What first prompted you to consider the G.R.A.C.E. view? (God Restores All Creation Eventually)
I was confronted by 1 Timothy 4 : 10, which didn't fit my view of salvation at that point. "That is why we labour and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe."
That really shook me; it challenged everything I had been taught and everything I had taught. It also challenged me to make a fresh study of salvation and God's overall plan for his creation starting with a blank sheet of paper.
I then began to see God's plan to reconcile all people popping out from almost every page in the Scriptures. It was amazing that I had never seen such things before. Verses like
2 Corinthians 5 : 18, 19; 1 John 2 : 2; Romans 5 : 18; 1 Corinthians 15 : 22 and Romans 11 : 32 began screaming at me.
Then I began a little experiment, which included asking myself some serious questions.
I considered, on one hand, the most popular Christian vision of the future, my previous view, in which most people would be excluded from salvation for ever.
I then considered, on the other hand, the vision of eventual Christian reconciliation, in which God achieves his loving purpose of reconciling all people.
Then I asked myself ........
Which vision most strongly supports the Biblical concept of a God of love?
Which vision best describes God’s eventual victory over evil?
Which vision best honours and celebrates the victory won by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross?
Which vision best demonstrates "grace surpassing sin" that Paul describes in Romans?
Which vision most helps us to honour and worship God?
Which vision gives the better idea of a loving Father raising and disciplining his children?
Which vision most likely inspires hope?
Which vision is more consistent with God as a model of kindness and mercy that Jesus asked us to follow?
It didn't take me too long to decide that I had been selling God short and that I had been attaching severe conditions to his unconditional love.
I like this list of questions Barry. They may go a long way to giving us a structure to base our arguments on.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of telling a story around the scriptural argument. Making it personal is a good indirect way of getting a pointed point across.
I might run it by the house church as a means of building discussion tonight.
Would you like me to get permission from you first before I discuss these things with the house church?
Bless you, Rog
No mate. Use whatever you like, whenever you like, wherever you like.
ReplyDeleteRoger here again.
ReplyDeleteSomething very powerful about 1 Tim 4:10 is that it refers to believers as a subset of all the people who are saved.
This is important as sometimes one can see that certain scriptures are very contextual, such that "all people" may only be referring to "all people who are saved" (a bit like references to "the whole world").
It would be much harder to reduce the impact of this scripture by such means as it does not allow for such questions of its scope and context.