Can We Really Exercise Free Will?

[sawdust]

You say God cannot cause people not to believe. He doesn't need to, they are already in a state of unbelief! However, He can change a person's heart to believe when they hear the preached word. When that happens, it is not a work of man - it is a work of God himself!
Now tell me if you think this is true.....

They can't be in a state of unbelief unless they first have something to not believe ergo, God always initiates with grace and truth and the Devil follows closely behind with his "brand of truth". I strongly suspect many people have forgotten or were completely unaware of their first encounter with the Lord because they were very young. But He is there from the get go. The Spirit is in the world convincing people of righteousness, sin and judgment. Needless to say, the Devil's doing his own version of convincing as well.

Did the devil change your heart to not believe or did you decide that for yourself? You came into this world knowing neither truth nor lies, you heard both from somewhere. If the "devil didn't make you do it", why would you think God made you believe the truth? Why is it so hard to accept your decisions between truth and error are your decisions? It doesn't in anyway take away from God's power or glory as it was by means of His grace and mercy you heard the truth in the first place and it was His power that saved you based on His own determination to save believers. It was His design that gave you the capacity to use your will for limited self determination.

God has never given our volition the power to create reality so how could our volition be responsible for changing our reality simply because we use it as God tells us to do? "repent and believe", "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" "choose you this day" etc. You weren't living in a coma all your life until the Gospel suddenly sprang into your heart. You have been making decisions for and against the Lord all your life.

 

[sawdust]

Can you show me a scripture that states there are believers who do not know they are believers?

Did you always know you belonged to Christ?

 

[HeIsHere]

Did you always know you belonged to Christ?

No.

 

[lrs68]

From Romans 1 [God manifesting Himself through His Creation\People (are created)]...

From Corinthians and Romans [God manifesting Himself to a person's consciousness (in their thoughts)]...

From Romans and Ephesians [God manifesting Himself by hearing the Gospel preached]...

There's no doubt that God has made the first move in every humans life to make Himself known so they would believe.

Also from those Scriptures humanity has the ability to reject or accept God.

That is proof of Free Will!

 

[sawdust]

So a person can be justified by merely believing God created everything? The righteous can live by faith in the created universe? Can you give me chapter and verse on that?

And who gets to define "right": God or you?

Do you get to define who a believer is? Are you able to see what they would decide if they had the opportunity to hear the Gospel?

Plus you don't seem to read very well as I did say we must trust God to do what's right. The inference there is that we trust Him because we don't know.

 

[sawdust]

I am in serious doubt that a person would be regenerated without ever exercising personal faith in Christ Jesus for salvation, if that is indeed what @sawdust asserting.

But appreciate the scripture.

I am asserting that our believing, a positive act of our volition, is not the same as saving faith that comes from the word. We are required to believe, God produces faith. Faith = the word in us.

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Our believing (an act of our will) does not produce the hope and evidence as above. It is the word of God that produces that but the word does not join Himself with those who refuse to believe.

To those who do believe, the word of God produces faith in us which, is an act of God made possible by means of grace. In fact I would go further and say it is Christ's faith that we are given and we make that faith are own as we continue to obey by believing the word and walking under the influence of the Spirit (led of the Spirit). Also known as sanctification or working out our salvation. By making His life our life (and all it entails, having already been given that life by means of our salvation), we continue to grow to the full stature of Jesus Christ the Lord.

You are correct in that I believe a person is not regenerated unless they believe the Gospel.

 

[HeIsHere]

I am asserting that our believing, a positive act of our volition, is not the same as saving faith that comes from the word. We are required to believe, God produces faith. Faith = the word in us.

In the Greek faith and belief come from the same root word, one being the noun the other the verb.

I will come back to this later, busy right now, but I do not see faith/belief as volitional, the volition/exercising of faith comes afterwards.

 

[sawdust]

In the Greek faith and belief come from the same root word, one being the noun the other the verb.

I will come back to this later, busy right now, but I do not see faith/belief as volitional, the volition/exercising of faith comes afterwards.

The word for spirit is pneuma but do you think Matt.5:3 and Jn.16:13 mean the same spirit? Or that the Spirit is giving birth to Himself in Jn.3:6?

Conversely, in James Jm.2:19 even the demons believe God is. Is that true? God does exist doesn't He? Does that mean if they believe they must have faith? Afterall, they are believing something that is true. I'm going to be presumptuous and say you don't believe the demons have faith.

So what can we conclude from this? Believing something is true and having faith are not necessarily the same thing, yes? Therefore, is it reasonable to suggest that believing and faith are not necessarily the same thing at all times? I believe, within correct context, they can be seen as different things coming from different sources.

 

[cv5]

I am in serious doubt that a person would be regenerated without ever exercising personal faith in Christ Jesus for salvation, if that is indeed what @sawdust asserting.

But appreciate the scripture.

I think you misunderstood what sawdust Intended to say.

 

[cv5]

@cv5 thoughts on the above statement that I bolded?
Do you know if there is a scriptural reference?

Yes. Jesus -God is outside of time and knows literally everything because He is omniscient. All things all the time at all times

He definitely knows who will be saved from eternity past. But He also leaves the choices and decisions to believe up to that person without coercion or kidnapping their free will.

An easy call that one can make by studying His interactions with Satan as crazy as that sounds. Satan will never repent or believe and Jesus knows it. Knowing this He used Satan-Judas as the means of "delivering" Him to the crucifixion.

And so on and so forth.

 

[Magenta]

The Bible says, the flesh brings forth fruit unto death.

The free willer believes, the flesh brings forth fruit unto life.

 

[Hakawaka]

Hello Hakawaka! Well, I did not ask that question, but anyways the reason people do not believe is manifold, but explicitly laid out in Scripture pertaining to the characteristics of the as-yet unregnerated person whose heart (it is with the heart one believes) is definitely not good ground for growing the seed of God's Word into faith. Man's heart is incurably wicked and that simply means there is nothing he can do about it, any more than the leopard can change his spots or the Ethiopian the colour of his skin (those are the Biblical examples given with the state of our helplessness in that regard), but God certainly can and does and even promised to. None are good and it is not possible to produce something good from the bad. Jesus said such was impossible. This among many other things said of the flesh are denied and contradicted by the free will crowd who put their man-exalting theology above what is articulated in the Bible. Instead they ascribe to the natural man (unregenerated) what is only possible of the spiritual man (regenerated). The unregenerated person is blinded and taken captive to the will of the devil and refuses to come into the light as a lover of darkness and slave to sin suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and is neither capable of receiving nor comprehending the spiritual things of God, to which he is opposed, nor is he capable of submitting to God. But guess what? We who post these Scriptural truths get told by the free will crowd that they are tired of hearing about it... probaby because they have a grand total of ZERO verses articulating what they believe. They are too attached to their vain man-exalting theology to believe what Scripture says.


Man is deceitful (Jeremiah 17 verse 9), full of evil (Mark 7 verses 21-23), loves darkness rather than light (John 3 verse 19), cannot come to God on his own (John 6 verse 44), does not seek for God (Romans 3 verses 10-12), is helpless and ungodly (Romans 5 verse 6), nothing good dwells in his flesh(Romans 7 verse 18), is a slave of sin (Romans 6 verse 20; John 8 verse 34; 2 Timothy 2 verse 26), cannot receive spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2 verse 14), is dead in his sins (Ephesians 2 verse 1), is by nature a child of wrath (Ephesians 2 verse 3), is at enmity with God (Ephesians 2 verse 15), hostile to God and cannot submit to God's law (Romans 8 verse 7). Therefore we rightfully conclude in accordance with the conditions described of the natural man in Scripture that his inherent inclination is to reject God. Thanks be to God, Who appoints people to believe (Acts 13 verse 48), chooses who is to be holy and blameless (Ephesians 1 verse 4), predestines us to adoption (Ephesians 1 verse 5), calls according to His purpose (2 Timothy 1 verse 9), chooses us for salvation (2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13), leads us to and grants us repentance (Romans 2 verse 4; 2 Timothy 2 verses 24-25), grants the act of believing (Philippians 1 verse 29), works faith in the believer (John 6 verses 28-29), causes us to be born again (1 Peter 1 verse 3), born again not by our will but by His will (John 1 verses 12-13), draws people to Himself (John 6 verse 44), grants that we come to Jesus (John 6 verse 65), predestines us to salvation (Romans 8 verses 29- 30), and circumcises our heart (Romans 2 verse 29), all according to His purpose (Ephesians 1 verse 11).

That begs the question of whose job is it to prepare the heart? The parable of the sower, talks about heart being the soil in Luke's account of it. So is it God that makes the heart (soil) good? If it is God, then God should do it for everyone since God wants everyone to be saved 1 Timothy 2:4

Is there any Bible verses on that? Only thing I could find was this:

Proverbs 16:1
The preparations of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

Which seems to have a kind of synergy at play.

 

[studier]

Some thoughts on these posts:

I am asserting that our believing, a positive act of our volition, is not the same as saving faith that comes from the word. We are required to believe, God produces faith. Faith = the word in us.

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Our believing (an act of our will) does not produce the hope and evidence as above. It is the word of God that produces that but the word does not join Himself with those who refuse to believe.

To those who do believe, the word of God produces faith in us which, is an act of God made possible by means of grace. In fact I would go further and say it is Christ's faith that we are given and we make that faith are own as we continue to obey by believing the word and walking under the influence of the Spirit (led of the Spirit). Also known as sanctification or working out our salvation. By making His life our life (and all it entails, having already been given that life by means of our salvation), we continue to grow to the full stature of Jesus Christ the Lord.

You are correct in that I believe a person is not regenerated unless they believe the Gospel.

This is a really good starting point and touching strongly on the point of this thread.

In the Greek faith and belief come from the same root word, one being the noun the other the verb.

I will come back to this later, busy right now, but I do not see faith/belief as volitional, the volition/exercising of faith comes afterwards.

This is a really pertinent response and point of discussion. I'd like to hear its continuation.

I think you misunderstood what sawdust Intended to say.

This is some solid mediation. This discussion should be kept on track.

That begs the question of whose job is it to prepare the heart? The parable of the sower, talks about heart being the soil in Luke's account of it. So is it God that makes the heart (soil) good? If it is God, then God should do it for everyone since God wants everyone to be saved 1 Timothy 2:4

Is there any Bible verses on that? Only thing I could find was this:

Proverbs 16:1
The preparations of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

Which seems to have a kind of synergy at play.

This is a great question, an excellent OC Scripture seemingly answering it, and a great observation at the end in which I've highlighted the important word.

It's this type of discussion that can find answers. All the very weak, invasive, repetitious reformed rhetoric and misuse of Scripture just derails the discussions and puts them on a never-ending merry-go-round going nowhere.

IMO @sawdust made some very important points. I think they can be enhanced by the @HeIsHere observation re: faith and belief. I think part of the answer to the combining of those 2 posts is to look at what @sawdust said about "spirit".

For consideration, just as spirit is sometimes Spirit and at times difficult to see which one is in view, so is faith vs. belief sometimes difficult to discern. Sometimes belief of men (tied to volition as @sawdust noted) which can also be faith of men or faith/belief as @HeIsHere noted, but at other times not Faith (The Faith of/from Jesus Christ) or The Faith that is the product of the Good News from God.

@sawdust noted Heb11:1 which has some profoundly important wording. For another in Hebrews look intensely at Heb4:2 and what it's saying was a problem in the Exodus generation. Consider there this concept of faith or belief or faith/belief (while continuing to consider volition). For another layer of the problem in that generation Heb3 is interesting while noting Heb4:2 is its continuation.

Fun reading this morning. The absence of the rhetorical group from this brief chain of posts was an excellent break.

 

[Hakawaka]

Some thoughts on these posts:



This is a really good starting point and touching strongly on the point of this thread.



This is a really pertinent response and point of discussion. I'd like to hear its continuation.



This is some solid mediation. This discussion should be kept on track.



This is a great question, an excellent OC Scripture seemingly answering it, and a great observation at the end in which I've highlighted the important word.

It's this type of discussion that can find answers. All the very weak, invasive, repetitious reformed rhetoric and misuse of Scripture just derails the discussions and puts them on a never-ending merry-go-round going nowhere.

IMO @sawdust made some very important points. I think they can be enhanced by the @HeIsHere observation re: faith and belief. I think part of the answer to the combining of those 2 posts is to look at what @sawdust said about "spirit".

For consideration, just as spirit is sometimes Spirit and at times difficult to see which one is in view, so is faith vs. belief sometimes difficult to discern. Sometimes belief of men (tied to volition as @sawdust noted) which can also be faith of men or faith/belief as @HeIsHere noted, but at other times not Faith (The Faith of/from Jesus Christ) or The Faith that is the product of the Good News from God.

@sawdust noted Heb11:1 which has some profoundly important wording. For another in Hebrews look intensely at Heb4:2 and what it's saying was a problem in the Exodus generation. Consider there this concept of faith or belief or faith/belief (while continuing to consider volition). For another layer of the problem in that generation Heb3 is interesting while noting Heb4:2 is its continuation.

Fun reading this morning. The absence of the rhetorical group from this brief chain of posts was an excellent break.

Thank you for the kind words. Another question I want to ask: Is there any Scripture that someone was elected / chosen and then fell away?

I can only think of one example, Saul, he was chosen (to be king) but fell away later. Judas is another one. Judas was chosen to be one of the 12 apostles and fell away.

The Bible teaches Judas' name was in the book of life, but we know it was later erased as Rev 3:5 warns can happen.

Jesus speaking to the twelve and He tells them:

Luke 10:20
However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

 

[ChristRoseFromTheDead]

Thank you for the kind words. Another question I want to ask: Is there any Scripture that someone was elected / chosen and then fell away?

I can only think of one example, Saul, he was chosen (to be king) but fell away later. Judas is another one. Judas was chosen to be one of the 12 apostles and fell away.

The Bible teaches Judas' name was in the book of life, but we know it was later erased as Rev 3:5 warns can happen.

Jesus speaking to the twelve and He tells them:

Luke 10:20
However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Those of age who came out of Egypt.

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. Jude 1:5​

 

[Everlasting-Grace]

If one repents and believes, are they not already exercising faith?

Not before the repented.

If you have not repented. You are still living in darkness.

 

[ChristRoseFromTheDead]

The Bible says, the flesh brings forth fruit unto death.

The free willer believes, the flesh brings forth fruit unto life.

If I decide of my own free will to control myself and not sin based on what scripture says and my desire to not piss off God is that fruit unto death?

 

[reneweddaybyday]

Yes, and another Scripture cited by tulipists is Jer. 17:9a, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.”
The immediate context includes:

Jer. 17:5, “Cursed is the one who trusts in man… and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”
Jer. 17:7, “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.”
Jer. 17:10, “I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

Does Jeremiah 17:9 state that natural man has a heart wholly incapable of submitting to God? That is what some who post in this forum actually believe (and post ad nauseam in this and other threads in this forum) ... and, the verse can be construed to state what is believed by those who make such statements if and when the verse is ripped from the context within which the Author of Scripture has placed it ...

Jeremiah 17:

5 Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.


The word "man" in vs 5 and in vs 7 is translated from the Hebrew word (geḇer). There is no difference between the "man" in vs 5 and the "man" in vs 7. In other words, it's not that the "man" in vs 7 is "elect" or the "man" in vs 5 is not "elect" ... they are both just "man". The only difference between the two "man" is in whom (vs 5) or Whom (vs 7) the "man" trusts ...

in vs 5, the "man" who trusts in "man" (different word ... Heb = 'āḏām = mankind) is cursed.

in vs 7, the "man" who trusts in the LORD is blessed.

The point of Jeremiah 17:5-8 is not that natural man is incapable of trusting in God ... in vs 7 "man" is specifically told to trust in God and, please note, there is no indication in vs 5 that man's only object of trust is mankind ... in fact, vs 5 says that when a "man" (geḇer) trusts in mankind ('āḏām) the vs 5 "man" is departing from the Lord.

so what about Jeremiah 17:9?

The point of Jeremiah 17:9 is that trusting in our own hearts is the same as trusting in mankind (āḏām) ... we have to trust the Lord as instructed in Jeremiah 17:7. We are to trust in God only ... not trust in other men or even our own hearts.

The same truth is written in Psalm 1:

Psalm 1:

1 Blessed is the man (Heb = 'îš = male) that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.


also Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man (geḇer) that trusteth in him.
.

 

[Cameron143]

Not before the repented.

If you have not repented. You are still living in darkness.

By the time someone repents, they have already had a change of heart and mind. Repentance is the evidence this is so. If repentance is required to be saved, salvation is by grace plus repentance.

 

[cv5]

Conversely, in James Jm.2:19 even the demons believe God is. Is that true? God does exist doesn't He?

Certainly, the demons believe that God EXISTS. They surely saw His face many times before they fell.
However, they do NOT believe what God SAYS about Himself or what He is intending to do, nor do they believe that He is Good.

Belief in existence evidently falls short. Very short.

[Heb 11:6 KJV]
But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.