Avoidance of my points is not a way to truly get to the truth of what I have been saying with God's Word. Also, nowhere did I agree to your terms in wanting to talk about Paul's revelation. That is something you wanted to do and you never really drove home your point in defense for a denial of free will in choosing God. I was only addressing those verses that I found pertinent to refute your defense of what falls under the umbrella of Calvinism (i.e. a denial of free will in choosing God).
Feel free to address that point I presented, repeated in the following:
The Bible does not teach the" free will" of unregenerate man. Free will is a philosophical notion (Aristotle, Cicero) asserted by Pelagius, a British monk around 400 AD, on the assumption that the moral responsibility of man requires that man have a free will. Biblically, this is not so.
The Bible teaches that man is a slave to sin (
John 8:34;
Galatians 3:22;
Romans 11:32),
that it is only those whom the Son makes free that are free (
John 8:36; cf
John 8:32,
Romans 6:18,
22,
8:12;
Galatians 5:1).
Free will (self-power) was lost in the fall when man's nature became corrupted, enslaving him to sin so that he cannot do the good (
Romans 7:18-19,
8:7). Free will (self-power) means the freedom (power) to do the good; i.e., obey God (
Mark 12:29-31), to be sinless. Unregenerate man no longer has that power (
Romans 5:6,
7:18,
8:7-8;
John 15:5), which is the meaning of the depravity of man.
What unregenerate man has is" free agency," the freedom to do what he wishes or desires,
to act voluntarily according to his disposition. But with his unregenerate (fallen) nature, his disposition is toward evil; i.e., self-interest in preference to God (
Mark 12:29-30;
Romans 1:21,
3:10-12,
23). The difference between free will and free agency is not just semantics, it's the difference between being able to obey God and not being able to obey God (
Romans 8:7-8). The regenerate man can obey God, not because of self-power (free will), but because of the power of the Holy Spirit who transforms his disposition (
Romans 8:9).
The conclusion to this is: there is no conflict in Scripture between the absolute sovereignty of God (
Daniel 4:35;
Acts 2:23,
4:28,
13:48;
Luke 22:22;
Romans 8:29-30,
9:14-29,
11:25-34;
Ephesians 1:4-12;
2 Thessalonians 2:13;
1 Peter 1:2) and the free will of man, because the Bible does not teach that man has free will (
Romans 3:9-12,
23,
6:6,
17-22,
7:14,
24-25,
8:7).
Man is only a free agent, choosing voluntarily accordng to his disposition, which is corrupt and evil (
Genesis 6:5,
8:21;
Jeremiah 17:9;
Matthew 7:11;
John 1:5,
3:19). God exercises his sovereignty over man, not by compelling their acts or wills contrary to their preferences or dispositions (which would be an overriding of their free agency), but by operating
through their dispositions (
Genesis 20:6;
Exodus 3:21;
Deuteronomy 2:25,
30;
Joshua 11:20;
1 Samuel 10:9;
Ezra 1:1,
5,
7:27;
Nehemiah 2:12,
7:5;
Psalms 105:25,
106:46;
Proverbs 21:1;
Ezekiel 36:27;
Daniel 1:9;
2 Corinthians 8:16;
Revelation 17:17), to which their wills
freely respond. So that there is no conflict between the sovereignty of God and the free agency of man, because man stll acts
voluntarily according to his wishes and desires, he still
voluntarily chooses to do what he prefers, which is the meaning of free agency (and what many think is the meaning of "free will;" i.e. the power to make all moral choices).
So the Bible does not teach the ability of unregenerate man to always choose the good (
John 8:35), it teaches only the ability of unregenerate man to choose voluntarily (
Exodus 25:2;
Ezra 7:13), and it teaches that when man voluntarily chooses to do what pleases God (keeping in mind that anything done by God's enemy; i.e., those apart from faith in Jesus Christ, has no ability to please God), it is only because the power of God works it in him (
Ezra 1:5;
John 6:65;
1 Corinthians 2:14,
15:10;
Philippians 2:13;
Hebrews 13:21).
philosophical free
will -- the Biblie
denies such (
John 6:65,
8:34)
philosohical free
agency = Biblical free
will (
Exodus 25:2;
Ezra 7:13)