"Wanting" free will is irrelevant. Who said anything about keeping it unchecked? You are confusing freedom with wantonness.
Predestination is misunderstood...
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Hmm...that's what I thought. It's a very misunderstood passage because it's so often taken out of context. We have to understand the audience to whom Peter was writing. It's the same one to whom he addressed in his First Epistle (1Pet 1:1-2), and it's incumbent upon all interpreters to also pay very close attention to the pronouns and terms of endearment he used in 2Pet 3; and finally to factor in that huge "therefore" that begins v. 17, which reveals to us precisely why he said the foregoing.
There is no such thing as an "unchecked" will, if by that you mean freedom to do anything we want. Even God Almighty cannot do everything! As stated so often, everyone's will, including our Creator's, is limited by our nature. You seem to have a very tough time grasping this biblical truth and because you can't, it appears you reject it totally.
Free will in this context is the ability to choose to respond to the gospel. That's it. That's all. There's no need to complicate it.
Discretion of choice limits by our own individual and collective perspectives.
Children of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ
Children of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ
are you saying free will has different context
I'm still waiting for you to say what free will is.
Why would you think that? I said (and normally do say) precisely and completely what I meant to say. Don't bother thinking I mean something else.
I did already, clearly and specifically.
you've said free will is a choice.
I'm still waiting for you to tell me how free will is a choice.
A choice is the ability to think.
So I'm asking you, how free will is able to think.
How about you think that through, and when you realize the category error you've made, perhaps you will have the integrity to withdraw the question.
Explain how free will and choice are the same thing.
Don't say they are the same thing.
Explain why.
God cannot DO everything? @Rufus
God cannot act contrary to his nature and character. For example, Titus 1:2 states that God cannot lie, and Isaiah 6:3 and 1 Peter 1:16 state that God cannot sin or overlook sin.
The Bible teaches that God has supreme authority and absolute power over all things. Ephesians 3:20 states that God can do anything, far more than people could ever imagine or guess. Ephesians 1:11 says, "God works all things according to the counsel of his will".
Isaiah 46:10
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;
Low Christological view of God and of Christ-glad I have seen this.
Ask them to use Scriptures to answer your probing questions-now you are doing it the right way.
I don't need to think it through.
Free will is nothing more than a philosophy.
From responses here, free will has the ability to act beyond the limits of outside influencers or wishes
Or free will is the ability to make choices undetermined by the past.
or free will suggests only one event is possible.
There all philosophies.
How about free will being your self control.
Can you control your will or not.
For instance a person knows he is going to soon be dead, because of cancer.
And he can not change the outcome.
Does such person choose to become saddened in the heart.
Could such person change that saddening.
Could such person let that saddening keep saddening him.
Why would his will be free in this possition.
The only way it would be free.
If he was to remain downbeat.
People can stop themselves from going into full blown depression, who have no mental health issues in this position,
Othere people can not.