Confusion around the word "will"

Mark Quayle said:

I suppose there may be some who consider themselves Reformed, who think synergistically concerning salvation. Myself, I think monergism applies to not only salvation but sanctification and all good that "we do". I have no doubt we cooperate with God, but that is a vague word. Our efforts do not combine with God's efforts to produce something greater than his work alone. Furthermore, our efforts are a result, and not a cause, of his work. Apart from him we can do nothing. Our work does not add to him, but is his also.

If, on the other hand, we do not work, we have no reason to think we are regenerated.

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You are in a very small minority of Christians who believe that God is sovereign in all things, including salvation.
I rarely find anyone who believes that God predestined the whole of human history, form creation to the end of time. Most Christians have a knee jerk reaction, to this Bible doctrine and say things like "I don't believe in a God, who creates people for the sole purpose of casting them into the lake of fire and watch them burn".

Most Christians are happy to allow God the privilege of looking down the corridors of time and seeing those who would accept Christ's free offer of eternal paradise and saving them based on their wise choice to accept Christs free offer and reject Satan's offer of eternal torment in the lake of fire.

We have to give these smart people credit for choosing wisely, I mean it takes a lot of wisdom to reject Satan's offer and chose Christs offer. Making such a difficult decision must be rewarded, with the greatest prize of all. I mean imagine how smart these people need to be to accept what Jesus offers and walk away from Satan's offer, while the vast majority buy Satan's product. It's as though Jesus can't meet His monthly sales target and Satan is getting all the bonuses.

These people refuse to entertain the vague possibility that they may not have the ability to make this decision, without God causing them to make it in the first place. I'm left to wonder if their reason for rejecting God's sovereignty, means there's nothing for them to boast about.

Dan1988 said:

You are in a very small minority of Christians who believe that God is sovereign in all things, including salvation.
I rarely find anyone who believes that God predestined the whole of human history, form creation to the end of time. Most Christians have a knee jerk reaction, to this Bible doctrine and say things like "I don't believe in a God, who creates people for the sole purpose of casting them into the lake of fire and watch them burn".

Most Christians are happy to allow God the privilege of looking down the corridors of time and seeing those who would accept Christ's free offer of eternal paradise and saving them based on their wise choice to accept Christs free offer and reject Satan's offer of eternal torment in the lake of fire.

We have to give these smart people credit for choosing wisely, I mean it takes a lot of wisdom to reject Satan's offer and chose Christs offer. Making such a difficult decision must be rewarded, with the greatest prize of all. I mean imagine how smart these people need to be to accept what Jesus offers and walk away from Satan's offer, while the vast majority buy Satan's product. It's as though Jesus can't meet His monthly sales target and Satan is getting all the bonuses.

These people refuse to entertain the vague possibility that they may not have the ability to make this decision, without God causing them to make it in the first place. I'm left to wonder if their reason for rejecting God's sovereignty, means there's nothing for them to boast about.

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I wanted to rate your last two paragraphs "funny" but it's a painful funny. I have tried, I don't know how many years, and even after having seen things their way at first, to understand their antipathy toward Calvinism, and though I know of many many reasons, some of which are common to ALL of them, there's no one reason that I can call THE reason.

God is amazing, the things that he overlooks in all of us. As many, including most of my relatives, are quick to say, God even talks in Scripture as if FreeWill was true, as though leaving the future up to our self-determination, even to the point of allowing us to consider consequences and make plans, not just making the immediate decisions themselves as animals do. He does not often upbraid us for thinking this way.

I have to remember though, that though other Christians get this wrong, we Reformed have no basis for saying we have it right. There is a lot we have right, but not totally right, if for no other reason than because we are not steadfast, nor have we sounded the depths of the truth of what we have right. How much of what we believe is more words than understanding? It may all make sense to us, and hang together, but how much do we live by? How much of it governs our thinking and our obedience? Thank God for his mercy!

To whom much is given, much will be required. We too are without excuse.

Dan1988 said:

We can't make this say that God's will is for everyone to be saved. If we say that, then we're saying that God is not almighty and He is not able to execute His will, and that is not the God who revealed Himself through His Word the Holy Bible.

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This isn’t true at all if God had decided that He wanted man to choose to love Him of his own free will. If that’s how God declared it to be then it would not be an attack against His sovereignty at all.

Fervent said:

Whether God can have conflicts in His will is an interesting question, since it calls into question omnipotence and omniscience if He cannot accomplish all that He desires. ...

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I don’t think omnipotence and omniscience requires for example that people are free to do whatever, and at the same time not free to do evil.

zoidar said:

Do you really wonder that? No one boasts about being a Christian. We all know it's by grace. The question people ask is if we have no part in it at all.

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I can't speak for your own personal integrity, but if it is like mine, the motivations for what you do and think are not usually clear. I am probably as skeptical about myself as I am about anyone else. I can fool myself at the drop of a hat, and be proud of my humility without even realizing that is what I am doing.

The human drive for self-governance is not far removed from self-determination. While these are to some degree good and necessary for our relationships with each other, they are not the same thing with God. It is indeed necessary for us to choose, but to think that our choices are steadfast and that we alone cause the future is just silly. Yet when it comes to deciding for Christ we insist upon it! Oh, yes, we ask for help, and strength, and whatever else our theological thinking requires, but in the end, we think WE are the ones who caused God to react according to the formula we call the Gospel. We want think the grace of God is to provide salvation --not to cause salvation. Even those of us who detest the notion of self-determination as relates to our dependence on God, cling to it desperately.

By the way, a few minutes ago I was looking at the word, "will", in Greek references, and apparently your Swedish translation is very close, in meaning "want or desire" --but the Greek word is a derivative of another Greek word meaning "determination". Interesting, to say the least.

Fervent said:

Whether God can have conflicts in His will is an interesting question, since it calls into question omnipotence and omniscience if He cannot accomplish all that He desires. It seems to me the solution is more likely in that somehow it is more in a person's interest to have their own will expressed regardless of consequences, and God in goodness to all men seeks their highest interest which is not necessarily comfortable or pleasurable.

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God's mind doesn't work on the same presumptions that ours do. If two or more propositions or outcomes are logically self-contradictory, (eg God making a rock too big for him to pick up), he is the first to know it. While God's heart may be categorically well-intentioned toward his creation, he created for a particular purpose (the Elect as the Dwelling Place of God), and there is only one way to accomplish that purpose. The rest of his creation is instrumental in accomplishing that purpose, and it is for that accomplishment of his purpose that the rest of creation is made; they were not made primarily for him to have somebody to be mad at --that would make no sense to omnipotence. I don't know if God's compassion for the lost pains him, when he knows the majority will be forever lost. But we do know that his allowing of sin does indeed result in huge pain for him. Consider the picture of Christ, with his "Godhood suppressed" as mere human sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The focus for one's direction of logic is often of huge importance. An insane man can be perfectly logical about something he has no business even considering. One thing we miss in these discussions is the fact of God's intense and (I believe) unending, pain for our sakes. Sin is primarily against God --by far --it doesn't even compare. An Atheist has no concept of what Christ did when he calls his death and resurrection "a dirt nap". None of us are equal to the task of knowledge concerning these things, nor certainly, the depth of God's suffering on our behalf, the Austere Creator of the Universe, who by his loving grace does not hold his pain against us, nor berate our ignorant inconsideration. He is AMAZING. Meanwhile we have the gall to return to the vomit of our occasional sin, and still suppose ourselves the masters of our own fate???

zoidar said:

I have been a bit confused around the word "will". We have a word in Swedish "vill" that sounds a lot like the English word. The Swedish word is more in the meaning "want or desire", probably that is where my misunderstanding comes from. To will is more of an allowing/choice than a desire (if I understand it right). So from that understanding God desires/wants everyone's salvation, yet only wills those who belong/have faith in him to be saved.

Edit: Is it correct to say: "God's will is everyone to be saved, yet He only wills those who believe."

Edit 2: Or: "The judge's will was for his brother not to go to jail, but the judge willed him the sentence of jail for ten years." Contradiction or correct use of the word will?

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In English it is incorrect.English leads to a certain action. IN Greek will can be desire cased on construct and verb tense mood etc.

So in English to convey the thought from the original language it must be said, gods desire is that all would get saved, but wills only teh elect to be saved.

zoidar said:

I have been a bit confused around the word "will". We have a word in Swedish "vill" that sounds a lot like the English word. The Swedish word is more in the meaning "want or desire", probably that is where my misunderstanding comes from. To will is more of an allowing/choice than a desire (if I understand it right). So from that understanding God desires/wants everyone's salvation, yet only wills those who belong/have faith in him to be saved.

Edit: Is it correct to say: "God's will is everyone to be saved, yet He only wills those who believe."

Edit 2: Or: "The judge's will was for his brother not to go to jail, but the judge willed him the sentence of jail for ten years." Contradiction or correct use of the word will?

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Will involves not just choice, but power.

The will is the power of choosing, and acting in accordance with that choice.

Free will is the power to make any and all choices, and to act according to those choices.

Man does not have free will. . .he cannot choose to be sinless and act according to that choice.

Man has limited free will. . .his will is limited by his fallen nature.

Since the will is governed by what one prefers or desires, the will of the unregenerate man does not desire the things of God.

God's will is governed by his attributes--holiness, justice, love, etc.

Justice flows from his righteous holiness, and is the governor with which all his attributes must be in accord, including love.

Which is why for our sin to be forgiven by the justice of Gdd, Jesus had to die to pay the penalty for it.

zoidar said:

I have been a bit confused around the word "will". We have a word in Swedish "vill" that sounds a lot like the English word. The Swedish word is more in the meaning "want or desire", probably that is where my misunderstanding comes from. To will is more of an allowing/choice than a desire (if I understand it right). So from that understanding God desires/wants everyone's salvation, yet only wills those who belong/have faith in him to be saved.

Edit: Is it correct to say: "God's will is everyone to be saved, yet He only wills those who believe."

Edit 2: Or: "The judge's will was for his brother not to go to jail, but the judge willed him the sentence of jail for ten years." Contradiction or correct use of the word will?

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Here is what God's will looks like.

Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Isa 46:11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
Isa 46:12 Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness:
Isa 46:13 I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.

God is sovereign. What he wills, he gets.

zoidar said:

There must be a difference of being proud of being a Christian than boasting about it. Not that being proud is a good thing either. I think it's hard for us to be proud about something that we know in our heart is pure mercy, but people are different.

Interesting about the Greek word. Thanks!

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Like the word, 'will', the word, 'proud' has at least two different uses or meanings: 1. the use where one may boast over accomplishment, status or whatever. 2. the one where mere belonging induces pride. I do not consider it my accomplishment in the least to be part of the family I am proud to be part of. Truth is, it is my family I am proud of, and I am proud to be an American for the same reason. I am very proud to belong to God, but it is God that I am proud of --not myself. None of these make me a better person than my neighbor.

zoidar said:

Why not have a language where we only have words than mean one thing?

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Haha, yep. Even learning law or philosophy leaves one all the more aware that precision of terminology is necessary for precise understanding, but then they all learn to misuse words, usually by vagueness, to take their shortcuts.

I don't know if you remember a while back, the thread on here about God's language. I believe God may well have a language that is like that. But we con't understand it for its mere purity. It may even be a language in that it is spoken, yet the words ARE the very thing we would currently think they only represent. Also, I think language is a concession of God to our ignorance and fleshly mentality. We do not know much about the things God speaks about.

That is what amazes me about Scripture: He can use our fallen language to speak truth. On top of that, I think he even has great plays on words and puns, maybe even a Great Joke, (I think CS Lewis referred to somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it), that includes the whole combination of temporal fact and spiritual hard reality, all the words of the Word, all the plays on words and puns. There we will see how we blinded ourselves, and how our words condemn us, and how God is in no way at all to be blamed for the injustices we want to complain about. This and so many other things will be seen. If we were not in our glorified bodies at that time, we would not be able to absorb it.

zoidar said:

Why not have a language where we only have words than mean one thing?

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Regardless of the precision of a word, the precision of the combination of words always puts context as the master of different shades of meaning (i.e. "use") of those words. Thus, the precision of each word begins to soften. Words still mean things, but....

And what's more, "in many words sin is not absent". Kind of multi-use verse there.

BNR32FAN said:

This isn’t true at all if God had decided that He wanted man to choose to love Him of his own free will. If that’s how God declared it to be then it would not be an attack against His sovereignty at all.

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Yes it is true and it would be an attack on God's sovereignty. God said we all hate Him and love our sin by nature. You need to explain what could possibly turn a God hater, into a God lover.

We all naturally love to sin, which is rebellion and hatred towards God. How can you change your nature, or as God said "can a leopard change his spots". If you say we can change our very nature, then that makes us our own gods.

zoidar said:

Do you really wonder that? No one boasts about being a Christian. We all know it's by grace. The question people ask is if we have no part in it at all.

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The reason they ask your question, is they reject the fact that God saves and they want to claim the glory for their own salvation. So they strip God of His glory and set themselves up as their own god and saviour.
It always comes back to the sin which God hates the most, "PRIDE"

Mark Quayle said:

I wanted to rate your last two paragraphs "funny" but it's a painful funny. I have tried, I don't know how many years, and even after having seen things their way at first, to understand their antipathy toward Calvinism, and though I know of many many reasons, some of which are common to ALL of them, there's no one reason that I can call THE reason.

God is amazing, the things that he overlooks in all of us. As many, including most of my relatives, are quick to say, God even talks in Scripture as if FreeWill was true, as though leaving the future up to our self-determination, even to the point of allowing us to consider consequences and make plans, not just making the immediate decisions themselves as animals do. He does not often upbraid us for thinking this way.

I have to remember though, that though other Christians get this wrong, we Reformed have no basis for saying we have it right. There is a lot we have right, but not totally right, if for no other reason than because we are not steadfast, nor have we sounded the depths of the truth of what we have right. How much of what we believe is more words than understanding? It may all make sense to us, and hang together, but how much do we live by? How much of it governs our thinking and our obedience? Thank God for his mercy!

To whom much is given, much will be required. We too are without excuse.

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All of the Christian denominations claim to believe in the same God, but when you read their statements and confessions of faith you would think they believe in entirely different gods.

All Christian denominations are divided around the question of how we are saved and how we are to worship God. Non denominational Churches are also divided over the same things.

Most Churches teach that salvation is a team effort, between God and the individual. Very few teach that it's all of God, they basically teach that Jesus failed to complete His work of redemption so we need to pickup the slack and complete the job.

God is mysterious, we will never know why He does what He does and we will never understand Him. His ways are too high for our puny little minds to even begin to understand, so Christians should never ask any questions of God. We should all just, obey and serve Him and never ever ask any questions.