There is no strength in mans ability or will to love God, (first Commandment) and we can only love God when we know His love for us and have that love given to us through the Holy Spirit. (the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Spirit) We see we cannot keep the commandment by the letter (free-will) but by first accepting Gods will which is a product and fruit of the Spirit...The letter kills but the Spirit GIVES life! Oh that some would have ears to hear!
Irresistible Grace & People "falling Away" From Christianity. How Does This Happen?
- Thread starter Scripture Bird
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I agree with you that to have a growing love for God requires knowing Him. Sadly, many people can and do reject God even after they've repented to Him, and they fall out of grace with Him. Naturally it isn't God's will, because His will as that we all come to Him.
We don't have strength to conjure up our own form of love because there is no other love since God is love. However, we do have free will since this is an extension of God. And love requires free will.
Well biblically to "fall from grace" is to return to the law and the attempt to justify oneself apart from the righteousness of faith, which is a GIFT! And love does not require free-will as some would use the term in a religious context. The scripture declares that we have this ability to love God because He first loved us, His Will in effect empowering us to obey. That is a surrender of the self-will to the will of another, it is not free-will. I did not choose to love God until He first loved me, until I knew this love by the power of His Spirit...to call this great work of God, a product of free-will is to miss the truth of who God is and is so shameful, in my view.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing, we just insist on wording it a certain way.
Yes, I am trying to show a truth that can be hidden about the nature of our obedience and how God supplies us from His Own will and grace the ability and desire to be obedient, the term free-will misses altogether what true obedience to God means. The "will" of man is not encouraged, it is broken at the Cross of Christ and with Christ. "it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me" is the goal that has been set before all believers, the "free-will'' must be crucified with the rest of the flesh and all that is of man that desires to boast.
Silk, we just see the scriptures differently -- Arminians and Reformed.
For the Arminian, G-d can only be glorified when someone receives Messiah. For the Reformed, G-d is glorified in all things, no matter what.I always fall back on my go-to example: the pharaoh of the exodus, because he is so obvious. What glory did this pharaoh bring to the G-d of the universe? How could He be glorified through the hardening of his heart? That Israel was let go and eventually went into the Land, where G-d would use Israel to bring the Messiah. And all of us here know that the coming of the Messiah to the nation of Israel meant His coming for the whole world, to live, to give His life, to rise again, to take His place as our High Priest, where He serves this very day -- Tuesday, the 24th of June, 2014. This should make us nearly swoon with the wonder of it all.
Did that pharaoh show G-d's glory? You bet. Was he part of the coming of Messiah to save all who were c\to be saved? You bet! Did this pharaoh show forth the glory of G-d? Oh, yes!
As far as inspecting one another for dark spots, I'm sorry! Maybe I am naive, but I don't see it. To me, we are having a discussion, thinking things out, writing what we are thinking.
I have learned to love people here, whether or not I agree with them. It is basically irrelevant -- at least on a human level -- that we disagree at times.
Not in the Torah. By Law, a slave is freed through Law. It was not like more modern slavery. Slaves were often simply employees who owed more money than that slave could pay and was usually freed when the amount was paid or on what is commonly called Jubilee.
Lol Mitspa. I see your point, there is some truth to it, but you are wrong.
A student can bunk school. A student can throw the teacher off the balcony. Now you automatically assume when CCW raised this that this would be evil / slave to sin.... but what if the teacher was evil? What if he was killing students?
We have free will when a slave of sin and we have free will when a slave of God. We choose to carry our cross daily. Many of us...don't.
Consider Abrahams bosom. There were slaves of sin that bent the knee / have a heart after God's and then there were slaves of sin that didn't! Abraham had faith / bent the knee to God, but yet he was a slave of sin. He was guilty of the death penalty by the law of Moses for adultery with his maidservant. David was guilty of the death penalty for murder but yet bent the knee...before and after murder.
In the NT, after the cross, we receive a new nature 2 Cor 5:17. This does not mean we are 100% slaves to God, it just means we have less of an excuse for giving in to 'mortal' sins, hence this scripture Heb 10:29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?.
It is like marriage. You would say that I am a slave to my wife? I would entertain that thought because I do love her and cannot ever think of not being with her. But reality is, I can commit adultery and force a change of heart....any-day!
Lastly...lets say bending the knee despite sin = NT born again = eternal slave of God (OSAS type) and not bending the knee = slave of sin. For you to suggest we have no free will when having two choices is to suggest God has no free will. Would free will exist only if we have more then two choices? Don't you see how silly that is?
Free will exists as long as there is no '''forcing''' us to make a choice between two or more options. If you do not believe in free will, you automatically believe God is evil / forcing us to be with Him. Now I know you don't believe that.
Right this very second I can pull the middle finger to God and go commit a mortal sin with no repentance....I can bounce between good and evil if I wanted too. That is free will! But I choose to carry my cross!
We choose to be slaves. We choose to remain as slaves. Salvation is God's doing but getting onto the plane to heaven / into Abraham's bosom is all ours.
I never said it was. My point is that it is NOT heaven and that it is NOT Hades.
Your free choice analogy confuses you and Mitspa and you seem to have missed me saying that then... God also only has free choice and not free will according to your definitions.
What about free will in slavery is hard to grasp? I can decide today to NOT be a slave unto God. Heb 10:29 makes that crystal clear.
I don't believe in "free will" as defined in the dictionary... it doesn't exist in the scriptures, it's a choice, so it's not MY definition...
We have a will and it is free to do as it pleases. We choose to limit / submit our free will to God, that does not mean we don't have it or lose it.
The dictionary considers divine intervention in its definition ...
1. voluntary choice or decision <I do this of my own free will
2. freedom of humans to make choices (that's where you and Mitspa stop) that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention (this is where scripture stops).
Choice + not influenced by God..... is true according to scripture. How else did God choose Abraham? over all others? David? Moses?
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That's not true. Those OT hardly experienced His love or knew of the cross. There were men who hated evil and loved what was good. Loving what was good is being after the heart of God. God is able to go one step further and help those...but they need to desire that / open the door before He comes. That is exercising free will when still a slave of sin.
A sinner cannot deliver himself from the power of sin by his own will, he can "choose" a lot of things. He can "choose" what church to go to or what lie to tell etc.. But he is a slave to sin, until God grants him the grace to receive salvation from sin. Now a person who in convicted by the Holy Spirit and Gods will, must yield their own "free-will" to Gods will.
You are just assuming a whole lot...and no one who walked with God walked in their own free-will, they walked in obedience to Gods will. Also Christ has been crucified and the Holy Spirit has been poured out, and the revelation of Gods Righteousness has been made known. So to look at the Old Testament to try to ignore the New is a great error.
A slave does not have free-will, they are a slave! Only a very bad slave would claim they do as they will...
What? These are huge jumps in biblical logic ! According to the scriptures we are all slaves of sin, and of course we are very much forced to surrender to God by the truth of the results of our sin, which is death. No man at no time can claim free-will except Adam before the fall and Christ who had no sin. This idea of having free-will is a product and deception of the flesh and a rejection of the truth that we are all wretched and cannot please God because of the power of sin that dwells in us. Of course the sin in us lies to us about our own "free-will" and tells us we have some choice, therefore we are not really slaves to sin, its a lie.
What "hardening" of the heart means to me, is refusing to budge from a position, no matter what evidence comes up to the contrary. Pharoah, who already considered himself divine, already was opposed to God's Will before the plagues. Pharoah willfully chose to ignore God's Will until the final plague, when his own son was taken. It was only this that weakened his position. He let God's people go and then almost immediately changed back to his own former will and chased after them and lost his army. If Pharoah had let the people go at the get go - Eygpt's misery could have been avoided. The lesson taught was for both Israel AND Eygpt. God gave Eygpt the chance to abide by His Will. They chose not to learn. Today there are no more Pharoahs - there is an Israel. Knowing what Pharoah would do, He still gave Pharoah the choice. It shows His love for ALL people, not just Israel. Even the mislead ones.
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