"Free will" and Romans chapter 9 (woman, allegory, praying)
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Here is another perspective to consider, a post from another forum
Romans 9 is about God loving the second born (man of the spirit) and hating the first born (man of the flesh) in all of us. The point of the whole chapter is that the elder (soul) must serve the younger (spirit). If you miss this, you will make the same mistake that Calvinists have made and make it about different people and not about two different parts within all of us. This makes God a respector of persons which the scriptures clearly state that He is not.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, Seeker. I believe that in Romans 9, Paul is speaking of individuals and how God predestined their roles to bring about His purposes, but there are many scriptures which speak of God's intention for all people, the reconciliation of all. I believe that in Acts 10, Peter spoke of God not being a respecter of persons in that God was calling to Himself, both Jews and Gentiles. This boundary was no longer to be a boundary as far as the gospel is concerned. The people of God were not only to be associated with the Jews. Thanks again for sharing and God bless.
Last edited by ShanaBrown; 01-27-2008 at 09:45 AM..
Here is another perspective to consider, a post from another forum
Romans 9 is about God loving the second born (man of the spirit) and hating the first born (man of the flesh) in all of us. The point of the whole chapter is that the elder (soul) must serve the younger (spirit). If you miss this, you will make the same mistake that Calvinists have made and make it about different people and not about two different parts within all of us. This makes God a respector of persons which the scriptures clearly state that He is not.
Blessings
SeekerSA: That is a very interesting perspective but a hard one to support. It requires too much speculation and reading into the Scriptures things that are not clearly there. It does speak of two different people and nothing about some "elder soul" or "younger spirit."
Furthermore, what is the CONTEXT of Acts 10:34?
"Then Peter opened his mouth and said: 'In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in EVERY NATION WHOEVER fears Him and works righteousness is ACCEPTED by Him." (10:34). This entire passage is about the opening of the Gospel to the Gentiles. All were astonished because "the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also" (10:45).
God no longer favored one nation over another. The promise to Abraham was fulfilled--all nations of the earth were blessed; that which was once outside the commonwealth of Israel had been brought in; that which was once afar off had been brought near. Notice also that the key to being brought in is BELIEF on Christ, for the circumcision as well as for the Gentiles. And no one comes to Christ except the Father draws him! And He draws to Himself those He decides to have mercy upon. He prepares beforehand some to be vessels of wrath for destruction and He raises up others to be vessels of glory.
SeekerSA: That is a very interesting perspective but a hard one to support. It requires too much speculation and reading into the Scriptures things that are not clearly there. It does speak of two different people and nothing about some "elder soul" or "younger spirit."
It was not my post but I tend to agree with it. BTW I am not a literalist.
Similarly tares and wheat, one taken, one left relate to the law and grace in us all and not to an us and them.
One must remember too, Paul wrote his epistles over a period of time and like all of us, he did grow in knowledge and truth. He said that "when I was a child I spake as I child, when I grew up, I put away childish things" (paraphrased)
The poster who posed this is also a member here, I leave him to expound.
Seeker, regardless of which way we may see it (imo), the point can still be made that God is the One who has predetermined or predestined certain conditions or things to take place as far as this is concerned. If you believe that this is speaking of God's intent for the man of the spirit to be ruler over the man of the flesh, this is due to God's predetermined plan or intent. And if someone views it as speaking of certain roles to be performed by certain individuals or nations, this is still the result of God's predetermined plan or intent. I can see how both would relate but I one problem I have with the your perspective is that the old man is to be put to death in all of us, not just be servant to the spiritual man. Where does the passage in which Paul says that God will have compassion/mercy on whomever He wills come in, with your perspective? I don't see how it fits. Just wondering. Thanks for sharing and God bless.
Last edited by ShanaBrown; 01-27-2008 at 03:41 PM..
I agree with the perspective that Seeker posted and it seems clear when the whole chapter is read. The point is that the elder must serve the younger. God has shown this with Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Issac, Esau and Jacob etc. Gal. 4 helps with this saying that the first born is after the flesh and the second born is after the spirit and the child of promise.
If this were not the point that God was making in Rom. 9, we would have to assume that God has ordained that all elder brothers must serve all younger brothers because God always loves the younger brother and hates the older brothers.
The second born (second Adam or man of the spirit) in all of us is the one whom God loves and the first born (first Adam man of the flesh) will not be heir with the child of promise. God hates the man of the flesh in us all and we should agree with Him and hate that part of ourselves also.
Don't make the mistake and take what God said about Jacob and Esau out of the context of how God feels about the second born over the first born. It is not about some people that God hates and some that He loves. He is a good Father and is not a respector of some of His children over others of His children. We should all know Him better than this by now.
If this were not the point that God was making in Rom. 9, we would have to assume that God has ordained that all elder brothers must serve all younger brothers because God always loves the younger brother and hates the older brothers.
Hi, why must this be assumed from the passage?
I can see how both would relate but I one problem I have with the your perspective is that the old man is to be put to death in all of us, not just be servant to the spiritual man. Where does the passage in which Paul says that God will have compassion/mercy on whomever He wills come in, with your perspective? I don't see how it fits/ Aren't there examples of God having certain roles for people? For example, look at the Hebrew nation and God's promise to Abraham. All people are to be blessed as a result though. It isn't about hate. The word for hate in the Romans passage has a range of meanings. God bless.
wrt Predestination or Pretermination, both of which I abhor intensely is based on Romans 9 yet ignores so many other texts showing our responsibility and the exercising of choice.
With Predestination, in effect, it is "by chance" you are saved as you need to have been one of the elect. This in essence nullifies all choice wrt "getting saved"
Pretermination goes one step further and thus says all is ordained of God in the first place and we really have no say in the matters or affairs of our existence whatsoever. Thus illness, misfortune, good fortune et al is ordained of God and hence we waste our time praying for that to change as it was sent of God.
The way I disprove it is this:
You get ill and believe that God brings this upon you. Even the extreme folk believe we still have some choice to a degree. You can either:
Rebuke it. Are you in His will or not?
Accept it. Are you in His will or not?
Deny God is the Great Physician
Then we can look at another extreme. You are a faithful Christian and do all the best you can, meet all said requirements of church laws, IOW a squeaky clean and righteous Christian. One day your 5 year old daughter is kidnapped, raped and her murdered mutilated corpse found a few days later.
If that is willed of God, what message is He trying to convey to you? Predetermination says all comes from God.
This is where it gets tricky.
It is from God, thus God can break His own laws of thou shalt not kill and do not commit adultery.
Well such a God I do not want to serve as He is sicker than most earthly fathers.
The other extreme side of the same coin is open theism which states our will can upsurp the will of the Father, thus we can choose to disobey Him and catch him by surprise. Thus we are set on a course and every single action we do by choice by 6.7Bn folk is adjusting the space-time continuum every nanosecond.
That God too I do not want to know as He really seems to have created a monster He cannot control.
The truth is found in neither extreme but somewhere inbetween.
God delegated dominion to us and has never retracted it. I am sure He intervenes as He had to with the Hebrews when they nearly got themselves wiped out a number of times.
There are just too many scrips that show we have choice, we choose to forgive to be forgiven likewise hence we have some free-will.
The problem comes in with traditional beliefs that we who are "saved" are either predestined aka elect or we stumbled on it an chose differently to other folk. Neither are true.
God wills that all men be saved, He sent His Son, He "died" for ALL mankind past, present and future.
For me salvation is a done deal, even viewed from the traditional sense. All are saved already and we who come to the "salvation experience" have a John 6:44 epiphany aka few chosen. The rest do not see it until it to happens to them. I view all this from a perspective of Unconditional Love, the message I believe Jesus taught.
Many will say yes He is Unconditional but.... No buts. Unconditional means just that, Unconditional. As soon as we make His Love conditional, then His love is no more significant than ours is. He loved us first. He chose us, we did not choose Him.
If Jesus said I shall draw all men unto me and we know that one day every knee shall bow to the Glory of the Father, the part we play is sharing the Good News. The good news is that He loves us unconditionally, the bad news is the church hangs a slant on this love with buts.
The closer you move into the Father the further you walk away from sin.
It was not my post but I tend to agree with it. BTW I am not a literalist.
Similarly tares and wheat, one taken, one left relate to the law and grace in us all and not to an us and them.
One must remember too, Paul wrote his epistles over a period of time and like all of us, he did grow in knowledge and truth. He said that "when I was a child I spake as I child, when I grew up, I put away childish things" (paraphrased)
The poster who posed this is also a member here, I leave him to expound.
Blessings
Are you saying that the truths of Scripture evolve as the writers matured? Are you saying that we cannot trust eveything the apostles wrote because some of what they wrote might of been written while they were still immature in their faith?
In reality, what Paul wrote in Romans 9 is not something someone would even think to write while he was in a state of spritual immaturity. While in a state of spiritual immaturity one would generally tend to write things favorable to the desires of the flesh--things that would conform to the immature reasoning of one still greatly influenced by a huamn sense of right and wrong. He would write things that appealed to man's totally inadequate sense of fairness. In other words, if Paul were still in a state of immaturity, would he not have written that God would be unfair to destine some to be vessels of wrath and destruction and others to be vessels of glory!
What man without the direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit would write such things as found in Romans 9? These are truths directly revealed to Paul--truths he anticipated would be hard to swallow and would be resisted. "Why does He yet find fault?" "Oh, man, who are you to talk back to God?" "Does not the Potter have power over the clay?"
Again, the people mentioned in this chapter are real people--they are not metaphors. "Jacob I loved; Esau I hated." The mention of Pharaoh can be nothing else than a reference to the Pharaoh of Moses' day who, in the hardness of his heart, refused to let the people go! For His divine purposes, God further hardened Pharaoh's heart which ultimately led to his destruction and to a clear revelation of God's glory.
He is the Potter; we are the clay. If in His perfect wisdom and righteousness, He chooses to make of some vessels of dishonor and others vessels of honor, who are we to resist His will?
I agree with the perspective that Seeker posted and it seems clear when the whole chapter is read. The point is that the elder must serve the younger. God has shown this with Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Issac, Esau and Jacob etc. Gal. 4 helps with this saying that the first born is after the flesh and the second born is after the spirit and the child of promise.
If this were not the point that God was making in Rom. 9, we would have to assume that God has ordained that all elder brothers must serve all younger brothers because God always loves the younger brother and hates the older brothers.
The second born (second Adam or man of the spirit) in all of us is the one whom God loves and the first born (first Adam man of the flesh) will not be heir with the child of promise. God hates the man of the flesh in us all and we should agree with Him and hate that part of ourselves also.
Don't make the mistake and take what God said about Jacob and Esau out of the context of how God feels about the second born over the first born. It is not about some people that God hates and some that He loves. He is a good Father and is not a respector of some of His children over others of His children. We should all know Him better than this by now.
Yes, Kratos, we should all know Him better by now. And we should see that Romans 9 IS about some whom God hates and others whom He loves! He is the Potter; we are the clay. In His ultimate righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and immutable SOVEREIGNTY He makes of some vessels of dishonor and of others vessels of honor. This simple teaching in this text is only misunderstood and redefined by those who will not accept such sovereignty.
Furthermore, does this text deal only with God's children? Nowhere does Romans 9 state that God hates His children--but He hated Esau because Esau was and never would be one of His own. Likewise, Pharaoh was not His child. He drowned in the Red Sea in total rebellion against God.
But I would submit that God does show "favoritism" among His children. He raised up Mary specifically to be the "mother" of our Lord. He chose Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, to be the great leader of the infant church. He chose the other Apostles as well. Not because they were greater than anyone else. As a matter of fact, they were not in any way special as the world would view such things. God often chooses the "foolish" things of the world to confound the wise! He raised up Judas to be the one who would betray Christ. He chose John as the one to whom He would reveal the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Throughout the ages of the church, various ones in various places have been ordained for special tasks designed by God to accomplish His will.
Yes, we should know God better by now. God questioned Job: "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it . . . . Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn Me that you may be justified . . . " (Job 40:2, 8)?
Job answered God: "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You . . . . I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know . . . . therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:2ff).
Romans 9:18 clearly states: "He has mercy on whom HE WILLS, and whom HE WILLS He hardens." When we make this to mean something else, are we not contending with the Almighty to correct Him? Are we not somehow seeking to annul His judgment? Are we not replying against God?
"But indeed, O man, WHO ARE YOU to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'why have you made me like this?' Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?"
It is your privilege to believe in free will but you cannot believe in free will AND the sovereignty of God. Either God is in total control or He is not in control at all.
Preterist
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