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.
Yes as long as it is Biblical and not the gnositic version of secret illumination of "poof" that comes to people unaware, just birthed in them like some mystical experience, some divine decree completely separated from the Faith God requires.

There is true illumination and false counterfeit... be careful.

  • Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path".
  • Psalm 119:130 states, "The unfolding of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple".
Ah, so in your theology, God sneaks up on people?
 
Choice and will are not the same, we can choose something but can be prevented from enacting it by the will of others. Also being able to prevent them enacting their will at times.

We still have will but not free will in our fallen state.

Who said God gave you a will to enforce your will on others?

You start from a wrong premise to come to an erroneous conclusion and completely forget about the grace of God that is at work in the world.

It is your volition that enables choice. You cannot make a choice apart from your will. To say they are not the same is to deny their connection and in that denial, failing to see the true purpose of will as God intended.

God ensures our will is free when it matters.
 
thought you wanted the illumination of his word m 🤩
She does not believe in it. Divine intervention is not even required in her belief system, no matter
how many ways that directly contradicts what the Bible actually explicitly articulates. And if God's
Word really was a light on her path, she would give up free will beliefs, and stop blaspheming God.
 
Who said God gave you a will to enforce your will on others?

You start from a wrong premise to come to an erroneous conclusion and completely forget about the grace of God that is at work in the world.

It is your volition that enables choice. You cannot make a choice apart from your will. To say they are not the same is to deny their connection and in that denial, failing to see the true purpose of will as God intended.

God ensures our will is free when it matters.

Yes exactly.
 
Matthew11-27.png

Matthew 11 verse 27 ~ All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

Sounds like knowledge of God is a "wee bit" important piece of theology.
 
Sounds like knowledge of God is a "wee bit" important piece of theology.
Yet we have those here pooh poohing it and calling it heretical. They come across as desperate.

They go to great lengths in their dishonesty, trying to discredit those who uphold the truth of Scripture.
 
View attachment 281476

Let’s try again without serving us a word salad.

Are you smarter to understand Scripture, more moral, and a generally better person than those that refuse Jesus after they hear the Gospel?

Or, being dead, did God “quicken” you, so that when you heard the Gospel, you believed and received Him?

Which is it?

In either case, explain WHY the lost refuse Him.

Our fallen state is an aberration to what God intended due to the sin nature in the flesh. His grace enables us to stand before Him as if that aberration wasn't there and we can respond as He intended, people who can decide for themselves whether they like the light or whether they like the dark. God did not create us for the dark so to respond to Him positively doesn't make one better or more moral or anything other then what God intended, free to choose Him which, is normal. That some prefer the dark when shown God's light is a mystery and no-one who loves the light will relate to it or truly understand why, it can only be accepted as that's the way it is.
 
Who said God gave you a will to enforce your will on others?

You start from a wrong premise to come to an erroneous conclusion and completely forget about the grace of God that is at work in the world.

It is your volition that enables choice. You cannot make a choice apart from your will. To say they are not the same is to deny their connection and in that denial, failing to see the true purpose of will as God intended.

God ensures our will is free when it matters.
deism ?

He hears the prayers of the righteous. John 9 listens to a worshiper who does his will , but his face is against those who do evil.

The lord is far from the wicked. Which means it's the lords righteousness.
 
Yet we have those here pooh poohing it and calling it heretical. They come across as desperate.

They go to great lengths in their dishonesty, trying to discredit those who uphold the truth of Scripture.

Yet, Jesus also said, "This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God..." (Jn 17:3).

Apparently, FWers are clueless as to what the essence of Christianity is.
 
Actually "some here" believe our God is far too good for the god you FWers worship, namely SELF!

If we were the kind of FW'ers as you love to tag us for being?
Then your argument would be correct, and you could feel free to put us down.

That is precisely why you refuse to learn correction to learn something different to find out who we really are.
You have become like ignorant white bigots who think all blacks are the same.
The same closed mind mentality in effect.

Seems to me?
The problem you are having would be?

If you actually learned what it is what we are believing?
Without quickly tossing it before giving it serious thought?
You would cease having a target to vent your own theological bigotry upon.
If you allowed yourself to learn the difference objectively?
You would find out we are not the FW group you love to hate.

The problem you would face with your "group-think"corrected?
You all like too much how it makes you feel to vent maliciousness towards FWers, while claiming yourselves righteous.

Your groups bonds and approves of each other around its wrong thinking.

Your actions are an old story.

One that the angels have witnessed to for thousands of times.

......
 
  • Like
Reactions: sawdust
Yet, Jesus also said, "This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God..." (Jn 17:3).

Apparently, FWers are clueless as to what the essence of Christianity is.

No, we are not.

Did you note?
Jesus said, "may know."

He did not say, "always knew."
 
If we were the kind of FW'ers as you love to tag us for being?
Then your argument would be correct, and you could feel free to put us down.

That is precisely why you refuse to learn correction to learn something different to find out who we really are.
You have become like ignorant white bigots who think all blacks are the same.
The same closed mind mentality in effect.

Seems to me?
The problem you are having would be?

If you actually learned what it is what we are believing?
Without quickly tossing it before giving it serious thought?
You would cease having a target to vent your own theological bigotry upon.
If you allowed yourself to learn the difference objectively?
You would find out we are not the FW group you love to hate.

The problem you would face with your "group-think"corrected?
You all like too much how it makes you feel to vent maliciousness towards FWers, while claiming yourselves righteous.

Your groups bonds and approves of each other around its wrong thinking.

Your actions are an old story.

One that the angels have witnessed to for thousands of times.

......

Anyone ever tell you that your question mark-laden posts portray you as clueless little kid who never learned to construct coherent sentences?

And I don't hate FWers. And what makes you think that I don't understand non-Reformed soteriological views? There's nothing new under sun with your particular brand of heresy. It's been around forever, sadly. But thanks be to God that FWT will die an ignoble death in the New Eternal Order since no saint will ever choose to sin. All the saints for all eternity will praise God, thank Him and glorify him for graciously rescuing us from OURSELVES -- which just happens to be our greatest enemy!
 
No, we are not.

Did you note?
Jesus said, "may know."

He did not say, "always knew."

How could his disciples "always knew" since they need Life within them to know God!

So, tell, Mr. Einstein, in a sentence or two, preferably without any of your misplaced question marks, what you think the warp 'n' woof of biblical Christianity is.
 
deism ?

He hears the prayers of the righteous. John 9 listens to a worshiper who does his will , but his face is against those who do evil.

The lord is far from the wicked. Which means it's the lords righteousness.

Nothing you said here has anything to do with what I was talking about.
 
Anyone ever tell you that your question mark-laden posts portray you as clueless little kid who never learned to construct coherent sentences?

Jesus had a similar problem.
Was he incoherent?

It is a spiritual issue.
One that I am not surprised to see you are having a problem with.

Spiritual maturity is not about how long you have been saved.
It is about how much sound doctrine you have allowed to crucify your old ways.


Then Jesus told his disciples...
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.


False doctrine shelters the flesh and protects it.
Even, encourages it to be itself in arrogance while using the Word of God to do it.