I have a few verses I would like to get a Calvinist interpretation of. To me they don't seem to be compatible with many of the Calvinist doctrines; they deal with God commanding us to repent and turn to him and with us forsaking Him after we have been following Him.
Why would God command something that is impossible?
1) God clearly does command us to do that which is impossible for fallen sinners: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Moreover, the law of God itself demands to be obeyed perfectly, flawlessly (James 2:10)—thus demanding a level of obedience that has proven utterly impossible for every person who ever lived, except Christ.
2) Therefore the fact that God commands us to do something is no proof that we have intrinsic power in our fallen state to obey Him. (Cf. Romans 7:15-16).
3) One major reason God gives us moral standards we cannot obey is to reinforce our knowledge of our own spiritual impotence, so that we have no option but to turn to His grace as we seek salvation from our sin. (Cf. Luke 18:13-14).
4) Nothing but sheer arrogance and a blindness to one's own spiritual poverty would lead anyone to think he is capable of obeying God or saving himself through human will power. (cf. Luke 18:11; Romans 10:3.)
5) It is also a serious mistake to imagine that inability nullifies responsibility in the moral realm. The fact that sinners are spiritually dead and therefore morally unable to obey God does not remove them from the moral obligation to obey Him.
6) I think you misunderstand the Calvinist objection to "free will." Every true Calvinist believes sinners are responsible moral agents, free from any external force or coercion in the choices they make. They choose freely. But they inevitably choose wrong, because their choices are determined by their own nature and their nature is sinful and corrupt. We can discuss this further if you're interested, but the point is simple: A call for the sinner to "choose" something good is in no way incompatible with Calvinist theology.
Job 34:4: "Let us choose to us judgment: let us know among ourselves what is good."
Scripture often calls us to make choices that involve a decision for good rather than evil. That in no way suggests that we are morally neutral, or inclined neither to evil or to good. Choosing "good" goes against the sinner's nature (Romans 8:7-8), so unless God graciously intervenes to awaken and empower us, we will always make the wrong choice (Jeremiah 13:23). And we do so without any external force or compulsion. In that sense our choices are perfectly free. But apart from divine grace we would be hopelessly enslaved to our own lusts (Romans 6:20). So the sinner's "choice," though free in every meaningful sense, is always predictably wrong.
Job 33:27-28: "He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit and his life shall see the light."
Note that this verse plainly teaches it is God who enlightens and saves the sinner; the sinner doesn't turn himself around apart from God's enablement. I don't know what in this verse you imagine is incompatible with Calvinism.
Job 40:14: God states; "Then will I confess to you that thine own right hand can save thee."
Well, just read what goes before this verse. The Lord speaks to Job out of the whirlwind and says, "Do you have an arm like God?" (v. 9). Can you thunder with a voice like His? Can you deck yourself in majesty equal to His? (v. 10). Can you disburse your wrath in a way that humbles all who are arrogant? (vv. 11-13). If you can do all that in the same way God can, "Then I will also confess to you That your own right hand can save you."
In other words, God Himself is saying it is arrogant to think you can save yourself. That's exactly the same point I made above.
Deuteronomy 30:19: Moses tell them to choose life rather than death. If there is no choice in the matter why would he say this?
See above. They do have a choice. They just can't make the right choice without God's gracious enablement.
1 Samuel 15:11: Saul "turned back from following" the Lord, so he had to have been following Him at some point in time. As far as what I have learned one of the doctrines that Calvinists teach is the irresistibility of grace. Here it does not seem to irresistible.
Again, you don't understand Calvinism very well. God's grace toward His elect will always ultimately triumph over their resistance. (In other words, "irresistible grace" does not mean God's grace is never resisted, because many of us resisted it at first, but it ultimately proves irresistible.) However, God's goodness to the reprobate ("common grace")—which is what you see operating in Saul's case, I believe—is always rejected and resisted.
Joshua 23:8-16: Joshua warns Israel to cleave to the Lord their God as they have done and not to turn back. If they could not turn back in the first place why would God have Joshua warn them in the first place?
God's warnings are often the means He uses to secure our perseverance. See John Murray's comments on this in the chapter on perseverance in Redemption: Accomplished and Applied.
Galatians 4:9, 11: Paul asks the Galatians why they would desire to be in bondage again by turning to the weak and beggarly elements after they have been known of God. If grace is irresistible why would they have to be warned?
See previous answer. The warning itself is a manifestation of grace.
Jude 24: The expression is "able to keep us from falling"; not "will keep us from falling." Able in Greek means "maybe" "might" "can" anything but "will."
Wrong. "Able" in Greek is from a root that means "power"—dunamai. Literally, "God has the power to keep you from falling." Moreover, Peter makes it explicit: we "are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5). God's own power is the keeping agent, not my own weak and fragile "will power."
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