Free Will

[da525382]

Thank you, strength, very well said, indeed.

Don

 

[TigerBunny]

Gee thanks, Tiger, for telling me studying will help me out.

Don

It wasn't meant to offend Don. I'm glad others here have gone more in depth here for you. Some are blessed to be good teachers. Others are gifted in different ways. The body isn't made up of just hands

Blessings

 

[da525382]

It wasn't meant to offend Don. I'm glad others here have gone more in depth here for you. Some are blessed to be good teachers. Others are gifted in different ways. The body isn't made up of just hands

Blessings

Tiger, I agree fully with you, you don't have to lecture me any further. As I said before, thank you for the references you gave me....you are a blessed teacher, too, I'm sure, like anyone else here. Your words simply come across to me as more lecturing, something I was not seeking. I imagine I have simply not understood you well, perhaps you and I are more like oil and water, I don't know. Again, thank you.

Don

 

[UMP]

I think I understand that free will really does not exist in the context of our salvation. However, to continue in God's grace after our salvation, is there free will to leave His grace?

Thanks,
Don

I don't think so, at least not permanently. It's a subject I've been thinking on for some time. Let me give you a couple reasons why I think the way I do.

Here you have Paul "laboring" even much more than others, yet he contributes the increase not to himself but to God. In other words his faith, work, etc was maintained by God.

1 Corinthians 15:
[10] But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Below is stated for us to be confident that what God started in us, he will finish.

Phil. 1:
[6] Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Now when we really go off the deep end, as I have done before and blatantly seek sin and it's carnal gratification, leaving God behind, what will God do for his elect? Chastise them! You have to ask yourself, can God be ineffective in his application of the rod? I personally don't think so. God gets the results he intends for.

Hebrews 12:
[8] But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

 

[da525382]

UMP,

What an absolutely phenomenal post. How thankful I am to have those verses, I cannot tell you how much they help!

Blessings,
Don

 

[Atlantians]

I will quote what I posted in another thread:

Calvinism inately uplifts the Sovereignty of God, while Arminianism inately uplifts the dignity of man.

Which is superior?

Obviously the one that glories God greater.

Above all we need to see the Bible as the characature of God, the example and vision of God's gift to man.

So what fits scripture greater?

Ephesians clearly claims all believers are predestined.
We see examples throughout the Bible of God's sovereignty revealed:

Ephesians 1, 3-14:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.​

Praise be to the God. Litterally: Good words be said of God.

For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.​

He chose us to be holy and blameless in His sight, not truly in nature, but in sigh, in position. And He would restore us in ressurection to actuallity.

He Chose us, we did not Chose to be saved, rather we accepted what was our Destiny. We did not let go when pulled up, that is all. We held on, while He did all the work.​

In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will— to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One he loves.​

Adopted as sons, litterally, adopted each of us as the Unique Male Heir. We are heirs, sons who are heirs to Him, and as He is our inheritence, we are His inheritence as He has thus chosen us to be.

Ultimately, We exist for His glory, our salvation is for His glory, our lives and deaths are for His glory.
We are not saved just for our happiness, but we are saved for His Glory.
He could have glorified Himself by our destruction, yet He loved us so much that He agonized Himself through His own sacrifice of Himself, even His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, so as to Glorify Himself by our salvation.

In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.​

In accordance with the riches of grace. He lavished this predestiny on us, chosing each of us and pullling us away from our falsehood, our inane nature, our estranged nature. Indeed, He illumined us for the works He chose us for.

And He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.​

He made this known to us, illumining us, by His good pleasure, by His will for His glory.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformitywith the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.​

In Him we were chosen, we were predestined according to His plan which he works out all details to conform to. We are made so that we might be for the parise of His glory.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.​

When we were illumined, when we heard the truth, and our hearts leaped to life, but for that moment, then we were Given, a choice:


Conform, live, prosper, be free. Given a choice, another level of God's grace so as to never force Himself on us, pleading to our souls, and when we, having no other good choice, gripped our hand, which He had all power to pull without agreement, pulled us alive to our feat.

Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.​

We, when our hearts leaped from death to life, believed, by His strength-faith being a gift, were sealed by His spirit into His kingdom, sealed by the third member of the Trinity, and filled therein with the spirit as a seal of deposit which we can never remove or surrender. We were bought, we are possessed by Him, owned by God, slaves bought and bought to be freed.
Redeamed from the slave block of sin, the slavery to our nature.




Ephesians 2:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.​

We were dead, dead, what does that mean but that we were not alive, and can the dead chose life from the death when the dead can not hear, breath, speak, see, or know?


Can that which is dead rise itself up to life enough to chose life everlasting?






But what were we dead by, what was this death?

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.​

How can those who are objects of wrath, those who are by nature segrewgated and apart from God estranged by our own nature from the God we were created by?

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.​

He made us alive, He is our salvation, how can we say "I came to Christ" when so clearly He brought himself into us?

Making us alive, when we were dead and without choice.

What choice, though, can we have when we are dead? We are prone to sin, incapable of not-sinning, influenced and twisted by that nature long ago established. How can we when so slave-like sold out to our sins, how can we then pride ourselves with saying we came to Christ, saying we chose salvation?






How can the dead cjose?

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.​

God, like a loving father, grabbed us from the mud, lifting us up to him into His embrace. Alive.

Can the dead child raise himself from the dead and stand up himself?






Nay, he can not, but Christ sparked life in our souls and rose us Himself.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ​

We were created by Him to do things we were not yet alive to do.

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.​

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.​

We were brought, by Christ. We did not come, but were ushered in, brought into salvation.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.​

His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.​

He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.​

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.​

In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.​

We are being used as building blocks.



But ultimately, whatever you believe, whether Armenian or Calvinist, ultimately, we must realize there is truth in both, and finally, we must wrestle, deserately wrestle with the truth in the passages that pointy to that which we disagree.



And in all things:

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.​

I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name.​

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.​