God wanted man to fall

TedT

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They are indeed consequences. I said "constraints or consequences." You've chosen to focus solely on "constraints."
I focus on coercions and constraints not compulsions because neither death nor hell compel people to avoid them, ie a free will can still ignore them. A true impediment to a free will decision cannot be ignored like a perfect GODly compulsion to sin or not to sin or the compulsion of seeing the proof of hell.

Without such compelling proof, a free will is not coerced by death or hell or we would see it in life.
 
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LightLoveHope

Jesus leads us to life
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No, it doesn't get silly. It's defined. Free will is the ability of any moral agent to make decisions of morality without constraints or consequences imposed by any other moral agent (such as God).

If God imposes consequences upon our actions, then we are not truly free to act, we act under compulsion and threat.

Scripture categorically denies that you have the inherent will to avoid sin. It also categorically denies that you have the inherent will to seek God.

I hope you do not mind but important point needs to be made.
Morality only exists within a relationship framework.

A man who has been condemned to death for a crime no longer has the right to life.
A man who owns nothing, cannot have something stolen from them.

Morality has a core problem and it is who defines the ultimate reference point. If I am god and own everything, and my word is law, then nothing I do is wrong.
If the Lord is the source of ultimate reference, then His heart and ways define morality.
And free will then becomes in relationship to our relationship to Him and how he defines our point of responsibility, innocence and guilt.

So in the Lords terms He has given the prodigal son the right to walk away, to chose, to love or to hate, as Judas betrayed, or as Peter repented and returned to faith and restoration.

There is always a temptation to get involved in talking about "objective" free will, separate from creation and God, but this gets no where. For me the only argument is about justifying our behaviour about things we cannot cope with and justifying the hurt we have done to others.

Adam's excuse was he trusted Eve. Eve's excuse was that the serpent sound pretty persuasive. But they all knew they had betrayed the Fathers love and care, freely and openly.

Adam was told if he ate of the tree of knowledge he would die. There was a choice there, without compulsion or threat. God was saying what would happen to them, because the result of their action would kill them.

Avoiding sin. There is a fundamental miss-understanding of sin. Sin is being separate from God. By its nature it is rebellion, independence, rejection and seeing God as a threat. We are born into this state, we do not chose this position. Our whole nature will defend ourselves against outside positions and people, and justify all that we do "I did it my way" All our decisions and feelings will lead us to make the wrong decisions freely, because our emotions will steer us into death. That is free will exercised without the Lord.

The issue at the centre is not the free will, but communion and letting love rule our hearts.
The law is just the mirror that shows the failure that man standing alone will never be able to aspire to what mans hearts desire or can truly accept. I know this tension, feeling it since a child, and trying to make sense of my failure and my aspiration and desire to walk in love.

Paul emphasised the cornerstone of the two Kingdoms and change was Jesus.
Without Jesus in our lives we were slaves to sin and its power.
God bless you
 
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