It's all your fault for believing what the revealed Word of God says.
If you held to heresies instead you could be friends with the world.
Can We Really Exercise Free Will?
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If you held to heresies instead you could be friends with the world.
That could be walking under law.
Knowing His choices and then doing them = law.
Walking in the Spirit will surprise you when it causes you to find out that you have been doing what God desires before you even knew that it was His desire.
That is part of the mystery of walking in the Spirit! It becomes a supernatural lifestyle.
Sometimes... we need to learn God's Word to discover that something we had been doing God's will unawares, and thought it was a wrong thing to do.
Why is that?
Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Being led of the Spirit can land you in a situation doing something that you did not understand why you did something. Something that you even thought might be wrong. Only to find out a few days later in Church while hearing a message that what you did was God's way of doing something as found in the Word. That is one way to discover you were being led of the Spirit.Once you realize that reality, one must develop a hunger for more and more sound doctrinal teaching, as to learn not to find yourself resisting doing something the Spirit is wanting of you to be done.
Yes! His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
That reality can cause us to think and do His ways.
Until we become inundated with sound doctrine teachings, we may even think in isolated cases it was Satan wishing to motivate us.
........."It was just so foreign to my way of thinking!"
Being led of the Spirit is a discovery adventure, requiring one to learn what it was he was just exposed to.
C'est la vie!
He foreknew there would be believers - more specifically "those (plural - the men) who love Him" Rom8:28 - these (plural) are the whom as I identified.
Specific individuals is another discussion.
You hit the nail on the head. Thats exactly the way the cookie crumbles. We make FREE CHOICES....... we are not COERCED by any outside force to act, however unless we are regenerated we are bound to freely make the kind of choices that DO NOT lead to eternal life!
So you could put it this way: The will is free, yet bound by sin. We need to be set free by the Son of God.
There has been alotta ink spilled and words minced over this subject and the only BIBLICAL view is what I just presented. Fallen mankind in the image of Adam CANNOT set themselves free!
DONT BE THAT ROMANS 9:19-20 MAN/WOMAN!
19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?”
When hearing the doctrines of grace presented if your answer is "its not fair": RECONSIDER your view, the only view that causes this response is the doctrines of grace. This is why it clearly is the view that Paul meant to present.
This is highly interpretive and close to the point of brief discussion I was having with @Genez re: Rom9-10. See post #5,485.
In Rom9 because Paul continues after speaking of Jacob's election which was not based on human will or exertion/effort per Rom9:16 in context, into discussion re: the Remnant (all Israel is not Israel) and then into the Gospel and the nations, this discussion puts us back into one about Faith, human volition, grace, and we're right back to the controversies re: Calvinistic, Arminian, Free Grace, and others over these merry-go-round issues.
Thats it. Alotta folks are just reaaaal lazy with their Bible study and it starts and ends at John 3:16, which dont even TALK about the capabilities of man to believe or not to believe.
Its always about man's freedom. How about God's freedom? What about that!
Nice pondering!
The concept of what's valuable vs. worthless is a fun study in the Scriptures. You've conceptually nailed the epitome of value.
Fun read!
In John 1-29 it says "behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" another reference to the world.
Now I'm ver sure you've been doing this for awhile. At some point we look around us and wonder if we really want to be part of this and associated with some to many who identify as Christian. At a time when I paid more attention, there were terms like christendom that were coined to include all of what identifies as Christianity, so we could say things negative about it. "churchianity" was also such a term. Thats's where we pull back and simply rest in Him and that He's got it all under control and knows who are His.
Well stated.
No matter where we are in this advance, until our last breath there's more.
Are you addressing this to me by mistake or did I miss something?
Re: the "world-kosmos" my read is that it's definitely used to mean different things, but here it means what it sounds like and probably even more than most of us are considering. This phrase "of the world" can legitimately be translated "from the world" which would ultimately have more complete eschatological and cosmic realities that what Christ has done according to God's Plan and Purpose and thus His will and His decision, ultimately removes sin from God's creation - His created order - let alone from just those who believe in Him.
We discuss too small on these merry-go-rounds.
I'd join @HeIsHere and ask are you sure, and now are you sure that's all Deut7 says, especially about love? I'd Also ask if you think there is any parallelism going on in that verse.
I interpret in light of Scripture teaching that God loves all people and provides everyone an opportunity to be saved from hell,
which you can ignore as you prefer and believe God does NOT love everyone but rather He shows favoritism by electing only a few
to escape damnation, but it doesn't change the truth. "Whom" = "Those", as in "Those/Whom God foreknew [would choose
to accept Christ] He also predestined [planned from the beginning] to be conformed to the image of His Son [to become loving]...".
Agreed, it wasn't for anyone's salvation but who He chose to build a nation.
God does not save the Elect, He elects the saved.
I really like how you explained this, Pilgrim. We as a race are "caught between good and evil," and all we have to do is turn on the news to see that blend of sin and sanctity that seems to be amplifying at an accelerated rate.
The choice was ours. God gave us that choice and made it very clear that the forbidden fruit was off limits, period. We chose to disobey His word. That's on us, not God, and unfortunately we as a race continue to eat from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the results are crystal clear.