Can We Really Exercise Free Will?

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Once again ohhhh humble one........You are a sinner in need of salvation. You are everything but humble. You are miserable to the core. You cannot be humble......Yet you received His Grace.

Special @Rufus is not very special.

You are just as miserable and despicable as all of us who CHOSE to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
@Rufus is trumpeting Calvinists' humble worthiness again? Sounds awfully self-exalting to me ROFL.

Will this induce @Magenta to issue another one of her imprecatory diatribes?
 
Jhn 17:24
24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

The ELECT

The Father does the drawing of all men.

Those whom will accept His drawing?
In our dispensation, those who accepted, he will give to the son.

In our dispensation those He gives to the Son have been chosen to be the Son's Bride.
God elected them for this honor.

In Christ ...... grace and peace
 
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Once again ohhhh humble one........You are a sinner in need of salvation. You are everything but humble. You are miserable to the core. You cannot be humble......Yet you received His Grace.

Special @Rufus is not very special.

You are just as miserable and despicable as all of us who CHOSE to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Kroogz... some here may not know what Calvinists believe about the human race.

Some may fail to realize that you were only mirroring towards Rufus what is the Calvinist view of the human race.
You not saying what you did to deliberately put him down.
But, only putting him in the same box that Calvinists use concerning all humans.

If they say you are bad for saying what you did?
They, in effect. Without realizing it. Are saying Calvinists have a horrible mental attitude towards people.

Grace and peace.....
 
And you know why that didn't happen?
because pharaoh hardened his heart. pharaoh said he did not know Jehovah Elohim when Moses and Aaron went in and told pharaoh he should let the children of Israel go into the wilderness to hold a feast (Ex 5:1-2).

In Ex 1:8 we read there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. The pharaoh Moses and Aaron were dealing with did not know the history of the God Who brought all the riches to Egypt.

the pharaoh Moses and Aaron were dealing with then instructed the taskmasters to lay more burdens on the children of Israel which were impossible to fulfill and which resulted in beatings.




Rufus said:
It didn't because God's thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours and HE obviously thought that by raising up Pharaoh the Creator-Redeemer would be glorified by the king -- all far God's glory and the greater good for Israel.
pharaoh did not glorify God.




Rufus said:
And no, why would I want God to harden my heart? Unless it was also for my good -- perhaps to teach me a valuable spiritual lesson.
I believe God chastens and we harden our own hearts if we do not yield to His chastening.

God punished pharaoh through various plagues. All of Egypt's gods were judged in the plagues; however, pharaoh did not heed the warnings of God and all the people of Egypt suffered drastically in having the firstborn male of man and beast die in the final plague.

Even after the final plague, pharaoh attempted to bring the children of Israel back to Egypt to enslave them. In so doing, more Egyptians drowned in the sea.




Rufus said:
What about all the evil that God ordained for Joseph through his sinful brothers? God's hand was in all that and He decreed (permitted) all that evil to occur also for a greater good. And once again, that greater good was so that God would keep all his messianic prophecies.
God did not cause Joseph's brothers to conspire to kill Joseph. They wanted to kill Joseph because they were envious of Joseph (Gen 37:11).

Reuben talked his brothers out of killing Joseph and persuaded them to throw Joseph into a pit. Reuben wanted to spare Joseph and then come back and get him out of the pit.

God working this evil out to His own glory does not equal God causing Joseph's brothers to do what they did. What they did was sinful and God is not sinful.




Rufus said:
But be of good cheer! This fallen world will one day come to a crashing end and God will no longer have to work through the many evils of humanity to achieve his plans and purposes. In the eternal New Order, I kinda doubt there will be any hardened hearts -- either decreed by God or self-induced by man's own wickedness and deceitfulness.
agree. :cool:

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Perhaps you are misunderstanding where I am coming from. The phrase “might be saved” in the KJV is not describing uncertainty after someone receives the truth. There is no question that anyone who receives the love of the truth and believes the gospel will be saved. Scripture affirms this with complete certainty.

The phrase “might be saved” is describing the situation before they rejected the truth. It expresses the real possibility that was still open to them. The outcome depended on whether they welcomed the truth or rejected it. They rejected it. That is why the intended result never came to pass.

This is exactly what the Greek construction εἰς τὸ plus the infinitive conveys. It expresses an intended result that is conditional upon a response. It does not weaken the certainty of salvation for the believer. It simply expresses what would have happened had they received the truth.

It can be seen clearly when restated:

If they had received the love of the truth
then they would have been saved.
They refused the truth
so they were not saved.

The KJV translators used “might be saved” to accurately capture that conditional possibility. It does not mean that salvation is uncertain for those who believe. It means that salvation was genuinely available to these individuals, but their refusal to welcome the truth is what prevented the intended outcome.

So the verse is not about uncertainty after receiving truth. It is about the genuine possibility of salvation that was rejected because they refused to receive the truth.
I understand what you are saying ... I just disagree that "might" is the key word in the verse. As stated, I believe "received" is the key ... with a proper understanding of the Greek word for received (déxomai).

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[Jhn 17:20 KJV]
20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
let's not orphan vs 20 from vs 21 ...

John 17:20-21 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

.
 
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let's not orphan vs 20 from vs 21 ...

John 17:20-21 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

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Agree totally. Sorry was in the middle of a football game my bad.

Never going to happen again....👍
 
let's not orphan vs 20 from vs 21 ...

John 17:20-21 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

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[Jhn 1:9 KJV] 9 [That] was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
 
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Yes, Jesus Christ died for for all ALL his sheep, for ALL the elect, for ALL God's covenant people, for ALL the Church, and for ALL the humble.
So you are saying not for the plain-vanilla rag-tag everyday fallen sinners? That error is nothing new really. That's what the religious frauds in Jesus' day thought too.....🥲

[Mat 9:13 KJV]
13 But go ye and learn what [that] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

[Mar 2:17 KJV]
17 When Jesus heard [it], he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

[Luk 5:32 KJV]
32 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
 
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AMEN, brother, preach it! FWers are hell-bent on perverting the Gospel which is why they absolutely refuse to understand important doctrines that are explicitly stated in scripture. They'd much prefer to read their presuppositions into passages such as Jn 3:16, rather than believe explicit passages that tell us for whom Christ died. Ditto for God's love. We have several explicit passages that tell us specifically who it is that God conditionally loves; yet again, they go to a Jn 3:16 text to invent their doctrine by reading their assumptions into the passage.

PLUS -- if Christ died for all w/o exception, then where is the covenant that God cut with all mankind w/o exception? God is a COVENANT God who makes covenants with his chosen people. The only way to understand how God saves the Gentiles of this world, such as Cornelius, is through the Abrahamic Covenant which is being fulfilled in this New Covenant economy. But FWers reject this inconvenient truth because God never promised Abraham that he would become the father of each and every person in each and every nation.

FWT is a man-exalting, man-glorifying, world-loving perversion of precious gospel truth, and this strongly suggests that the love of God is not in many FWers since God's born again saints are forbidden to love the world.
Whatever your true motives and sentiment, they will not be hidden forever.

[Jhn 5:42 NKJV]
42 "But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.
 
I doubt very much that any Calvinist here is packing the gear to grasp the fullness of the narrative.
But what worries me is that some of them would surely hide/bury/deny it if they DID know.....

At any rate, you have been given the benefit of this outline.
By all means consult with your bedfellows @Rufus @Magenta @rogerg. See if it will do you any good......:sneaky:

A. Judges 13:15, 14:6, 15:1 3 young goats
B. 3 Women 14:2, 16:1, 16:4
C. 3 Moving Holy Spirit 13:24, 14:6, 14:19
D. New Ropes 15:3, 16:11
E. 7 Green Vines 16:7
7 Locks of Hair 16:13
F. Samson Mocks Delilah
G. Slavery of Samson
H Torment of Samson
I. Binding of Samson
J. Samson Soul - Vexed unto Death 16:16
K Thirst unto Death 15:18
L. Telling All His Heart 16:17
M. Samson's Permission
N. Return of Samson
O. 5 payments of Silver
P. Cleft of The Rock (Moses)
Q. 16:25 "Merry"
R. Lad
S. 3 Lies of Samson
Again I have no idea really what your getting at, other than the idea you believe God instructed samson and there family to do things for themselves, which means they can do things by themselves to you.

Well samson could but do anything miraculous unless the lord was with him.

You had the message plain and simple, the spirit of the lord came on Samson and he was then able to kill a lion.

Samson was chosen to do his will.

So where his parents.

A will means inherent

It's not placed on top of your head
 
Not true. The idol they worship is the god called SELF.
correct sir.

Little demi gods is the term used.

It's the inner rebellion as God goes to work in them,

Well let's just say God's prick to there conscience.

Then they'll fight for years, finding every reason to deny Gods existence, such as saying there's no way God would do this or God would do that. Or God doesn't speak to me,

Wrong he's already pricked there conscience 🙂

Because why well the will of the free will of the flesh, is in conflict with his inherent will in them.
 
I disagree, Bro.

Look, unbelievers who are reading the comments in this Thread are likely to think that we're all a bunch of Idiots, due to our constant fighting with each other, and it could make them even more determined not to want to become Christians!!
Unbelievers and believers both have Gods inherent will and both wills have value

Romans 9:18
 
You keep guessing and trying to sound confident.
It's embarrassing.
Look when Jacob wrestled against God he had his hip pulled out of place.

I don't know about you but i would be highly embarrassed to walking around with a hobble for the rest of my life 🙂
 
The moral of the story is Because of Jacobs struggles with his faith and even tho God pulled his hip out of place God still found favour with Jacob and gave him a new name


Israel

Yep through
out Jacobs struggles with the lord,, the lords inherent will was active in him