I don’t quite understand. There is several verses in romans that sounds a lot like predestination. There is also a ton of verses that talk about making the choice to follow Christ. I want to believe free will. The idea that God decides who is gonna follow Him and who He’s gonna throw in Hell I find disturbing. If you support predestination please explain the verses that speak about free will. Ex John 3:16. That’s just one of many. And if your for free will please explain the verses that sound like presentation. Ex Romans 9:21-23. Also I know about Armineaism but Romans 9:21-23 doesn’t sound like it’s based on our choices
These conversations usually end up becoming a debate between Calvinism on the one hand, and Arminianism on the other.
I'd recommend a third option--the Lutheran view (freely admitting my bias here).
Lutheranism accepts predestination, but reject the idea that God picks and chooses who will or will not be saved.
Predestination does not mean that God saves you, but not that other person over there. Predestination means that God chose you, in Christ, by His fully abundant and generous love for you. That's good news! God loves you, and He chose you, He gave Himself for you, Christ died
for you. And He loves your neighbor, He wants you, and your neighbor, and everyone else, He sent His only-begotten Son so that anyone, everyone who trusts in Him should not perish but have life everlasting. It is the will of God that not some, but that
all be saved.
God loves everyone. Christ died for everyone. This great big grace, God's uncompromising love for this world, indeed each and every single one of us sinners is such that, rather than leaving us to perish in death He gives Himself to the world, for the world, to love and rescue and redeem the world. To take hostile sinners such as you and me, and adopt us as beloved children. It's not about us climbing up that ladder to God, it's about God coming down. God came down. God always comes down.
You belong to God because Jesus claims you as His own. He claimed you on the cross, He claims you in the preaching of His Gospel, He claimed you in your baptism, and He claims you every time you receive His body and blood in the Lord's Supper. Jesus gives Himself to you, and when He gives Himself He takes hold, and rescues us.
Christ is risen from the dead.
Trampling down death by death.
And to those in the tombs,
bestowing life.
He fought hell for you. And He won. You don't need impress Him, He is yours, and you are His. That is His word, His promise to you.
God chose the weak and foolish things of the world to confound the strong and the wise. But for we who are being saved, Christ the Wisdom and the Power of God. And we should be unashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to save all who believe, Jew and Greek, and by it God's renewing gracious justice freely justifies us through the faith we have received from Him.
God does this, has done this,
for us.
-CryptoLutheran