"Jesus died for you"?
CAN ASCOL TELL ANYSINNERS IN FLORIDA,
"JESUS DIED FOR YOU"?
Down in the "Sunshine State," I don't suppose any sinner living in or around Cape Coral should expect to hear Pastor Tom Ascol of the Flounders tell him/her that "Jesus died for your sins."
On the Flounders' blog, Tom condemns Steve Gaines' view that Steve can tell a sinner that "Jesus died for you." Ascol says:
"Where is there any record of any apostle going up to a person, stranger or not and saying, 'Jesus died for you'? Jesus died for sinners as sinners."
Well, if you can't tell "a" sinner that "Jesus died for you," then how can you tell "sinners" that "Jesus died for sinners?"
Where is there any record of any apostle going up to persons, strangers or not and saying, "Jesus died for sinners as sinners"?
If you can't tell one individual sinner that Jesus died for you, how you tell many sinners that "Jesus died for sinners"? Are not "sinners" simply a collection of individual sinners?
Yet, Paul says "while we yet sinners, Christ died for us," the "ungodly" (Romans 5:6, 8).
Also, we read the Christ came into the world to "save sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15), but I suppose Ascol would not tell an individual sinner that Christ came into the world to save him.
Ascol evidently cannot tell "a" sinner in Cape Coral or the state of Florida that Christ came to save him, and died for him. I wonder, if "a" sinner were to bring a couple of other "sinners" to a preaching service at Ascol's church, making a total of three "sinners," could Ascol specifically say to those three collectively, "Christ died for sinners," and "Christ came to save sinners"?
If Ascol could say that to all three "sinners," does that really include all three of them, or only two of them, or just one of them? If he could say it to all three sinners, why could he not say it to one of the sinners?
It seems to me that if Ascol can't say "Jesus died for you" to "a" sinner, he can't very well say it to three "sinners," and if he can't say it to three "sinners," how can he say it to ten sinners, twenty sinners, a hundred sinners, -- or for any number of "sinners" at all?
So how can Ascol tell any sinner, or all sinners, in Cape Coral and the state of Florida that Jesus died for any of them at all?
In reality, isn't Ascol really promoting the Hybrid Calvinist heresy that no sinner (or number of "sinners") can believe that "Jesus died for him" until after he has been "born again before believing in Christ"? Then, after he has been "born again before faith," then it is "safe" to believe that "Jesus died for him"?
posted by Bob L. Ross @ 11:32 PM
1 Comments:
This is an interesting take.
You guys really should have a bigger based web site. You really have some interesting thoughts here.
5-pointers have clever (or not so clever as the case may be) ways of trying to lay down their case for Limited Atonement. The problem comes in that there is enough evidence in the Bible to show that the "elect" was meant to be followers teaching others after Jesus and has nothing to do with people being saved.
I think that Calvinists ought to just break away from Baptists and claim themselves not Baptists. I think that is the only way they are going to be happy is if they are exclusively in their own camp. Not just "reformed" (what an idiotic tag).
That's like saying "Reformed Scripture".
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