Featured Do We Have Free-Will?

God does not force us. He looks upon our helpless condition, knows we are enslaved to sin, and knows we cannot chose Him on our own and He shows mercy by intervening to free us from worldly influences and convicts us of the truth of who we are as sinners and our need for Jesus as Savior and we respond to His intervention with faith.

BTW, you compared God to angels. I know you didn’t intend to be dishonoring to God, but it is. Angels do what God tells them to do. God doesn’t act like angels.

peace to you

 

Hello miss E,
A person whose will is bound still makes choices.
Choice is not the issue.
Everyone agrees that there are choices.
Are you aware Greg Boyd is an open theist?
I will work through his article later on.

 

A problem you have is in 3:16 does not say whosoever will.
It says everyone believing.

 

The Calvinist version of John 3:16 has God loved some of the world in this way, He gave His one of a kind Son so that everyone God causes to be believing in Him, shall not perish but have eternal life. Not how it reads.

 

We can choose Jesus due to God first choosing us in the beloved!

 

I am a child of wrath, one at war against God, who will not submit to Him, nor desire to walk in light but stay in dankness, so How much do I really do to get saved?

 

As much as fallen sin natures will allow for!

 

Why not the 1689 Confession?

 

The who so ever wills are those to whom God granted saving faith and enabled their wills!

 

Would someone in that described state accept Jesus as their Lord though?

 

Miss E; It takes an enormous amount of intellectual dishonesty to chastise me to not misconstrue your words (I did not), and in the next breath misconstrue my words to mean something I clearly did not say.

You have demanded folks answer you directly. I have and you have ignored my questions to you and continually distort and misconstrue my answers.

I had hoped you were willing to have a respectful debate. I see now you only want to vent your opinions and ignore and attack all that disagree with you.

Thanks for the conversation

peace to you

 

Yes, that is why it is free will. God did not determine that state. That state is just the normal separated from God State. God’s plan was to always send Himself to be the Atonement.

 

So, if I read your comment correctly, you are saying that “WHOSOEVER”, really means “those I (God) decide will be saved.” IOW you have no choice in the matter. Is this your claim????
Just to be clear, you had NO choice in whether you would accept Christ or not; it was ALL His doing?
No question as to who SAVES, only whether YOU had the choice to accept or deny His offer.

Someone earlier compared this to a man in a pit. He cannot get out by himself, so he NEEDS help to get free. The man is a Jew, & another man, a gentile, throws a rope to him to climb out.
Pit-man sees that his potential rescuer is a gentile, so he refuses to give the gentile the satisfaction of “saving” a Jew.
It’s Pit-man’s choice to either be rescued or stand his ground - HIS CHOICE!! The offer of life is there, but Pit-man must grab the rope & start climbing if he wishes to be saved, & all the gentile’s rope pulling is futile if Pit-man chooses not to grasp the rope!!!!

 

Yet you have no verse that gives your pagan philosophy. If you did, it would be in condemnation of that philosophy.

The definition of free will is a choice that is free of pagan philosophy as an external factor. There is no fate or determinism that goes against one's ability to choose. It is fate and determinism that does not exist. Because they do not exist, then free will does. Because of those external non existing factors is the only reason that posters in this thread deny free will. They use pagan ideology to declare it is not real. The very definition of free will declares fate and determinism is not real. Perhaps that is not the way they look at it? But that is the basis for limited Atonement, even if they deny that fact. The Holy Spirit seals all sons of God (all mankind ever to be born) at conception. That is God choosing all, now the all can freely choose God as a response, without fate or determinism.

That experience plays a factor is what the Bible teaches. The majority of humans never hearing the Gospel once in their life. But that does not limit God. It only limits the individual. God says that the blood of all in darkness will be required at the hands of the church. The church failed the command, not fate or determinism. She failed because she listened to Satan and allowed fate and determinism to infiltrate her very doctrine and theology. The result is denying free will even exist.

The false teaching of fate and determinism is as old as the time of Noah. Free will is a modern construct used against reformed theology. It was never used against the ancient teaching of fate and determinism. God even uses human philosophy to correct His wayward church.

Free will is not defined as the ability to keep on sinning without consequences, which is the attempted false accusation against free will. Sinning without consequences is already the default position of natural human will, thus not free will. Free will is the ability to do something other than living in one's natural state. Why reformed theology condemns untold millions without free will, can only be Satan's deception in their own thinking and theology.

 

The issue is The Totally Depraved fallen sin nature of Adam, possessed by all his descendants.

The misinterpretation of a adjective, an adverb, a noun, or a pronoun, such as in the case of the uses of a word like, "all", are simply shortsighted and flesh filled.

These are 50 or so scriptures that presume to teach Universal Atonement, which don't.

We always try to have more scriptures that the opposing side, where they don't even know what they don't know, and other places they could be in error, also.:

Genesis 4:7
Genesis 6:3
Deuteronomy 5:29
Deuteronomy 8:2
Deuteronomy 30:19
Deuteronomy 32:29
Psalm 81:13-14
Psalm 125:3
Psalm 145:9
Proverbs 1:22-30
Isaiah 1:16-17
Isaiah 1:18-19
Isaiah 5:4
Isaiah 30:15
Isaiah 55:1
Isaiah 55:6
Isaiah 55:7
Jeremiah 4:4
Ezekiel 18:24
Ezekiel 18:30
Ezekiel 18:31-32
Ezekiel 24:13
Matthew 5:13
Matthew 11:21, 23
Matthew 23:37
Matthew 25:14-30
Luke 19:41-42
John 1:7
John 5:34
John 5:40
John 7:32
Acts 3:19
Acts 7:51
Romans 5:18
Romans 9:32
Romans 14:15
1 Corinthians 8:11
2 Corinthians 10:12
2 Corinthians 5:14-15
2 Corinthians 5:19
2 Corinthians 6:1
2 Corinthians 11:2-3
Philippians 2:12
1 Timothy 1:19-20
1 Timothy 2:4
1 Timothy 4:19
Titus 2:11-12
The Epistle to the Hebrews
Hebrews 2:9
Hebrews 6:4-6
Hebrews 10:26-29
Hebrews 10:38
2 Peter 1:10
2 Peter 2:1
2 Peter 2:20-22
2 Peter 3:9
1 John 2:2
Jude 1:21
Revelation 2 and 3
Revelation 3:20

Every preacher should be worth their weight in The Cause of God and Truth, which title is also the book giving explanation to rightly divide these scriptures. Please see
Part 1 https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/gill/The_Cause_of_God_and_Truth_-_John_Gill.pdf