suhtiwdog

No greater love than this: Christ laid His life down for His sheep. They recognize His voice & follow Him. They were given to Him & He’ll never lose them. Amen!

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🗣️🔥🥵

https://t.co/aNvf6PgrRo

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 Yes, that is my assessment based on the fruit of your replies and posts over the past year targeting and insulting those across the soteriological aisle from you.

You have a consistent pattern of sectarian tribalism, divisive gatekeeping, and antagonistic engagement with other Christians, Brother.

And even when you aren’t necessarily derisive toward your many brethren or individuals, you can’t help but quote-post a Christocentric perspective just to twist it into some argument against Calvinism — which I’m assessing is the fruit of a divisive heart, as your content does little to promote peace or edification. Instead, you esteem yourself and your worldview higher than hers, to the point that you can’t even share yours without trying to tear hers down. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

😅 Missy, do not bother with the, as Paul would put it, “babes in Christ” who are clearly still stumbling over their own carnality stunting their spiritual maturity if they keep bringing the conversation back to who follows whom… “You are of Paul; I’m of Apollos… You are of Calvin; I’m of Arminius.” 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 Bro & I have a Friend who did the impossible for us.

We were both His enemies… but what was the aroma of life to me was the aroma of death for my bro.

What truth I received and knew, my bro could not due to a veil on bro’s heart.

We both heard the same message from our Friend but it was foolishness to my bro — but as for me I recognized the voice of my Friend.

Bro hated My Friend and started hating me, too.

I asked my Friend what about my bro, and He said “What is that to you? Love him anyway and follow Me.” 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

@just_keep_read @rootcausesleuth 😅 True… and that’s a much better meme than the one originally chosen: because fruit don’t wear tuxedos, people do… 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

@rootcausesleuth 🤗 I understand. I am sorry that I took it that way. Peace be with you. 🙏

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🗣️🔥

[Grant Olson @grantedbygrace]

LET'S BE BEREANS

I debate what the Bible says about salvation on here daily, and I won't stop; we're told to "contend for the faith" (Jude 3). But I've read the threads, mine included, and this is for me first. Brothers and sisters in Christ calling each other names. Accusations instead of arguments. Labels instead of people. And the world reading all of it.

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). When two Christians argue about grace with no grace in the argument, the unbeliever reading it learns nothing about election. He learns we're no different from him. The works of the flesh: "enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions" (Galatians 5:20). The fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (5:22-23). The doctrine being debated doesn't decide which list a thread lands on. The hearts debating it do.

What Scripture asks when we disagree:

1. Contend. Paul "reasoned with them from the Scriptures" (Acts 17:2); Apollos "powerfully refuted... showing by the Scriptures" (18:28). Debate isn't the problem. "We destroy arguments" (2 Corinthians 10:5). Arguments, not people.

2. Hear before you answer. "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame" (Proverbs 18:13). A test: can you state the other person's argument in a way he'd recognize? If not, you haven't earned a reply yet.

3. Argue with the person, not the label. "I follow Paul... I follow Apollos... are you not being merely human?" (1 Corinthians 3:4). A label lets you answer the worst version of a man instead of the man. Ask what he believes. Answer that.

4. No name-calling. "Whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire" (Matthew 5:22). "Speak evil of no one... show perfect courtesy toward all people" (Titus 3:2). Paul, on opponents: "correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance" (2 Timothy 2:25). The change of mind we want is one only God grants, and he's never needed our contempt to do it. A jab has never changed a mind. It has only ever hardened one.

5. Take less offense. "It is his glory to overlook an offense" (Proverbs 19:11). "When he was reviled, he did not revile in return" (1 Peter 2:23). Most fights are made of second comments. Let the first one go and there's no fight.

6. One measurement. "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction" (2 Timothy 3:16). Each of us is working out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), and the ruler is the same for all of us. So quote the chapter, not the label and not my motives. And if you want to persuade: "sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness" (Proverbs 16:21). Gentleness isn't weakness. Solomon says it's what makes an argument land.

7. Agree where you can, be agreeable where you can't. Say what the other person got right first; Luke does for Apollos before Priscilla and Aquila "explained to him the way of God more accurately" (Acts 18:25-26). "Outdo one another in showing honor" (Romans 12:10). Wisdom from above is "peaceable, gentle, open to reason" (James 3:17).

The Bereans "received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). The man they checked was Paul, and Luke calls that noble. So check me. Check the person you're arguing with. Check yourself. Against the text.

My commitments; hold me to them: Scripture before my opinion. Your argument stated so you'd recognize it before I answer it. No name you don't call yourself. Where you're right before where I think you're wrong. If I can't say it "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15), I won't say it.

"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4:6). Gracious, and salted. Let's be Bereans.

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

@intj68 @Chris_Harris111

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

@CherylSchatz 🤔 I believe it was Paul who called the Christians at Corinth “babes in Christ” for being so carnally focused on the sectarian tribalism of who follows who that, by it, their spiritual maturity was being stunted. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 Unwillingness implies possibility, it only becomes an impossibility when said unwillingness becomes inability due to judicial hardening. As a compatibilist I personally don't hold to a view that says we're born unable — I firmly believe that comes later as we are permitted to spiral after our own carnality to become deeper lovers of darkness and increasingly hostile to God. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 The Gospel is the power of God unto the salvation of believers, just as it is the catalyst of God unto the hardening of unbelievers — similarly, those sent to preach it are an aroma of life to those being saved, but an aroma of death to those who are perishing. The Gospel NEVER does nothing — it ALWAYS accomplishes what God sends it out to do. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 All days are holy to the mature, discerning, Spirit-filled believer — for idols are nothing and the Kingdom of God is not about tricks or treats, but serving in the newness of the Spirit those things that are acceptable and pleasing to God: joy, peace, righteousness, and above all love.

That being said, we ought not to put stumbling blocks before others who are weaker in faith that esteem one day holier or unholier than others. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 They believe and follow because they ARE sheep. Others do not believe nor follow because they ARE NOT His sheep.

They are not drawn and given by the Father to the Son to become sheep to get to know the Shepherd; they come because they already are sheep that know and are known by the Shepherd.

They are sheep because they were chosen from the beginning for salvation — covenantal grace given to them before time began, before they were born or had exerted their own wills to do anything good or bad.

They were made by, through, and for the Son to be drawn by the gospel, to receive new hearts and spirits made alive in Christ — just as God made the wicked for Himself for their day of doom, to perish under the veil on their blinded minds and darkened hearts as the goats He never knew covenantally because they were not chosen, drawn, and given to the Son according to the perfect purpose and counsel of God’s will. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 Kill the tiger — if your love is greater for the beast than the man, then there is something wrong with your heart… but good news, God can give you a new one! 🤷🏻‍♂️

✍️ “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.””
- Genesis 1:28

✍️ “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand.”
- Genesis 9:2

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

😅 We’re all evil and foolish by default, Brother. That was not the issue I was addressing, at least not from a place of derision…

To clarify, the purpose of sharing those passages is that to understand the spiritual things of God we need both the Holy Spirit and the wisdom that He teaches from the Scriptures — both of which are freely given if we ask God for them. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

🤔 Actually, the man who snuck into the wedding feast without the proper attire was thrown out because he tried to enter based on his own agency and willpower. He didn’t wear the garment provided by the King; he thought his own clothes were good enough. His eviction proves that those who approach God through their own will and exertion are rejected.

Furthermore, Jesus does not say, “I used to know you until you chose to stop abiding.” He says, “I NEVER knew you.” Their entire history was a relationship of absolute absence. They performed great works, cast out demons, and boasted in their own religious exertion — but they were never given by the Father, never regenerated, and never known by the Son.

The final authority IS God, agreed, which is exactly why the ones He actually knows, clothes in His righteousness, and draws to Himself believe the gospel.

So, the neighbor’s belief or unbelief is not based on their will or exertion, but on the will and exertion of the Lord — for many are called but few are chosen, but the children of God were chosen from the beginning for salvation.

We come to Christ because we are drawn by the Father, and we believe in Him because a new heart and the belief in it are granted to us — whatever we choose is just the temporal manifestation of God’s eternal choice to save some of us. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[suhtiwdog @suhtiwdog]

@MikeWingerii 🤔 Public: yes.
Televised: yes.

I doubt God would have said “no cameras” if they were available when He drowned the Egyptian army, or had His chosen nation eradicate the Amalekites, or struck down Ananias and Sapphira… 🤷🏻‍♂️