Can We Really Exercise Free Will?

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
God must perform a very radical surgery, where the heart is ripped out and replaced! Until this is done man simply does not have the ability nor desire to know the things of God. This must be done before he can hear, believe and trust the only God and His Son, Christ our savior.
Yes sir metaphors have more than one meaning.

And there is certainly a deeper meaning here when it comes to heart.
 
Glad you broached the topic of parables. I have one to toss out to all FWers -- most especially to the promulgator of the so-called "volitional belief" heresy. Now watch how FWers will go spastic on us and try to perform awesome feats of mental gymnastics. :rolleyes:

FWers, Listen Up! In the Parable of the Four Soils, v. 23 reads"

Matt 13:23
23 But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."

NIV

The two questions I have are these:

1. What do the various "soils" in this parable represent?
2. How did the man in v.23 come across "good soil" since no man is inherently good, according to Jesus (Mk 10:18)?
Yeah, just like all of your co-workers here.

No need to spread the gospel. The Gospel has no power.

Just hope your ticket gets stamped.(One can't even hope or see that in your theory.) One just takes a hit from the bong and is miraculously regenerated......Hadn't even heard of the Lord Jesus Christ.


You fall flat on your face at the start. You can't have these "super deep intellectual" questions if your premise is faulty from the start.
 
Rufus ... spreading your lies reveals you must be under the control of the evil one.

I never stated what you claim.
.

No lie. You do believe that Satan is controlling the lives of ALL men w/o exception (regardless of spiritual status), since the "whole world" can only be rightly understood in the distributive sense according to you FWers. Are you now denying this? Are you now saying that we don't have to understand "whole world" in the above sense? :rolleyes:
 
It's not clear on my mind exactly what a heart of flesh is.

Is it clear in your mind ?

Well the heart of flesh could mean a renewed heart of flesh now that the existing heart of flesh has been tamed by the heart of stone
the heart of flesh is a completely new heart, Jordon. God does not "fix" the heart of stone ... God places a new heart of flesh within each born again one the moment they are born again.
.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jordon
Rufus ... spreading your lies reveals you must be under the control of the evil one.

I never stated what you claim.
.

It's taken you a while to get here. I commend your patience. It doesn't stop here. At some point of opposing determinism, if it hasn't happened already, you may join the club of being called an unbeliever - a child of satan himself. If it gets there, welcome to the club.
 
Yeah, just like all of your co-workers here.

No need to spread the gospel. The Gospel has no power.

Just hope your ticket gets stamped.


You fall flat on your face at the start. You can't have these "super deep intellectual" questions if your premise is faulty from the start.

IOW, you haven't the first clue on what the Parable of the Four Soils is teaching. Not surprised in the least...
 
No he is not 100 porcent successful because he leaves the ability to accept his truth or not and so the parable of the sower of seeds is perfect for this situation as you know some seeds landed on good soil some fell on rocky ground and some on barren ground this is the symbolism of those who hear the gospel
lrs68 said God is 100% successful. That's who I was responding to. You disagree with that, obviously.
 
It's taken you a while to get here. I commend your patience. It doesn't stop here. At some point of opposing determinism, if it hasn't happened already, you may join the club of being called an unbeliever - a child of satan himself. If it gets there, welcome to the club.

Hey...RDBD insists that all mankind w/o exception is under the control of the evil one -- sort of like how Cain was, which is why he is characterized in scripture as a child of the evil one (1Jn 3:12)! What about you: Are you, too, under the control of the evil one? Are you still enslaved to him? In bondage to him?
 
You are talking about different stones. Totally unrelated. Stick with the fact that man is born with
an incurably wicked heart that NEEDS replacing = the heart of stone is replaced with one of flesh so
the man may love God as commanded~ the man with a heart of stone cannot submit to or obey God.


One of a few of those "cannots" the FWer changes to "can."
I can't use the argument of free willer in this discussion as im talking about a spiritual heart of stone being placed on the heart that is longer alive.

The heart was alive before the fall in nature, and a nature God had sen fit to create in his likeness,

Then the heart was no longer alive.

It's makes no sense they had that heart of stone before hand, and it only makes sense they where given a spiritual heart of stone.

Something given is not.sometbing taken.

It's possibly replacing something that is lost I feel

And I feel it was given as the lord removed it.

But for what purpose was the spiritual heart of stone given.

Should this metaphor of the spiritual heart of stone be seen. In one direction, nope and i feel a metaphor of the heart of stone only been seen as a person own heart shouldn't be either
 
No need for the parable of the four soils in reformed/calvie/tulip theory.

Just because you don't find the passage to be spiritually informative doesn't mean I do. Quit projecting your disdain for the Word unto me.
 
It's taken you a while to get here. I commend your patience. It doesn't stop here. At some point of opposing determinism, if it hasn't happened already, you may join the club of being called an unbeliever - a child of satan himself. If it gets there, welcome to the club.
oh yeah ... i've seen that accusation already from more than one ... they think they can treat others with contempt and disrespect ... they change the parable of the samaritan so they don't have to learn the lesson the Lord Jesus Christ wanted learned ... does not reflect poorly on Scripture ... it reflects poorly on those who claim to be believers and/or born again yet do not learn what the Father wants His children to know.
.
 
God ultimately saves every single one He intended to.
Ah so you mean to say the elct? the selected ones to be saved but not others? personally I do not agree with this line of thinking because the scriptures say he desires that all come to Christ that word there all means he does not predestine some to be saved and others not it means he desires that all are saved but as you know from the parable of the seeds this is not always the case

The kingdom of heaven being preached and us planting the seeds it does not always land on good soil but the fact is he still commands us to preach the gosepl and make disciples
 
Ah so you mean to say the elct? the selected ones to be saved but not others? personally I do not agree with this line of thinking because the scriptures say he desires that all come to Christ that word there all means he does not predestine some to be saved and others not it means he desires that all are saved but as you know from the parable of the seeds this is not always the case

The kingdom of heaven being preached and us planting the seeds it does not always land on good soil but the fact is he still commands us to preach the gosepl and make disciples
Once again, your God is too small.