Would you consider evangelizing someone with real hope that, by God’s grace, they shall repent of their sins and accept God’s salvation from their sins, to be saving grace or common grace?
If that evangelization is only (cooperating with, insofar as we are human) common grace and not saving grace, what kind of evangelization would you consider saving grace (and our evangelical cooperation with that grace) to be instead?
On the other hand, if that evangelization is saving grace when God does it, is it the properly human equivalent of saving grace when we do it, or the properly human equivalent of common grace? (Keeping in mind that we cannot save anyone by our grace–the question is about which grace we’re cooperating with when we do it.)
Alternately, should we never have hope in God for their salvation from sin when evangelizing someone?–only at best some kind of potential hope for their salvation from sin in case they happen to be one of God’s elect?
Setting aside that, on any non-universalistic soteriology, this would mean that there shall be no re-probation for the “reprobates”… The word translated “patience” in the NT Greek always in every occurrence even in Romans (except for one disputed exception in Rom 9) refers to God’s intention to save sinners from sin. In fact much Calvinistic emphasis on the persistence of God to save sinners from sin refers to this term as strong evidence for that stance.
Do you mean this patience to save sinners from sin will run out for some people eventually (which would be one type of Arminianism), or are you talking about some other sort of patience than the one mentioned in the scriptures? If you mean the one mentioned in the scriptures, how is it the same saving patience everywhere but not in Romans 9?–or is it the same patience everywhere including in Romans 9, but does not actually have anything to do with God’s intention to save sinners from sin? And if it really has nothing actually to do with God’s intention to save sinners from sin, why do Calvinist theologians routinely appeal to that Greek term in its other occurrences outside Romans 9 as evidence in favor of God’s faithful and trustworthy persistence to save some sinners from sin?
No, that’s the data. The context is the other data for explaining what this data does or does not mean. For example the reference to Deut and to Proverbs that I discussed, as well as what God expects of us toward our enemies.
When you say “all”, does that include being merciful (which is what the “doing good” is about in the Romans context) to those whom God has the right to execute His punitive justice on? Or only to those who happen to be of the household of faith? (I see you wrote “especially” with emphasis which would seem to imply that we are also expected by God to be merciful to those outside the household of faith, which in the long run means being merciful to those whom God has never intended to save from their sins if one or another variety of Calvinism is true.)
If we are to be merciful to the non-elect, too, are we to continue being merciful to them until we are perfect as God is perfect?–a phrase Jesus Himself connected with giving helpful mercy to our enemies? If so, shall we continue giving mercy to them once we are righteous with God’s righteousness? Or shall we stop giving mercy to them once we are righteous with God’s righteousness and no longer sinners ourselves? Or are we expected to be righteous with a righteousness other than God’s righteousness?–and if so, where does this other righteousness than God’s righteousness come from and why would God expect us to be that kind of righteous instead?
In other words, are we to be presently more merciful than God, or less merciful than God, or as merciful as God; and whichever that is, are we to continue being more, less or just as merciful, or should we grow to be less, more or just as merciful as God?
Is the love Paul exhorts us to in Romans the special love for God’s children just as He shows a special love to us, or is it an unspecial merely common love to everyone of the sort that God shows to everyone?
If it the special love we are to show only to God’s elect, where does Paul say so in those verses, and what ground does he give us for distinguishing God’s elect from God’s non-elect in this life? Or was Paul talking about showing love to our enemies among God’s elect in the Day of the Lord to come after we can distinguish by God’s judgment who is elect and who is non-elect?
If Paul was talking about the merely common unspecial love in those verses, does that mean God also to the non-elect blesses and not curses, does not revile them, gives them food and water to heap burning coals of repentance on their heads (as per the quote from Proverbs), repays them good for evil and not evil for evil, and lives in peace with the non-elect insofar as it depends on Himself?
Was God not giving His non-elect over to their own wills already, or was God working within them to lead them to righteousness?
Does God’s insistence on not leaving sinners over to their own wills count as only as common grace?–if so, how can we be sure that God will continue to insist on not leaving some sinners over to their own wills, since this is not part of God’s special grace to the elect?
Do sinners have any ability in their own wills to repent of their sins and escape the evil of their own wills without God’s intention that they shall do so? Is God’s intention that sinners should escape the evil of their own wills different than an intention of God’s that sinners should be righteous in their own wills, and if so how?
If God authoritatively decides that sinners shall never repent of their sins, and so that they shall either continue doing unrighteousness or shall cease to exist rather than come to do righteousness, who is ultimately responsible for sinners never coming to do righteousness (and for unrighteousness continuing to exist forever if they are not annihilated)? If the sinners are ultimately responsible for their never coming to do righteousness, how is that they are ultimately responsible without intentional help from God to be righteous instead of unrighteous? Did they have the ability to become righteous without God’s intention that they should become righteous?
Finally, it seems like when you want to credit God with the proper authority to punish sins, you speak of Him actively punishing sins. But when you want to talk about who is ultimately responsible for sinners never becoming righteous, you prefer to talk about God losing patience with those sinners and leaving them to their own sinful choices (as though He was trying to save them from their sins but they defeated Him and He gave up, so it isn’t thanks to God that they shall never be righteous but rather the insistence of the sinners against God is why God stopped trying to save them. Also as though He is only leaving them to do what they want to do, somewhere they won’t hurt anyone who is righteous, not actually actively punishing them.)
By contrast: I think God always acts so far as He can (so long as other considerations of His aren’t voided) to save all sinners from sin, so that ultimately it is the sinner’s responsibility if the sinner refuses to repent and impenitently holds to the sin. Nor does God ever give up on the sinner, arbitrarily changing His mind about saving the sinner from sin or being defeated by the sinner (or by non-moral Nature for that matter) so that God cannot possibly save the sinner anymore. God does not rest short of leading the sinner to righteousness.
We can trust Him to persist in saving sinners from sin, and to be ultimately competent at doing so; and we can trust God not to authorize final unrighteousness.
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