> General Discussions
Free Will is an Oxymoron.
Deborah-Leigh:
We are all accountable but God is Responsible!
Separate the distinctions here....accountable and responsible.
Separate the words choice.... and ....will. They are NOT the same!
We have many choices. God knows which one we will pick because He knows us better than we know ourselves. God tells us to judge ourselves and to take the beam out of our own eyes. He tells us to follow Him. Do we? No!
Why not? Because we can’t. Do we know we can’t? No. What does it take until we realize that we can do nothing outside the Sovereignty or separate to God? Accountability brings us to realize our spiritual condition. Do we want to know our spiritual condition? No. Why? Because our spirtual condition is weak and subject to vanity and for this we experience pain when we are shown wrong, we experience agony when we are shown up and embarassment is not a word we want to have come near to us. We like to look good and we do not enjoly looking bad. We love and cultivate and maicure a good self esteem! and a good self image. Is it fake. YES!
This is part of the plan and process bringing us few who are selected and chosen by God to come to the painful acceptance through much personal suffering and experiences of helpless hopeless loveless soul poverty, that without Gods goodness we can not change? How do we change? Simple. Painfully through chastisement and flogging and trials and tribulations. We do not want to change. The familiar is comfortable. We can only change if God changes us. Do we want God to do anything to change us. NO! Is God a respector of persons? NO. THANK GOD FOR THAT! .... Then after much suffering we learn obedience....DEGREE BY DEGREE. How? We begin to think that we are not so great anymore. We begin to realize we have to lean upon someone greater than ourselves. We begin to get wise. Then we begin to question our own motives if we are very blessed and God so desires and chooses. Then we begin to see that our motives are selfish and carnal and valueless. Do we want to? NO. God draggs us. Then if God decides, we learn about His Spirit of Love Joy Peace Kindness Goodness Patience Gentleness Faithfulness and Long Suffering. Then we realise that accountability simply shows us what our spiritual condition is. Do we still enjoy carnality or do we rise up out of pain and suffering into the embrace of God? God is making us and He alone decides. Do we agree with this situation yet? No....Yes?
If I am resisting or trying to shake off or show restentment and bickering about my accountability then I am accusing God of His ways not being MY ways and His thoughts not being MY thoughts. I would only do that if I hate Gods ways and Gods words and the carnal mind does just that. It HATES God. We are accountable means we have preferences that show if we enjoy evil or good, carnal or spiritual. Those preferences are not nothing. They are something. They are our indications of our spiritual weakness, failures and liability to temptation. We can not approach Christ unless we first accept our condition and then approach Him in order to lean on and depend on the Mercy Grace and Unmerited favour of God made available to us only via Christ our High Priest who understands what we experience because He has been through it all. If I do not like it this way, I can rebel and that will show my spiritual condition is immature, hard and void. If I see and accept the way of pain, taking up my cross, as being the only way to the Spirit of Christ, then I can go forward into the image of Christ being made within me by God. The condition I am in is the condition I AM in NOT the condition GOD is in. MY condition is NOT permanent. God will fix us all. We are in our spirtual condition now in this life and God has made the way out! Look at where you and I are! Look at what you and I bretheren have been shown already. You and I are not babes in the woods. Do we want to go back? Do we wish to return to milk?
You and I are acountable for what we know. To whom much is given much will be required. Do we go for or against this Princiiple of God? God will know all about it and we will be shown up in the end because all our works and words and motives will be revealed. God is responsible for that and He wont be mocked. If I like it, then it shows I am on the right course. If not, then it shows what will not be desireable to see…. a wretched heart condition. No one wants that! ... yet either I am pliable to Gods ways or I am still heading for breaking up and being crushed into a humble and contrite spirit. The Power of God is All Mighty. I should embrace God...and His Christ....yet only HE can create that in me. I can know what is being created by looking at what my choices show me about my spiritual condition!
Christ went to the cross. He did not want to. He went anyway. What does that show of the spiritual condition of Christ? What are my CHOICES showing about me? That is the accountability mirror. Will I throw it away, question it or use it? God knows how mature I am. He knows how much fire of chastisement I still need to get into the image of His Son who died for me.
Accountability.....by my choices so I am known by God and will be revealed accordingly. So will all of us be salted with fire. God will correct, fix and amend errors wickedness and deciept in the end. Do I want to wait till then for the second death Lake of Fire? Am I waiting? Yes....No? Do I care to know who I am before God? Do I care to face my spiritual condition? ....Yes...No?.....Just some of my own thoughts! Just some...!
Peace be to you
Arcturus :)
DWIGHT:
To whom then will you liken Me, or shall I be equal? Says the Holy One… I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me… I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things… I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded… To whom will you like Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we may be like?" (Isa. 40:25; 45:5, 7, 12; 46:5)
There are some things that are almost impossible to describe. Ray said, we know that God is all knowing, but did He ever learn? We don't know because the scripture doesn't say. There are many things that the scriptures don't say that we must take by faith. We cannot describe everything that we see even so we see it. I think the posts that we have had describing accountability have been excellent, but just because we can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. Sometimes we just have to render the things that are Ceasar's to Ceasar and to God the things that are God's.
In His grace,
Dwight
Brett:
--- Quote from: gmik on January 11, 2007, 02:35:17 PM ---
Clearly, w/o double-speak, I have no choice but to choose what was predestined for me to choose. So why does God hold me accountable????
--- End quote ---
Hi gena,
Flesh understand things are not the same as spiritual things. I found quote scripture that seem fit of 'why' and Paul had answer for us:
Rom. 11:33-36 NKJV
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How UNSEARCHABLE [Gk: anexereunetos-impossible understand] are HIS [God] JUDGMENTS and HIS WAYS PAST FINDING OUT [Gk: anexichniastos-impossible trace God]!
‘For who HAS KNOWN THE MIND [flesh] of the LORD ["man’s goings are of the Lord; How then can a man understand his own way?" Prov. 20:24]? Or WHO [flesh] HAS BECOME HIS [God] COUNSELOR [adviser]?’
‘Or who [flesh] has first given to Him [God] And it shall be repaid [reward] to him [flesh]?’
FOR OF HIM [God] and THROUGH HIM and TO HIM are ALL THINGS, to whom be GLORY forever [Gk: aionas, same as aion; {eis ho aionas} into the ages/eons]. Amen.”
If God given us in spiritual, it is not one day understand fully but is progressing. I wish we could have now but it is God's control and He knows what is best for us.
I hope Kat helped you out. And hope you get some insight (or maybe complete insight :D).
Brett
bobf:
I believe Paul answers the question in Romans 9. Paul asks, "Why does he yet find fault?" This is the same as asking why does he hold accountable the vessels of dishonor when they can not resist His will.
Romans 9:19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
First we are to recognize that God knows what He is doing.
Romans 9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? 21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
And now Paul gives the reason.
Romans 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.
So God finds fault (holds accountable) in order to....
1. show His wrath
2. make His power known
3. make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy
As an example, take the prodigal son. It is my opinion that he was first a vessel of dishonor since he sold his inheritance for a bowl of stew (riotous living). God held him accountable by sending a famine and putting him in a hopless situation and reducing him to the state of a pig. By doing so God made known His wrath & power upon that vessel. Later, when the prodigal son repented, he became a vessel of honor. And God made known the riches of His glory and His mercy on that vessel.
So God holds us accountable for our benefit, so we can see His wrath, power, glory, and mercy.
Chris R:
--- Quote from: gmik on January 11, 2007, 02:35:17 PM ---Same for me John. I am on the 2nd listening of Rays tape & of course I have read his paper on Free Will twice. I get it.....I don't get it....I know it....I forget it....
I agree that the forum helps keep it in front of me...
Sorin, I agree that is a fuzzy area for me. If I really had no choice in what I "chose" and it was fore ordained for me to do it, then why should I be punished for it??? Yes, I agree that given the set of circumstances anyone couldve been a Hitler, but I don't see how that changes anything.
Clearly, w/o double-speak, I have no choice but to choose what was predestined for me to choose. So why does God hold me accountable????
Another question, God is no respector of persons right??? What does this exactly mean?? If God chose Hitler to be Hitler and Billy Graham to have a grand, life isn't that bing a respector of persons?
love,
gena
--- End quote ---
Hi Gena,
Why does God make the rain fall on the wicked, and the righteous? This is a tough question for the human mind to conceive. Why does he make one vessel for honor, and one for dis-honor? So that he can save us ALL!
Rom 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will [have mercy], and whom he will he hardeneth.
Rom 9:19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
Rom 9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed [it], Why hast thou made me thus?
Its a tough question, and even a tougher answer.
Hope this is of some help.
Chris R
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