Featured Do We Have Free Will 2

Yes, and it was a free will choice.

Although it is not a wrong or right choice. There is only one choice. The transfer of one's will of sin to the will of the Holy Spirit. This ability comes and goes though. Saying the choice is wrong or right does not make sense. You are not making a choice between two options if one is to do nothing. Salvation is not a range of food on a restaurant menu.

 

Every choice has a reason for it. God controls our choices through the reasons we base them on.

 

The control of the choice for Atonement, is that God is always for, not against. We still have to decide. God does not make that decision for us.

 

Dead people cannot decide anything spiritual. He needs to give you the new birth before you can discern the right God over idols and want anything to do with him. Free will = you are already saved.

 

Except we are not dead people, those are in sheol. So no, you equate free will with people already in sheol. That is not possible.

No, free will does not equal already saved. What free will do you have if it is all going to preserverence? You want to choose another route?

Free Will is only one thing. To choose between God and Death. No coercion either way. We are forced to live in death. We are in God secure. Free will moves us from one condition to the other. Double minded souls keep going back and forth between the two, till they are exhausted and no longer know the difference. Best just make up one's mind one way or the other. We only are born one way, so we cannot choose to be slaves to sin, that is the condition we are born in. The only other choice is to be in God.

 

Why do people need to be born again?

 

Do I have free will... Sure I do but it wasn't free will that saved me... I didn't do anything to deserve Salvation, it was Gods work and Gods alone, in the person of Jesus Christ and I was changed by the Holy Spirit... A 100% Divine, three and one Godhead operation!... But I have a free will in discipleship, I can follow my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and receive the blessings in doing so or I cannot and reap the consequences thereof... IN THIS LIFE ONLY!... I do not believe anyone in Christ can lose their Salvation!... But you can lose the joy of it... Brother Glen

Philippians 2:12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

2:13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

 

John 3:3

“Yes, indeed,” Yeshua answered him, “I tell you that unless a person is born again from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

 

Free will does not save. It allows you the choice though. There is freedom in being as wicked as we want also. Free will is not about attempting the impossible on our own.

 

If we are born from above, how can we be the agent in the new birth? How do you know you are born again?

 

Free will is the ability to choose, not an agent in the new birth. We are not the agent, nor is free will. God told me I was born again. Can we boast that we made a choice? It is a humbling choice of our will. But the choice does not save us or change us. It only lets God know we are willing. Being willing is not the same as willing something. Willing something is doing it on your own. Doing something on your own is not free will. It is being bound to your own will.

Free will is not even making a commitment. That is just easy believism.

I think one issue why free will is not in the Bible, is because humanity had not thrown off the shackles of religion. Rome was not a government type free of religion. The emperor was still divine, and life still revolved around religious practice. Salvation was a conversion from one religion to another, in principle. Telling humans about free will would not even make sense until the enlightenment. But those in Christ knew and understood sooner than the world did. It would have been related to the liberties in Christ. Adam had free will, but probably had no clue about it whatsoever. There was truth that Adam and Eve needed more knowledge and wisdom, but not by disobedience. Nor even because they ate. They were now in darkness after eating, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they could not take with them either. Whether or not it would give a new lesson with each fruit is besides the point. God did not want them to use a tree to gain understanding.

 

I

I assume, in your position, that you can freely lose your salvation at any point when your faith wains.

 

It is not about my faith.

Would you choose to reprobate your mind? No one forces you to, do they? Do you force your mind to think wickedness? Are you free to stop thinking about wickedness, or are you forced to continually let your thoughts control you?

Does a reprobate mind remove your name if you are elected? Who changes your thoughts? You or God? Do you think God would at some point automatically stop your thinking if you could not? At what point is a reprobate mind? Can you recover on your own from a reprobate mind? Is God obligated to recover an elect believer from a reprobate mind, or does a reprobate mind even count? Why do we have Daniel 4? Is Nebuchadnezzer in Paradise?

 

You can choose only sin unless God gives you a heart that loves him. Faith is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And whatever is not of faith is sin.

 

Can you define this sin we allegedly are choosing? Faith is trusting God. If we do not know God, how can we trust Him? I agree that not trusting God is sin. Our best is only filthy rags. Only in obedience can one do works that last. But the choice we make to accept or reject God is not based on our works, or God’s Work, when it comes to actually making the decision. Of course all the Atonement was God. God does not change your mind. That is not part of God’s work. That is the point of all the wrong interpretation and theology. It is a gift, not some mind bending manipulation.

 

Sin cannot choose anything but sin. Until you are born again, that's as good as it gets.

 

So why are a lot of posters here so worried about what is going on in the world?

 

Only saved people have free will. So do you think all are saved but must maintain it?

 

I'm not worried since I know it is God's wrath and Jesus exhausted that for me, in my place.

 

Yes.

Romans 1:18-32.
John 3:19-20.
Ephesians 4:17-19.

John 6:29.

I cannot speak for them, but I'm not.
God is in control and He allows what He allows.

This isn't my world anyway...
I've a new city and a new world to look forward to.