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Deuteronomy 30:19
Kat:
Hi SDDiver,
I do understand how difficult it is to fully comprend (if it is even possible to fully comprend) this idea of no free will. We have all assumed this to be so all of our life and took it for granted that we have this power to direct events ourself. But for God to truly be soverenign and know the end from the beginning (Isa 46:10), then He must also know every detail inbetween. So there can not be anything whatsoever that He does not know will happen exactly the way it will.
I realize as you say you have read the articles already, but there is so much to take in in them. So I bring these excerpts out (because Ray has already explained these things so well) to try an address the specific question. This is more from the 'Free Will is an Oxymoron' Bible study.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php?topic=5154.0 -----------
If humanity has free will and they can choose to do good. Why don’t they? What’s wrong? I have theologians say, and I’ll quote them, “It’s the most marvelous gift God has given to humanity is free will, it‘s the most marvelous gift of all.” If this gift is so wonderful, why doesn’t it ever work? Why is it broken? Why does it malfunction 100% of the time? Why doesn’t it work?
You got free will, which means there is nothing that causes you to do evil, when you can just as easily do good, nothing. So why don’t you? Why hasn’t anyone? Where is the first human (save Jesus Christ) that ever lived that way? And why did Jesus do it, because He had free will? “Of My own self I can do nothing.” (John 5:30)
v
Am I going to fast for anybody? It doesn’t work. Even if we had free will, we know for a historical, Biblical fact it doesn’t work. It has never worked. What good is it? But we don’t even have it. We don’t have it, it’s an oxymoron. YOU can’t come to Christ. Even though they say, ‘you’ve got a free will.’ The Bible says you can’t come to Christ, you can‘t choose Him. You can’t seek God, no one seeks God.
Rom 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God(spiritual laws of God), neither indeed can be.
Well you say, ‘I got a free will, I can be subject if I want.” NO YOU CAN’T. Did Eve have a free will, that she could resist Satan? No. The first temptation and it was all over, down she went. Adam wasn’t deceived and he choose the same way. But God forbid that He would teach us right from wrong, what an evil that is.
Then they get into these strong words, like they say, ‘well if God has to ‘force’ us to love Him, what good is that?’ Well let me reword it, what if God has to ‘inspire’ us to love Him, how marvelous is that. It’s one thing to be ‘forced’ to write a book you don’t want to write. It’s another thing to be ‘inspired’ to write a book, you can’t wait to write. Do you see a difference? Don’t you see a little difference there? Notice what David said to God.
Psalms 119:71 “It is GOOD for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.”
It’s good. The Bible said it’s good. It’s good! They say, ‘oh it’s bad, if you don’t obey God’s statues, by your own free will, it’s useless.’ ‘If God has to force you to love Him what kind of love is that?’
But what if He inspires you. What if He has to punish sometimes to get your mind straightened out. As long as you get your mind straightened out, what’s wrong with that? There is nothing wrong with that. That’s how you get obedient children.
v
It’s interesting, you can always look at things in a negative and positive ways, when you might even have the same results in mind. Somebody will say, ‘do you think God forces us to love Him?’ I say, well to some degree maybe, but why don’t we use the word ‘inspire.’
This guy sent me an email and he said, ‘Ray there is a difference between forcing and inspiring.’ I said, oh really. Do they both cause something to happen? Well then they are both a ‘cause’ and whatever causes something to happen, makes it happen, so it happened. So it’s really immaterial what it was that causes it to happen, if it was something else that brought it about, right.
v
So what they are saying is, if God inspires you to love, it’s a good thing, if He causes you to love, it’s not so good, and if He forces you to love, it’s evil.
http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,1937.0.html -----
There are HUNDREDS of places in the Scriptures which speak of doing something, making a decision, choosing between two things, etc. Not ONE of them has anything to do with "free" will. You need to read the first couple of pages of the first of my four-part series on the Free Will Myth. I answer it in great detail after I first define what is meant by "free will" or "free choice.' Everyone has the bility to make choice, but that choice is based on SOME CAUSE, and that cause is what renders the choice to be not free.
God forsaw EVERYTHING in His creation BEFORE the creation. Therefore, nothing is "free" to go contrary to what God already knows MUST AND WILL BE! "For it is GOD which works in you both to WILL and to DO of His Good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). We must first believe the Scriptures before e will be able to understand the Scriptures.
God be with you,
Ray
SDDiver:
These are all great insights and I thank you all!! What a wonderful group of saints. What a sanctuary on the internet to retreat to. God bless you all!
I don't want to beat this to death but if I may go back to “my” scripture just one more time.
If I paraphrase it a little to say, “I set before thee the option to do thine job diligently or otherwise to surf the web all day, so choose to work so that thou wilt not get fired” – it is obvious what the right thing to do is; but I can do one or the other, or can I? Let’s say I choose to do the wrong thing then it was God who has caused me to do it. Right? But why does He ask me to do the right thing if I can’t choose it? Or can I? Dagnabbit.
I’ve chosen several wrong and bad things since I got up this morning. I wish there was an undo button sometimes. But then again, if I really had “undone” anything in my past life, then I would not be where I am today. Everything just had to happen the way it did. So I guess it’s true. I couldn’t have chosen differently. Yet God asks me to choose the right thing.
It makes me think of our kitten. When we first brought him home, he had the choice to use the litterbox in order to deposit his diarrhea, or instead to use the bed. He didn’t use the litterbox. I wanted him to use it though, but I had a feeling that he wouldn’t the first couple tries (I had “foreknown” it). He had a choice and he chose wrongly but certainly not because we made him choose wrongly. (I'm over it now and no longer holding a grudge)
Really, I don't think it's the no-free-will issue that is causing me problems. I'm able to humbly accept this and concur with you all that if God is sovereign (and He is), then He is in charge of every little detail of our life and our choices.
My question from the get-go should have been, why is God asking us to choose something that He knows we won’t choose?
mmijares:
Hi SD,
It was not the first time God ask human to make a choice.
Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
Gen 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
God did give Adam and Eve a choice and yet...and yet!...God knew (caused!) them to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, anyway. Why was it so? My mind kind of goes like round and round on this. I shall also wait our brothers/sisters to answer this.
Mij
Kat:
Okay it's good to work through these questions so we can more precisely get to what you need to know.
--- Quote ---why is God asking us to choose something that He knows we won’t choose?
--- End quote ---
The thing is God makes it clear throughout Scripture what He expects of us. Therefore we are without excuse as to what we are suppose to do. He has told us from the beginning right from wrong, good from evil. So we are finding out for ourself, by experience, that just like Paul we can not do the right thing.
Rom 7:19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
So God tells us what is right and good, but we prove to ourselves that we, of ourself, are incapable of doing it. This excerpt is not exactly about your question, but I think it will help.
http://bible-truths.com/part5.htm -----------------------
The Scriptures say that: "All is of God ... " (II Cor. 5:18), yet we just read that God " ... is trying no one." That is, God Himself, is not trying or testing us to see how well we fare. He already knows the verdict. He already knows, that we don't "fare" well at all. God knows all (I John 3:21). The reason God doesn't, Himself, try anyone is because He doesn't need to try anyone for His benefit-He already knows all. Notice Webster's Dictionary: "trial, 1. the act of hearing a case in a law court to DECIDE WHETHER the claim or charge is true." Surely, no one is so audacious as to think God needs evidence in a trial to determine the truth. God sends the trials, but God does not do the trying-He already knows the outcome-but man doesn't. Man desperately needs trials to prove to himself (not God), that he is a failure and needs a Saviour. The trials are for our benefit, for our learning, not for God's benefit and God's learning - God knows all.
We can accomplish no good of ourselves. What we are to learn is contained in the next passage: "Be not deceived [but of course, most people are deceived], my beloved brethren! ALL GOOD giving and EVERY perfect gratuity is from above, descending from the FATHER of lights ... " (Jas. 1:16). That is the lesson we, not God, are to learn and our trials are a great aid in understanding God's goodness.
----------------------------------------------------------
mercy, peace and love
Kat
Patrick:
--- Quote from: mmijares ---God did give Adam and Eve a choice and yet...and yet!...God knew (caused!) them to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, anyway. Why was it so?
--- End quote ---
Short answer; because it's all part of His plan, just one of the many "acts" in the "play" of creation by our Sovereign God!
A longer answer;
http://bible-truths.com/lake15.html
Jer 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, And it is EXCEEDING WEAK—who can know it." Jewish Publication Society (emphasis mine; why was it so?)
Romans 8:20.
"For the creature [Gk: ‘creation’] was made [put under, subordinate to, to obey] subject to vanity [Gk: ‘futility’], not willingly, but by reason of Him Who has subjected the same in hope."
First it is most important that we look at and understand the word translated "will" in Rom. 9:19. It is not the usually Greek word, which is translated "will" hundreds of times in the New Testament. This Greek word boulema is used but twice in the Bible, here in Rom. 9:19 and in Acts 27:43 where it is translated "purpose."
So the question that Paul is setting up is not "…who has resisted His will?" but rather, "who has resisted His purpose [His plan, His intention]?"
To the question, "…who has resisted His will?" the answer is: EVERYONE! But when properly translated, to the question, "who has resisted His purpose?" the answer is: ABSOLUTELY NO ONE!
God has a will and God has a plan and purpose to reach that will. And no small part of reaching His desired will is to set men against His will, just as He did with Pharaoh. But no one has ever hindered God’s plan and purpose in reaching that goal and stated will. God’s will, will be done in His time.
So back to Paul’s questioners: If God causes us to do what we do, and no one ever has or ever can go against or resist that purpose of God, why does He blame us when we sin? And again, I will let Paul answer, since the question was directed to him. But you know what? Paul does not even deign to answer their question. That’s right, Paul proposes the question and then does not directly answer it. He considers the very question itself too demeaning, if not blasphemous to answer. Instead He says this:
"Nay but, O man, WHO ARE YOU that replies against God? Shall the thing formed [that’s us] say to Him that formed it, [that’s GOD] Why have You made me thus? Has not the Potter [GOD] power over the clay [man], of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" (Rom. 9:20-21).
GOD IS THE POTTER AND WE ARE THE POT
Could anything be plainer? God, the Potter, does not owe an explanation to the pot as to why He made the pot the way He desired! And God desires to make some pots honorable and some pots dishonorable. Why? Because He is a mean and nasty God? No, because He has a plan, a purpose, intentions, to save all humanity in the end. That IS THE "WILL" OF GOD.
WHAT CAUSED EVE TO SIN WILLINGLY?
Did Eve herself think that she "freely" willed to sin WITHOUT A CAUSE?
"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that you have done? And the woman said [Yes, just what did ‘the woman say?’ Did she say that she "freely willed" to commit this sin? Did she say it was her and all her and nothing but her that did this? Or did she say…], The SERPENT BEGUILED ME… [and BECAUSE the serpent beguiled or deceived her, we now have a CAUSE], and I did eat" (Gen. 3:13).
"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because YOU HAVE DONE THIS, you are cursed above all cattle…" (Verse 14).
There it is. God’s Own answer. But will we accept God’s answer? For most, probably not.
God plainly said that it was the serpent who "has done this." Eve said it was the serpent that deceived her and God Himself also conceded that it was the serpent that "HAS DONE THIS." That was the CAUSE, and that was the reason for the serpent’s punishment.
WHAT CAUSED ADAM TO SIN WILLINGLY?
Or do the Scriptures tell us that he too was CAUSED to have his will do what he did?
"And the man said, THE WOMAN whom You gave to be with me, SHE GAVE ME OF THE TREE, and I did eat" (Ver. 12).
"And unto Adam He said, Because [‘because’—here is the real CAUSE] YOU HAVE HEARKENED UNTO THE VOICE OF YOUR WIFE, and have eaten of the tree …" (Ver. 17).
THE SOURCE OF ALL POWER
"Then said Pilate unto Him, Speak you not unto me? Know you not that I HAVE POWER to crucify you, and have POWER TO RELEASE YOU? Jesus answered, You could have NO POWER AT ALL against Me, except it were GIVEN YOU from above…" (John 19:10-11).
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