that will happen has already happened. God knows instantly .. never wonders.. cannot learn..is unaffected by our opinions of Him.” Doesn’t this prove the illogicality of supposing that we can, by acts of our “wills”, change the unchangeable Will Of God?

[10] Luther said: “All we do, however it may appear to us to be done mutable and contingently, is in fact done necessarily in respect of God’s will. God will all things. His will cannot be resisted, altered, or impeded.” Calvin said: “God turns every event whatever way He will…Neither God’s plan nor His will is reversed.” Can the concept of salvation by man’s “belief-work” be reconciled with these assertions?