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I had a good discussion with Alpha yesterday about predestination and "free will" came up. I see free will totally different than most. I don't see free will have anything to do with salvation. If we are dead in our sins and God brings us to life. How can we go against our own nature of hating God to now loving God? what changed us? My question is if we TRULY had FREE will then why can't we not sin? Are we not bound either in sin or righteousness? Can one be independent of sin or righteousness, is there an outside source I don't know about or are we locked in either and if God is the one who unlocks us then did not God violate our free will? If free will IS choice and we make the choice to to be with Him (somehow going against our own nature by acting independently without any interference of God) then how does that not take away any of God's glory?
God created Laws that we are to follow. He then bestowed us the awesome gift of free will. We choose which path we want to take. Our very own choices either adhere to what God wants us to do or they lead us into darkness. Our soul is the real us and when God put a fragment of Himself into us because He loves us so much, he made sure we would go back to Him.
By the same sense, we have no free will because when we choose a path that is not in harmony with God, we lose a part of our light. Once we forgive our selves of that particular deed, we can get that part of the light back because God forgives as soon as the deed is done.
Then we get to choose something else based on the path we are taking. One choice always leads to God and the other away. We always have the free will choice to choose which path to take and God will never ever take that right away.
The only thing God asks of us is love. How can you love someone and still harm them? So, when you love without condition, you cannot sin. Very simple.
I could present a bunch of scripture that states otherwise, but I recall you aren't swayed by such details.
Those "paths" are the everyday choices we make in our lives. There is no scripture for that.
Do I turn right on red or do I stay at a stop until it turns green? That's a choice. Do I walk to work or do I drive? Another choice.
There was a snow storm here last winter and as I read the comments by the ones who made the choice to slow down and wait for the chance to see the road, I was in awe of the decision of the person to just wait it out. It turns out that quite a few people were killed and he could have been one of them. Choices guide our lives as well as God. We can listen to God if we choose and always make the right choice.
Fundamentalist, I agree with you. We are not free to please God because we are made of flesh. God created us flesh knowing full well in advance (in the garden) it would be at enmity to Him and knew in advance it would not be subject to His law:
Rom 8:7 "because the disposition of the flesh is enmity to God, for it is not subject to the law of God, for neither is it able."
And God gave the law, not because He thought they could keep it but to prove to them they could not so they would need a Saviour:
Rom 5:20 Yet law came in by the way, that the offense should be increasing.
We all have wills, but that will is the "will of the flesh"
Eph 2:3 "(among whom we also all behaved ourselves once in the lusts of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the comprehension, and were, in our nature, children of indignation, even as the rest),Yet where sin increases, grace superexceeds,
And we know it can't please God and can't do His law.
Since this is so, God is responsible if we do or do not believe Him concerning Christ's death for us.
"It is not of him who is willing .. . but of God, the Merciful" (Romans 9:16).
But this is not the end God has in view. Theologians try to shield God from being culpapable in being involved in blinding humanity to the truth if eternal torment is true. So those theologians vest humanity with "free-will" to shield God. But He needs no such help from humans.
Those "paths" are the everyday choices we make in our lives. There is no scripture for that.
Do I turn right on red or do I stay at a stop until it turns green? That's a choice. Do I walk to work or do I drive? Another choice.
There was a snow storm here last winter and as I read the comments by the ones who made the choice to slow down and wait for the chance to see the road, I was in awe of the decision of the person to just wait it out. It turns out that quite a few people were killed and he could have been one of them. Choices guide our lives as well as God. We can listen to God if we choose and always make the right choice.
You're looking at what we see in the natural - the only equation we can make; but God is Spirit, and moves in such a way. To bring it into our dimension, say your small child "decided" to walk into the path of a moving bus?
What would you do?
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