Thiscrosshurts & Will,
Thank you for the thought provoking responses. I hope you understand what I am doing. I am allowing certain things to come through me to be typed on to this forum and tested by others such as yourself for truth.
Amen!
More people with this attitude will improve this forum immensely.
Free Will - Gift of God? I still am not convinced. The right to act independently from the will of God. I am bearing in mind that it is God whose ways are higher than our own.
No, I am convinced that I do not have the right to act independently from God in accordance to moral judgment and action. Since God is perfect and his will is perfect, the only choice that can be made is to follow God or destroy yourself.
Gary, even in your thinking, here reflected by what you type, you cannot escape the fact that we are beings with the ability to decide based on our free will. Only beings that are able to think and decide (that's basically how we exercise our free will) needs to be convinced of anything. Or decided that he is not convinced about anything.
The fact was revealed that we do possess that ability to choose which is what you call 'free will' but it stands also as fact that there is only 2 choices. Life or Death. By exercising that which you call free will, you die, so you do not truly have a meaningful choice.
To me, Life or Death is the consequences of the choice we make. We are still *free* to make the choice that leads to those consequences. I agree that we cannot escape God's judgment no matter what we choose. But the choice is ours to make.
We must remember when Adam chose he did so in hope that a righteous God would save them. His 'flesh', Eve had already offended and was sure to die. Adam chose wisely to sacrifice himself rather than save himself. He could have just let Eve be judged and replaced but exhibiting the true nature of God within him he chose to die for his bride. When he made this choice he had the mind of Christ.
Wow, that's new to me.
I thought Adam was blaming Eve as a self-defense mechanism, not unlike a normal human being like you and I would do
Examples of choice given unto me.
I can choose whether or not to marry.
I can choose whether or not to have sex.
I can choose the food that I wish to eat.
I can choose to drink wine or to abstain.
Yes these types of choices are the ones we have free will to do inside of the permissive will of God. We can choose which good we will do.
Brother, the problem is, as far as I can study, there is not a dichotomy within the definition of will (or volition) in the Scriptures such what you're implying above.
There isn't one type choice and the other possessing different characteristics or bore different consequences.
There are only choices, the difference between them are the magnitude of the consequences. Like eternal life or destruction.
God never gave Adam a choice. He gave Adam a command to follow by the Spirit of the Lord. Choice entered into the picture though Satan when a meaningful alternate appeared. Eve had no reason to desire the fruit until given one by an outside source. In and of herself she would never have considered it. Adam suddenly found himself in a position of having a choice which came from Satan. The messenger of Satan came to him bearing the fruit. He then having a choice which was created by Satan chose death proving the weakness of the flesh.
If what you say were true, and free will (the ability to choose) only entered the human mind when Satan introduced it, what then would be the purpose of the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden?
Why did God gave the command to leave the tree alone, to a being that isn't capable of choosing to disobey that command?
Really, what is the meaning of any commands if given to someone who cannot do anything but to do what the command says? That is like programming a computer, the computer has no ability to choose anything but what it's being told to.
Consequently, we humans do not have relationship with computers (the illusion of, yes, but not real ones).
Now Satan on the other hand is a different story all together. He was given more power and understanding than man being an Angel. This world is subject unto the Angels for that cause. They were created to be ministers unto God and unto man for Gods purpose. Each one was given their share of Wisdom, understanding and knowledge for the purpose preforming Gods will in his creation. Satan being the hinge pin. One has to answer what provoked him to act?
The only answer that I have is that he has to be the one who was ultimately entrusted with power over others with the expectation that this power was to be used for the purposes of good in others.
Here I agree with your thinking. Bearing in mind our disagreement that human being was given (by God) the same capacity to think and decide as Satan.
The conundrum is 'if God created a perfect creation, how could it go bad?'. Wouldn't the ultimate answer be that if it was created perfect it could not go bad? There would be no weakness in any of it? Yet it appears to have been designed for this intended purpose. We must then ask ourselves what God has said to this intended end. Why was the creation made? Answer, the Father made the creation for his Son. His Son was meant to go and leave off being in the form of God forever to become a part of the Fathers creation eternally as ruler of a perfectly refined world that has no evil within it but consists of Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Temperance, Meekness, Goodness, Gentleness and Faith. Not only would Jesus be the Son but he would have many brethren.
From the book of Genesis, I get that God created the world for us, humans, to be the steward of (Genesis 1:28).
God's Son needs to become human and die on the cross because God's love for humankind. The emphasize on the need was reflected in The Lord's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane where He yielded His will to His Father's (Matthew 26:39).
As the result, He, the promised one, the perfect lamb, has been given all authority and power both in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18).
Therefore He will rule with and over His people eternally as it is written in (Luke 1:33, and several other verses in the Scriptures).
I like the notion that you brought up that God created the world for His Son to rule over, that fits the plan of salvation and shows the genius of the Master Designer.
So shall we argue the point or just accept that our only choice is to live or die? Can we see that our choices are simply which good we choose to do? Free will is not really free will, it is living within boundaries set up by a Holy God who is Love. Free will is deciding to depart from that which is good. Satan made that choice without having an opportunity to repent. We do.
The way I see it, the act of choosing whom we will become a slave to, is the effect of having been given a free will. Whether it is God through our Savior or the world (Satan), each have its own consequences. One glorious, and the other, dire. And that's what we need to tell others about. I think both you and I could agree on this one.
Thanks again brothers!
Gary
And thank you for your thoughts also.
It's nice for brothers in The Lord to edify each other like this.
