John 3:27"John answered and said, 'A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven'."
Hebrews 12:2"Jesus is the author and finisher of faith."
Simply put, this Chapter goes into great detail to demonstrate that God is the cause of our faith, not us. You Have Nothing To Do With It (causally).
The Christian/Catholic church, on the other hand, states we as individuals must choose to believe/have faith. According to the church, you have everything to do with it (causally).
Context:
- More than anything, I'm writing this Chapter to establish the truth, not explain the implications. My purpose is to define how someone comes to experience faith in Jesus. The contents of this Chapter must be understood for the rest of the NT to be rightly discerned. (I can't emphasize this enough.)
- I'm not a Calvinist, have never been a Calvinist, and knew nothing about Calvinism until after the subject matter of this book was revealed to me through the grace of God. (That in and of itself is telling.)
- I encourage you to check the context of all referenced Scripture. I trust doing so will further establish the integrity of the message.
Now, I've broken down the remainder of this chapter into four parts:
Part 2 - Documentation of the 7 most straight forward Scriptures that tell us faith comes from God, and is not a choice we're responsible to make. My comments will follow each quote. (I've referenced 51 other texts, along with my commentary, in the Chapter 3 Appendix.)
Part 3 - Paul's empirical experience of faith.
Part 4 - A (very) brief expose of the term “born again” and its relationship with John 3:16.
Part 5 – Summary of Chapter 3.
The sole causal force of faith is God. Man can't produce, therefore, is not responsible to produce, New Testament faith. God does NOT offer people faith, then leave it up to them to accept or reject it. This concept does not exist in the Scriptures.