.well depends on how you look at the will of God being in conflict with the will of the flesh internally, but yet we can still love him.
Free will and devine sovereignty
- Thread starter Jordon
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Because it makes the sinner rather than God responsible for doing evil. I explain it this way:
People who are mystified by evil and repulsed by its punishment do not realize that the essential aspect of being a human rather than a robot or subhuman creature is moral free will (MFW), which is what enables a person to experience love and meaning. This is what makes humans different from animals, whose behavior is governed mainly by instinct. This is what it means to be created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27).
God could not force people to return His love without abrogating their humanity. If God were to zap ungodly souls, it would be tantamount to forcing conversions at gunpoint, which would not be free and genuine. If God were to prevent people from behaving hatefully, then He would need to prevent them from thinking evilly, which would make human souls programmed automatons.
MFW only exists when there is the possibility of choosing between two qualitatively opposite moral options that we call good and evil. These options are opposites because of essentially different consequences for choosing them. Choosing good results in blessing, life and heaven; and choosing evil results in cursing, death and hell (Deut. 30:19). This is why hell as well as heaven exists. It is the just consequence for choosing evil rather than God.
The Spirit of God is good: love, peace and joy (Gal. 5:22-23). Therefore, whoever rejects the Lord is spiritually separated from Him (Isa. 59:2) and thereby chooses the evil or satanic spirit of hatred, strife and misery and reaps the just consequence called “hell” in the afterlife (Gal. 6:7-9, Heb. 9:27-28). These options were presented by Moses to the Israelites (DT 30:19), and Jesus referred to this fundamental choice in terms of a fish or egg versus a snake or scorpion (Luke 11:11-13). Life… or Curse? (Gen. 3:24, Rev. 22:1-2)
God created theoretical evil or the possibility of rejecting Him as an option that actualizes MFW/free human personality. As such it is necessary and even good (Gen. 1:31). Of course, it was wrong for Satan (1John 3:8) and humanity (Rom. 5:12) to make evil actual by choosing to Sin or reject Faith in God’s Lordship. The first people to choose the evil option were named Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:6), and the first sin was ignoring God’s Word.
Who places the moral free will or freedom in an unsaved person to choose things of a spiritual nature tho, this is what I'm not getting from you, you seem to be saying that the moral spiritual freedom is still intact the way it was for a&e before the fall for every new person born today ?
Where as I'm saying that the spiritual moral freedom in a person born today is broken corrupt, all that is left is moral will of his flesh, which is also now the state of his soul and is broken not free in bondage to corrupt nature of the heart,
So God places his moral law in the heart of the unsaved which is moral freedom. To not live according to the flesh. By these means God knows in advance who will believe in Christ
I just explained how God created MFW in all human souls, and that removing it would make us like animals or robots.
Where does Scripture teach that humans are unable to repent of sin and seek God's salvation?
When tempted to choose tulip, one must be careful not to accuse God of hatred and favoritism.
what you haven't said is the state of mankind's moral will after the fall.
And what you haven't said or admitted God wrote his moral law on people hearts to morally correct there fallen nature.
So you can call that tulip all you like, and you can accuse that of being robots to, and you can go down the road of favouritism as well,
The fact you can't state the obvious, is testimony to you not me, not tulip not favoritism not robots, but you.
What you have not considered is the state of mankind's moral will BEFORE the fall!
I admit that God enables all sinners to repent.
We ALL can call it tulip, accuse of being robots and go down the road of favoritism.
IMO it is obvious from GW that tulip perverts the Gospel into heresy.
Those who would like to see a systematic study of this issue are invited to read
the thread on Resolving Problematic Interpretations of Scripture.
Exactly, because the point of the story of A&E is that humanity sinned as soon as they knew the difference between good and evil. No human was ever sinless other than Jesus. It is obvious to anyone with average astuteness.
Nothing is resolved by your inane/shallow/immature pot-shots. For anyone wanting to know my understanding of the Gospel, please see the thread entitled "The Kerygma: the Christian Creed".
Adam was sinless before the fall. It is obvious to anyone with average astuteness.
Nothing is resolved by your inane/shallow/immature attempts to call reformed soteriology "heresy."
For anyone wanting to know what shameless self-promotion is, this is it. Also, there's no understanding to be found in the above mentioned thread except in the comments that show your theology to be wrong.
Scripture does not teach that.
The astute will realize that I do not call "reformed soteriology" heresy, but only tulip.
Your accusations are "shameless", not my defense. No immoral equivalence please.
If you want to repent of pot-shoting and instead engage in sane/systematic/mature study of tulip,
you know where you can go.
So you can't explain what the phrase even means. And I'm not at all surprised
Roman Catholic doctrine opposes the the bondage inside human will.
Saint Augustine who would have nothing to do with Roman Catholic heresy, had all his truth rejected by the Roman Catholics on the truth about the bondage of human will.
So if you opposing the bondage of human will. Then your probably listening to Roman Catholic heresy