30 September 2024
The door is open, but the fallen cannot even be aware of it.
We reject Limited Atonement only because it misses the point. The blood price of the Cross was more than sufficient to save all of humanity. However, not all of humanity is in a position to claim that price. Only the Elect are capable of exercising faith. Humans with dead spirits cannot exercise faith; faith comes as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The non-elect have no place for Him. God never planned on saving the whole human race, only the Elect, those chosen from before the creation of the earth.
Why did He make humans who were damned from birth? There is no logic to this; it will always be incomprehensible to us. The whole thing rests on God's whim. Something about this distinction between the Elect and non-elect is part of His justification for putting the Devil in prison. It's beyond our grasp. All we have is the mandate to act when we are touched by His Spirit.
The non-elect world at large cannot change how it acts. There is no good thing possible from fallen people. Moral goodness is not some objectively defined quality; it is inherently personal in nature. It's more than obedience -- it's a passionate bond with God. No one can rise to the challenge of keeping the law code, so the question of what they might gain "in theory" is pointless. The non-elect cannot change themselves into Elect. And even the Elect cannot obey the law, to be "good enough" to merit peace with God. It's a personal bond.
You are expected to devote substantial effort to noticing, and organizing in your head, God's priorities. We take advantage of revelation to guide our thinking about it. However, we expect to absorb His Word as moral priorities in your heart.
And the Hebrew Scripture about that revelation didn't actually use the term "keep" in our sense of obedience. Rather, it uses a Hebrew word that implies guarding and protecting it. Outsiders cannot possibly understand it. We don't keep the Word from them, but we don't treat them as family, either. We protect the Covenant in terms of the people under it. To "keep" the Law is to guard the boundaries and warn people from stumbling outside.
"Hey, brothers and sisters, I found the boundary right here in my life!" You testify of what you experienced. It's not so that you can claim your experience is normative, but to share an experience they might not have had. They can decide whether it applies to them. You get to decide whom you will treat as family.
Life for the Elect is not transactional between equals. In every context, one is superior and others are subordinate (not necessarily inferior). Creation itself is feudal; someone always must lead. Spiritual people instinctively defer to others unless everyone defers to them first. It works best when you establish roles of leadership in a community.
But the roles can shift with the context, so that a subordinate in one situation becomes the leader in another, even among the same people. You become responsible for guarding the Covenant covering you provide when you lead. You can't revel in the role; you are constantly watchful of threats for their sake.
You don't decide who is Elect, of course. You simply decide who is rolling with your leadership, versus who is causing too much trouble to be included in the activity at hand. You don't want to exclude, but it is your duty to be ready to exclude or otherwise correct threats. You are expected to find a helpful way to offer guidance based on what's in their best interest. You are trying to protect the Covenant.
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