Please start with
post 665.
People believe in Jesus because Jesus causes people to believe in Jesus (John 6:29); therefore, people with ears to hear will believe in Jesus (Romans 10:17) by hearing the issuance of the command to "believe".
God's Commands Distinguished From Man's Ability
A Command Does Not Convey Ability To Obey Or Disobey Unless Explicitly Stated In The Command
The command issued by the Creator reveals fruit of the creature; in other words, God's commands exposes man's obedience or man's disobedience.
The command of God states God's rule for man, to reward or punish, to bless or to curse.
The command of God does not confer an ability to obey for man, and the command of God does not confer an ability to disobey for man; unless, God's command explicitly confers ability in the command or elsewhere in scripture, then such ability does not exist; otherwise, for a person to claim the ability exists is the person's heart wickedly adding to scripture.
An example from the Torah:
The Word of God records the command of God to Adam "Of every tree in the garden to eat you will be eating, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not eating from, when in the day you are to eat of it to die you will be dying"' (
Genesis 2:16-17).
Scripture reveals that Adam disobeyed God's command (
Genesis 3:6); therefore, scripture reveals Adam's ability to disobey God.
That was the single command issued by God to Adam, and Adam disobeyed; moreover, no account of Adam obeying a command of God exists in scripture.
No scripture reveals Adam's ability to obey God.
God did not say in God's command to Adam "you have the ability to obey" nor did God say "you have the ability to choose to obey".
Adam did not have the ability to freewill choose toward God.
Commands Embedded In Conditional Logic Statements
Scripture contains many conditional logic statements. A conditional logic statement is normally an IF/THEN construct.
In linguistics, logic, semantics, and reality the established fact is that an IF/THEN construct follows this pattern:
The condition results in a true state or false state. If, and only if, the condition results in a true state does the predicate get executed.
An IF-THEN construct merely exposes whether a condition is true or false; consequently, an if/then statement does not inherently convey ability to produce a true state for the condition.
An IF/THEN construct exposes a potential, current, or previously taken PATH along with the PATH's resultant IMPACT.
So, an IF-THEN construct imposes a conditionl expression and a predicate, for example,
Moreover, no conveyance of ability exists intrinsically within the if-then construct.
In scripture, an ACTION represents fruit for the the Word of God says "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn [bushes] nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits" (
Matthew 7:15-20) and "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (
John 15:5).
In language, an IF/THEN statement requires a qualifier to indicate choice, for example, "if you choose chocolate then you eat chocolate" thus the qualifier in the conditional is "choose", but the conditional still does not convey ability to "choose" which such conveyance of ability to "choose" necessitates additional language connected with the IF-THEN statement, such as "you have the ability to choose" since the predicate cannot be executed in the absence of a supply of chocolate.
In Scripture, "you have the ability to choose God" is never expressed nor implied, yet, on the contrary to such a statement of "choose", the Word of God says "you did not choose Me, but I chose you" (
John 15:16) with no exceptions to the stated choosing while applying to all believers in all time (
John 17:20).
These facts of IF/THEN statements do not disappear in scripture.
An IF/THEN can be expressed likewise as:
Thus, the conditional expresses an action/fruit in the condition (you_do_this), and the effectual result in the predicate (that_will_happen).
A conditional does not convey ability to the recipient of the conditional.
The same goes for a command, that is, a command does not convey ability to carry out the command.
For example, the command "do not do this" does not inherently grant the capability to comply with the command.
Neither a conditional nor a command convey choice unless specifically stated.
Continued to
post 664
