The Sincere offer of Salvation

Ponter kicked off an argument with Triablogue on the issue of the sincerity of the gospel with this argument:

1. God makes a sincere, universal offer of Salvation to all men, particularly non-believers. (See for example Revelation 22:17 - "The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.")
2. God cannot forgive men apart from the atoning work of Christ on the cross.
3. Therefore, Christ must have made a universal atonement for sin which allows Him to make a universal offer of salvation, for it would be impossible for men to be saved if Christ has not paid their penalty.

Triablogue attempted to defend themselves here here here here here here here (among other places) with the argument that God doesn't need to be sincere because He knows the non-elect will not accept His offer. But is this reasonable? No, because an offer is sincere if the person wants to provide it. An offer is valid if the person can provide it. What is absent this definition: the person who accepts the offer. 

It's a common assumption that because the reprobate don't want to accept the accord God can't seriously be intending to save them, or that because God knows who will be saved He doesn't actually want to save the non-elect.  But the sincerity of God has nothing to do with them, it has everything to do with Him. How can God know the future and still make the offer even though He knows the outcome ahead of time? Because He is love. He earnestly, genuinely, loves them enough to make the offer. Whether they love Him enough to accept the gospel is not the point. The point is that He loved them enough to make it.

Now the Triabloguers and modern Calvinists think differently, they reason that because man is fallen and the offer will be rejected it cannot be valid. In other words what they are really saying is that God is insincere when He says He loves them, and doesn't want them to perish.  What God really wants is actually for them to perish. 
Take for example God's offer to wicked King Ahab. In what reality can it be seen that God wanted Ahab to perish when He is extending an olive branch, and giving Ahab second chances, patiently waiting that he may repent? But because Triablogue have a desire to defend their position to the death they have to ignore those verses that speak counter to their philosophy. Because scripture is clear God is sincere in that He earnestly desires the salvation of all men, how else do you account for Him yelling at men to turn, turn from their sins lest they perish?  He is also not insane, when He is asking man to come, to reason with Him, that their sins may be as scarlet they will be washed white as snow, so, being rational, He wouldn't make an offer with His whole heart that He could not make good on.
And all this has nothing to do with the man. God's love is not called into question by evil men, in fact the opposite is true, it's seen even greater for what it is. The cross is ever so much more glorious because of our desperately sick hearts.
Thus says the Lord about Himself, Exodus 22:27 "...I am compassionate"
Thus He sincerely wants to save the non-elect men, but they will have none of it. Let their unwillingness to to be saved never impugn God's willingness to save them.

Some thoughts from Acts 3

While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's.  
Just like the man healed of Legion clung to Jesus (Mark 5:18)
12 And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk?
This is one of my favorite statements of Peters in this sermon. He has by this time acquired the heavenly knack for saying impossibly absurd things as if they were ordinary.  In fact this begins in earnest in Matt 14:31, when Jesus can't figure out why Peter would walk, and then stop walking on the water, "I don't get it, you were walking just fine a second ago." Or the angels rebuking him (Luke 24:5) for looking for the living among the dead. "Do you humans always walk around cemeteries looking for dead people? I simply don't understand your behavior" as if they don't recognize that they still thought He was dead. Or the other angelic rebuke Acts 1:11 "Why do you keep looking into the sky?" "Because that was incredible maybe?"
Why are you so astonished has the same feel to it. On the one hand, humanly speaking, it's amazing and beyond incredible. On the other hand, is it really any exertion of power for the God who made the universe to heal a man's legs?


13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers,
Thus equating Jesus with the Ancient of Days
glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.
Pilate may have been totally ruthless when it came to carrying out justice, but you had to say this about him: he wanted justice. He was cold and calculating in order to achieve an end of peace, rather than just bathe in blood like Herod the Great before him.

14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,  
you may think this was Barrabus, but this was actually me. And you.

15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. 16 And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

17 “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.  

This is why Jesus spoke in parables, so that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see, lest they be hardened further. Should God have revealed Himself fully to them and they reject Him, there is no alternative. No escape, no forgiveness available. But since they acted in ignorance it is possible to come to Him, to ask for mercy. In other words, by keeping them blind and ignorant God has given them the gift of forgiveness. They can be saved should they take it.

 

18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.  

Matthew 16:21, was a lesson Peter learned particularly well, considering Matt 16:23

19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, (our technical word is justified) 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, (sanctified) and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, (into our hearts that we may be adopted) 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. 23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ 24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. 

Luke 24:25-27. Christ is the sum and substance of the Old Testament. He is the One of whom it is written, and in Him all of it holds together. It points to Him, shows Him darkly, but nonetheless shows Him.

25 You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ 

Because Abraham was blessed by His seed, which was Christ, a Jew must be in Christ to receive Abrahams blessing.  In other words, the blessing of Abraham was Christ Himself and to turn away from Him is to forfeit your blessing as God's people. Thus Paul writes "they are not all Israel" and "a Jew is not one who outwardly." Without Christ there is no Abrahamic blessing, even if you have Abraham as your physical father.

Killed by Lion

1 Kings 13 is one of the more baffling sections in the history of the Kings of Judah and Israel. A nameless prophet suddenly appears at Bethel to give a word of warning against the evil king Jereboam, survives the temptation to join sides with the crown, but then falls to the temptation of joining with the false prophets. 
As a result a lion comes and kills him.

It brings to mind the severe punishment Moses was given when he could not enter the promised land for his failure to obey God.
In Exodus 17:6 Moses had been given the great honor of acting out the nature of the Father striking the Son and causing living water to pour out to heal the people (1 Cor 10:4).  Just as Nehushtan was lifted up on a pole and healed those who looked at him, thus prefiguring Christ, Moses was given the duty of prefiguring the punishment God would inflict on Jesus.
You can see that in the second instance it would not do to strike Christ again, as the cross was a once for all time event, so God had Moses speak the second time (Num 20:8).  When an adopted, justified, child of the covenant sins the Father speaks to His Son, asking Him to intercede for the fallen people who have broken fellowship with Him. He does not strike His Son twice with crucifixion.  Moses had therefore not merely disobeyed God when he struck the rock twice, he had ruined God's example, and portrayed an inaccurate message of Christ to every subsequent generation. When we understand this we are less inclined to think the punishment does not fit the crime, instead we think are tempted to think that God let him off light for compromising our ability to understand Christ better.  

I think the nameless prophet was in the same situation.

Like Christ he was a prophet, who comes on the scene of history as a nobody (Matt 2:23), with almost no back explanation. Like Christ he pronounced doom upon the ungodly v2 (Matt 23) as a warning to repent, and demonstrated his message with signs and wonders v4 (Acts 2:22), including healing the crippled hand of a man v6 (Luke 6:10).  He cast down the ungodly ruler of the age v1 (John 12:31), was enticed to throw in his lot with the king v7 (John 6:15) but knowing their hearts and how unstable men are he remains steadfast to obey God v9 (John 2:24-25).
Unfortunately that's where his story ends because that's where the similarities to Christ end. He was to be a picture of Christ, a prophet come into the world to warn and heal, to have no intercourse with the ruler of this world, but to accomplish his mission and return to the glorious land. He was not to become enamored with the sinful world, nor was he to join it, nor live in it, nor linger in it, for Christ did not come to live in our world but to call us out of it and into a better one. This man was a foreshadow of Christ Himself. A tremendous, amazing, honor afforded to very few people in the pages of history, and instead of being pure and steadfast this prophet folded up and fell in with sin.
So God sent a lion to show His displeasure. That's not how His Son was to be represented, as some prophet that gets half way to the goal and then gives up and decides to disobey. His Son is too pure to be represented in such an ugly manner, so God had to pull the plug on the analogy in an obviously divine fashion.
Christ is not to be looked upon as merely a good prophet, or wonderful teacher who brought kind words and did nice things and we weep to think that here was love Himself come to show us love. We should not have apostates mourn for Him as if they had a share in His inheritance.   

So yes, God is holy, and just, and to be obeyed, and deserves our respect. But more then that I think that God was trying to help us understand His Son by analogy, and lest we be tempted to overdraw the analogy He cuts it off.  Nehushtan was designed to show people how if we look upon it lifted up we may be healed (John 3:14), but when the worship became idolatrous it was destroyed (2 Kings 18:4). Moses was to prefigure the healing Christ brought, but when he misled them to the nature of Christ he was barred from the promised land. And when this prophet did more harm to us than good God stepped in.

And... because of the angels!

Paul talks in 1 Cor 11 about the need for the woman to be the glory of man, and to submit to the authority of men as central to the worship of the church. How should she show her womanhood? By having long beautiful  hair to cover her head with.  Now on the other hand men ought to have short hair, because he is the glory of God, being made originally in God's image.  Paul says, For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 
He then goes on to give three reasons why woman should have long hair to cover themselves with, to demonstrate that men have the authority.
1. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
2. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 
That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head,
3. because of the angels.

The first two reasons for hair covering are easy to understand, but the third isn't nearly so clear.  As Begg says the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things, so we will do alright to get the clear things down. And clearly the Corinthians knew what Paul was saying because the brevity of the statement seems to indicate some kind of footnote or after thought. 

Calvin's explanation is thus "When, therefore, women venture upon such liberties, as to usurp for themselves the token of authority, they make their baseness manifest to the angels... [it's] as if he had said, “If women uncover their heads, not only Christ, but all the angels too, will be witnesses of the outrage.”
MacArthur agrees with this, "Woman are to be submissive by wearing the symbol of authority so as not to offend these most holy and submissive creatures who watch the church (Matt 18:10, Eph 3:9-10) who were present  (Job 38:4,7) at creation."  Angels are therefore offended upon seeing short hair or uncovered heads.  Well I confess it may be true that they are standing by getting progressively more outraged and offended on behalf of Christ at seeing women in rebellion to men, it just seems to me that this is not a satisfactory enough explanation.

Guzik has a slightly different take, adding that God has angels watching so that they may understand Him, "God has eternal things to teach the universe through us (Ephesians 3:10-11; 1 Corinthians 4:9; 1 Peter 1:12)" Apparently seeing uncovered women would confuse or make it difficult for them to see what God is trying to teach them.

William Greenhill says something that feels nearer to the mark "angels are covered, to show their reverence and subjection to Christ. It is an honour to the angels, that in reverence to them the women are to be veiled." Now Greenhill means that women are to honor the angels by being veiled, but the logical leap is better, and that is the angels themselves are veiled (Is 6:2), and they enjoy a special privilege before God. Women enjoy the position of the angels, and therefore should be veiled, because the angels are veiled.

But for myself I think that 'because of the angels' most likely means Jude 1:6. The angels didn't respect the authority of those above them, and chose to rebel, to their everlasting destruction.  Women, if you choose to rebel against head coverings consider the angels who fell.  So because of the angels falling into rebellion by not respecting their authority women face the same jeopardy should they rebel.

The Five Points of Calvinism

A better way to approach the TULIP acrostic is to ground it in the concept of regeneration: 

Totally unwilling - we are unwilling (lacking the moral, not physical ability) to repent of our sins unless we're first awakened by God. (2 Tim 2:25, Acts 16:14, Phil 1:29). This is because we have a heart inclined to evil, or as God says, a heart of stone. It does not mean that we are incapable of repenting or believing, only that we are totally unwilling.

Unconditional regeneration - There was nothing inherently good within us that caused Him to fix our hearts, no foreseen good works that caused Him to operate on us, it was only because of His goodness. As it is written "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy" and again "The wind blows where it wills."

Limited Atonement - God does not regenerate all men; He chooses some to receive new eyes (John 3:3), new hearts (Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26), new understanding (John 6:65, Matt 16:17, Mark 4:7). He does not give this gift to all men equally, since "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." 

Irresistible Grace - If God tinkers with the heart of a man without asking permission first then what power does man have to resist His love? None, which is why regeneration is irresistible. 

Perserverance of the Saints - If regeneration is a one time permanent change then it stands to reason the patient will continue to love Him always. After all, "the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable."

Why Satan Fell

Some times you hear atheists put forward this paradox, "can God create a corndog bigger than He can eat? Either way you answer I've proven He's not all powerful."  The answer to this is that there are some things God cannot do. He cannot lie, He cannot steal, He cannot sin. God can't do things that bring Him no glory.

What if that thought occurred to Satan, and we only believe this because he sold it to us?

Satan was created to grow, and to develop; to advance. The Bible speaks of angels seeing, and longing, and learning, so it seems to me a reasonably small leap of logic to conclude that Lucifer, being an angel, was created with the potential and commission to grow.
What if it occurred to him that there was a way to grow beyond God? What if he discovered that he was capable of doing something as yet unrealized, something so totally novel that nobody had even thought of it before- becoming great by doing what God Himself couldn't? Would he not then be, in a sense, better than God having the power to accomplish this?

I propose that this was the reason Satan fell.  In his desire to grow he decided to go beyond God.  He began to derive his identity and pride from being what God is not, and cannot be. His rebellion is his pride, his badge. So he hates where God loves, tears down where God constructs, and continually does evil, because while God can only do good he is not so constrained. Notice however that the hating and working evil are secondary results that flow from the pride of rebellion. Satan does not hate goodness for the sake of hating, he hates because it is the expression of a power God doesn't have.
 
In fact this explains everything about Satan. Why would Satan would continue to rebel when he knows God is guaranteed to win in the end?  If God is a winner and can only ever win, then there is nothing better for Satan than to lose. For in this sense losing is winning.  Why would Satan freely opt for an eternity of torment? Because God can do nothing but delight in Himself, and this is Satan's way be greater than God. Can God be miserable in hell?  No, but the creature could.  Can God lie? No, but Satan can, therefore with every lie at every opportunity Satan expresses how his power is greater than Gods.

In the end the worst thing is not that Satan would think this way, but that mankind would agree with it and in so doing chose pain instead pleasure, loneliness instead of mirth.  The price paid to be able to say "I can do what God cannot" is, when carefully weighed on the scales, too high. Far better to choose humility and its results than pride and its fruits.

1 Cor 6:12-7:13 class notes

 It falls to me to have the dubious honor of leading the class on the topic of sexuality. Considering that our society is in open rebellion to God by delaying marriage past college I’m very excited. Hurray.

Paul will now resume his discussion on sexual matters that he has put on pause since chapter 5. The argument for abstinence outside of marriage for the Christian is on four parts

1.       Sexual sin enslaves men into bondage

2.       It is against our union with Christ

3.       It defiles our bodies

4.       It is dishonoring to God

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.

·         The Corinthians were quoting at him that in Christ all things are lawful, and he turns around and insists that while it may be true we can do something not all things are good and ought to be done.  Some things are downright bad and will certainly enslave you.  There is nothing wrong with smoking, except that it will enslave you.

13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

·         They quote at Paul again ‘food for the stomach and stomach for food’  Our appetites and sinful desires are like food which pass through us and don’t defile us.  Paul insists that this is valid only for things which are not eternal. 

·         The second point is that this only holds up for the created order.  The body was not made for prostitution or fornication, but for the Lord because He wants to display His glory in it. It ought to have a holy purpose.

14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

·         This is the proof of the last statement, since it’s His body He will come back for us and raise us up a new body

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!

·         Is Christ in the habit of male prostitution? It’s reprehensible. Therefore since we are Christ’s body we should be pure like Him.

·         Romans 6:3 commands us not to use our bodies as instruments for unrighteousness.

16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”

·         This quote taken from Genesis 2:24. In sex there is an equation where the two become one flesh.  Jesus should never be one flesh with a cult hooker.  It’s inconceivable. 

·         Sex combines the bodily delights of two people. In marriage this establishes their bond, in adultery it making and breaking it.

17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

·         The Gnostics taught that the body was disconnected to the soul. Paul here teaches that the soul is connected through the body.

·         Jesus prays in John 17:21 that they may be one as we are one.

18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

·         Some sins are spiritual only: Pride, laziness, greed. But this particular sin is the only one where the sin 100% involves the base animal desires of the flesh.

·         You are inside your body, but you are not your body. One day you will be torn from your body in death.  This particular sin is against that body which you inhabit. It’s 100% against you yourself. You are wrecking yourself.

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

·         You are not in command. God is over your life. Therefore you need to honor God who directs you. He bought you to live in your heart, you belong to Him.

7:1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman."

·         It’s likely they wanted an affirmation from Paul on this- it’s good for us to be abstinate.  Paul agrees but with a caveat.

·         The Corinthians had the idea that a celibate person had more time to be with God, was more holy.  Therefore even married people should not have sex.

·         It does not mean sex is bad that abstinence is good. We might say both eating and fasting are good together in their proper time.

2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

·         This however assumes that people are basically good and in control. That’s not the case.
      One man, one woman, in your heart, for life. This is good and sex inside this boundary is affirmed by God.

·         Our culture, and in this I mean especially young men, flee from marriage as if the whole institution was evil. This is remarkably wrong.

3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

·         This is to you women (I’ve just hit a low point in my Bible teaching career by telling college women this) you must have sex with your husband as often as he wants it.  He has a right to your body. When you get married your headaches and whining and pushing him away, and multiple excuses, and general dislike of sex – that’s a sin. A big one if I do say so myself.   

4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

·         It’s his body, not yours.  As far as I can see you owe him a nice upkeep on it while you’re at it.
      When it goes the other way men, she gets the same rights.

5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

·         Paul offers a concession, if you desire to abstain from sex as a married couple, set aside a limited period of time, with a goal in mind.  You should not give it up just to give it up.
      Sexual abstinence can occasionally accomplish some good, but then again it’s more likely just to ruin your marriage.

·         Deprive is the word for defraud from earlier. If you withhold you are cheating your spouse.

·         Satan’s plan is to encourage sex outside of marriage and minimize sex inside of marriage.  If you are pushing your husband around, and telling him what he can’t do, and minimizing his feelings, you are severely sinning.  I suppose it works the other way around, but I can’t ever imagine a case where it would be true.

6  Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. 7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

·         What Paul is about to say is not a previously stated rule taken from other scriptures. But oddly enough, this is going to count as new scripture. He’s going to lay out a rule, and an exception with an explanation

8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.
9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

·         Remain single, unless you can’t. If your heart longs for children and a husband and a noisy family that’s okay.

·         Bing single and happy is even better than married and happy, which is better than single and lustful.

·         At the time of writing Paul was single and since he was likely married before he could evaluate each fairly and come to a conclusion about it.

·         The Catholic church has ignored this warning and as a result only people not interested in marriage among whom are disproportionately child molesters are applying for the priesthood.

10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

·         God hates divorce. You can leave the other person’s presence, but you are still bonded to them.  If you divorce except for two reasons you are in violation of God’s law and pleasure.

·         The rigidity of divorce in God’s eyes is shocking. If you don’t like it be more careful who you marry.

·         Adultery is one, the other Paul is going to elaborate on: a non Christian leaving.

·         I’d venture to say that most of the divorces I have seen are just because the other person got bored, or were more excited about a person other than their spouse. This is flatly unacceptable to a Christian.

12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.

·         In Corinth they were having problems divorcing their non-believing spouses. This is not what God wanted from them.

Worshipping Molech

"They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." (Jeremiah 32:35)

We are so much more sophisticated today than those primitive worshippers of Molech were. We no longer do anything so stupid as name the prosperity god for one. For two we don't go to sacred places to invoke the blessing of the priest, we go to clinics where a respected doctor performs the ritual decently and in order. So we don't beat drums to drown out the sound of screaming babies, we play soothing elevator music and kill the fetuses before they get air into their lungs. And we don't cook them to death for godsake, we use the humane method of dismemberment. We have evolved beyond offering to operation. And most importantly we don't work reactively to dispose of unwanted children, we plan parenthood ahead of time. Fortunately we're so much more moral than those ancient savages.   

The Principle Error of Popular, Modern Calvinism

Introduction
Before beginning, let me first speculate that the denial of the necessity of faith is unique to Calvinism because the children of Calvin are a systematic type; following in the footsteps of the Institutes they seek to know why God would do a thing, while the children of Luther following in the footsteps of a Bible translation read the Bible as a story unfolding. You can forget the importance of faith in the first case, but it's impossible in the other. You never hear of hyper-Lutherans, because the beauty of faith is never forgotten.

The Centrality of Faith

Faith is:

• That thing which pleases God. Heb 11:6.  (The opposite holds true as well, all things done without faith are displeasing to Him. Rom 14:23)
• A settled confidence in God's promises, character, and goodness Heb 11:1 
• A command from God for something we must do Mark 11:22 
• The way we may be saved John 6:29
• Grounded on the atoning work of Christ on the cross.  Without Christ we have faith in nothing, meaning faith becomes is useless. 1 Cor 15:14 But just as faith is no good without the atonement, the atonement is useless without faith Heb 4:2 
• Possible only upon hearing the good news of Christ, which awakens our dead unregenerate hearts to life Gal 3:2,5, 2 Tim 3:15.  (Regeneration is a prerequisite for faith, until our will is put right we refuse faith)
• Trusting in God enough to live out your convictions.  James 2:19-24 (I know I'm starting to sound like a Lutheran here, but when Martin Luther translated the Latin the word he selected to convey faith or belief was the word trust.)

By faith we are

• sanctified  2 Cor 5:7; Gal 2:20, 3:11; Heb 10:38; Rom 1:17
• adopted Gal 3:26
• healed Mark 2:5; Mark 5:34; Luke 5:20, 8:48, 17:19, 18:42; Acts 3:16 and given strength Heb 11.
• justified Gal 2:16 
• saved should we have faith until the day of our death Eph 3:17; Gal 5:6; Col 1:23; 2 Thess 3:2; 1 Tim 1:19,5:8, 6:21; 2 Tim 4:7; Heb 6:12; Rev 14:2; Rom 10:9. (This is also proven out in scripture.  When Jesus prayed that they would be saved He asked His father that their faith not fail Luke 22:32, and when Satan attempts to bring people down into hell he attempts to remove their faith Acts 13:8)

Notice that faith is synonymous with salvation. When we have faith we have justification, reconciliation, eternal life, and should we lack faith we are already condemned. One thing alone astounded Jesus, and that was faith Matt 8:10, or lack thereof Mark 1:1-6, Luke 24:25-26.
It cannot be overemphasized: faith genuinely, totally, astonishingly, pleases God. He loves our faith. He desires we have it, because He is kindness beyond understanding.

Doctrines that Counterfeit Faith

1.Regeneration.
Faith is not regeneration.  Nicodemus was correct in asserting that man cannot be born again of his own  power- it would be an impossibility to use your own will to re-create your will, it would be like entering your mothers womb as an adult. Only God can create, and only God can re-create.
But faith is not like this. Man has a natural ability to place his confidence, approval, respect, and trust in things. Indeed, the very problem is that he places his trust and approval in himself.  That's important, so I'll say it again, God's very grounds for anger against mankind is their demonstration of their abilities.  
It makes no sense therefore to assert mankind is incapable of faith, or to equate faith with regeneration.
And so the consequence of equating faith with regeneration is that it doesn't matter if you have it or not because God will take care of everything for you.  If faith is merely a sovereign act of God's power then there is no reason to act, there is no need to act.

2. The atonement. 
If faith isn't the thing that pleases God and erases our debt before Him then what does?  Christ's atonement is often the answer.  Now this is a good answer insofar as He has placated God's wrath by His atoning sacrifice, but this is only what makes salvation possible, not what actually saves.  The hyper-Calvinist asserts things like "does Christ potentially save, or actually save" without realizing that the atonement is not applied from the cross. We are under wrath until the moment of faith, and not until we believe is God pleased.
The cross placates the wrath of God but only faith pleases Him. And of course, the consequence of this error is that there is no need for faith, because the cross is the only thing we need.

The Final Result
Faith is the mountain snow and sanctification is the stream it feeds.  Without faith being honored the result is that there is no sanctification. Not only is there no love for non-believers, there is no love for the brothers. Go into a facebook use-group, or look at a web page, or talk to them in person, they are predominately characterized by their divisive attitude. Better yet, observe them. See if they don't make for themselves an enlightened splinter group and leave their current church, citing how the rest of Christendom has failing theology. This is because they deny faith, and in so doing remove the possibility of sanctification. 
Such is the principle error of modern Calvinists.

Introduction to the problem of Modern Calvinism

High/hyper Calvinism runs rampant across the face of the internet, tramping down classical Biblical thinking and establishing itself as the final authority on all things Reformed. It's fruits are accessible, and sound so plausible that it's tempting to think they are correct. It's alluring.  After being fed a steady diet of Purpose Driven Life and Financial Peace in church it's not a wonder that when someone picks up a book by Aurthur Pink and actually sees the character of God being described they marvel, or when they encounter Owen who obviously ascribes so much value to the cross they forget where they were.  It's refreshing to see people in love with the truth of God's sovereignty, to want to know Him in more than just a shallow pop-culture let's sing about love way.
But even so it's no excuse for what many modern Calvinists have done to the historic doctrines, that is, smashed and compressed them.  Next post I'll show the problem.

Bnonn Tennant on the necessity of "Unlimited" Atonement

This whole series is well worth your time.

Part 1: Particular atonement is inconsistent with what is revealed in Scripture about federal headship and forensic imputation: two doctrines central to Christ’s penal substitution.

 Part 2: Particular atonement is inconsistent with the universal gospel call, whether it is conceived of as an invitation, or as a command only.

Part 3: particular atonement provides no grounds for faith, and makes the assurance of salvation impossible.

 Part 4: Answering the objection that universal atonement requires that God be at cross-purposes with himself

Part 5: Answering the objection that universal atonement entails either universal salvation, or a double payment for sins

Part 6: Answering the objection that a universal atonement would not actually secure or guarantee salvation for anyone.