Free Will compatible with Sovereignty

No, I don't see anything aspiring toward holiness there. I also don't see a statement, "We can will only according to our nature." I see a warning that if we choose to sin, we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Why warn us if we have zero capacity to resist temptation?

What was the point of the Adam and Eve story? Why did God create Eve last, after all the other animals? Did God create a male and female of every other species but then overlook to create a female human? Or was the whole point to get Adam to realize that he is not like all the other animals?

How do humans differ from animals? We can make moral choices. It doesn't mean we can make moral choices perfectly without help from above or that we can understand how to do or desire to do so to the point that would impress God, who is perfect.

It also doesn't make us animals before the Holy Spirit acts on us and angels after the Holy Spirit acts on us.[/QUOTE]
We can indeed decide to do right/wrong things, but the sinner apart from the work of the Holy Spiriting on them cannot freely decide to live for Jesus, and to get saved by Him, as our sin natures want to stay away from doing just that.
Paul is not stating that if we choose to now live godly we can inherit the Kingdom, its that we can and do that once saved by grace of God, as he is contrasting the works of the sinful flesh and the redeemed person now in Christ.

 

The first one exists, and the second one does not!

 

And because of the New Nature we have been made free from sin's dominion. Freedom is not the ability to sin if you want to. Real freedom is the ability NOT to sin. Sin is slavery. Holiness is Liberty. If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.

Sin is a tyrant. The fact that God cannot sin does not negate His freedom. It has no place in Him.

It's like saying "you're not free unless you can slap your wife around". That desire is not in me, not even an inkling. It has no place in me. Now if I find myself slapping my wife, or if I have even the potential, does that make me more free? Not at all. It makes me less free

God is free, perfect in Holiness, because sin has no place in Him.

 

Wait, this new nature leads us to make the right decision to come to Christ, have I understood this correcty?

 

Not what I said. Believing we come to Christ, receiving new nature simultaneous to our believing. Because we have died to sin and risen with Christ ( new position) and because we have been set free from the Law of sin and death THROUGH the Law of Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and because we are born of God and His Seed remains in us, sin has dominion over us NO MORE.

 

David, without controversy let us simply say that God is Autonomous and leave it at that.

 

So you serve the Lord unwillingly? What a shame.

Just kidding. I think we both serve the Lord joyfully and lovingly and heartily. And a sinner serves sin joyfully and lovingly and heartily. And then some are like Romans 7, wanting to do right and unable.

The will wills what it wants to will. It is our heart (what we love), our minds ( what we seek), our desires, etc that determines that.

But Christians have been set free to love God. Being a slave to love is the best kind of freedom. That's why Jesus and all the apostles call it LIBERTY and FREEDOM.

love makes us both slaves (willing) and free.

 

if God had wanted robots, He coulda easily made them, beings incapable of the slightest sin or disobedience. Instead, God made us with free will, as He wants beings who chooseta love Him of their own will and volition.

 

We do not freely make our decisions though, as any of us can be and are affected in making decisions by our own sinful natures and wills!

 

Except that sinners are enslaved by their sin natures, as jesus stated, and so freedom of the will is really Bondage to a sinful will!

 

If God does not choose to have us be saved, we cannot will ourselves to do that!

 

The 2 Confessions are not Hyper Calvinistic though, as they both reflect Dort on this issue of free will and God being still sovereign.

 

Correct, and God did not re-create/re-design His creatures to not have free will after the fall as the conclusions of those with a Determinist' view would commonly imply needed to have happened to fit their soteriological misconceptions.

At the roots the typical problem with the Calvinist' view on divine sovereignty is in their definition which begs the question that it must be Divine Deterministic Sovereignty rather than Divine Providential Sovereignty over creatures designed with free will.