Simple, man is king if he casts the deciding vote -- a vote that God refuses to decisively influence. King Jesus abdicates to King John Doe.
Disagree to the superlative. Consider the essence of God, and realize that love is never coercive. Hey, I'll put it in nicer words for you:
"The ability of a person to receive God's gracious
gift of salvation is not the same as
working for it.
To think so is to give credit for the gift to the receiver rather than to the Giver who graciously gave it." (Geisler)
Your second and third questions are
non sequiturs.
That's probably because the fault lies with you, dear Brutus.
How is this responsive to my question whether there is free will in Heaven?
Easy; I said that sin was a subjective disease that finds its death with the absence of flesh, and I would add that man's fall from grace enabled him the ability to value the good. This means that once we realize our wrong come the judgment of Christ -- the entirety of its imperfection -- there is no possible way -- if indeed we are of the faith -- that we could ever desire such things again.
Why do you conclude that the latter part of Romans 7 refers to an unsaved person?
I never said the relevance of the issue had to do with the soteriological realm. I only pointed out that sin is very much a power that works contrary to our desires. The chance that it was a saved person by far has more emphasis than if it was not, for it reveals that even the most godly of Christians can struggle with a disease
contrary to his will. Of course, I do not believe this is referring to a saved person as it is.
Why do you conclude that Jesus came "to save men from sin and not punishment"? He came to save from both sin AND punishment.
The sin
is the punishment. The death of a man's spirit from God's causes psychological death (that is, of the soul -- not our post-modern interpretations of the word). This is clearly what the verse indicates. Indeed, if we are slaves to sin, our salvation comes first from this slavery, and not some shady eschatological punishment that has no empirical proof in the face of the considering salvation. I find it quite paradoxical that we can run about the world and declare through a gospel of fear that men are condemned to an everlasting hell we can by no means prove, and yet come to the revelation that many have not: that sin is indeed the full punishment of the ******.
"The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvtion of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God's ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgugsting. It sees a thing as it is, -- that is, as God sees it, for God sees everything as it is.
The soul thus saved would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that would not prefer hell to sin." -- George MacDonald
Have you ever read
The Great Divorce?
I think all those Clapton concerts have scrambled your logic faculties.
Oh hush; you're just jealous cuz you can't jam like me and Clapton (take this example, my friend -- a clear reference to litotes: the lost art of literary speech).
Blessings.
