Does He pull us back or do we choose to go back ourself?
I believe He had to pull me.. what do you think?
Saul, Why dost thou kick against the pricks? Some call conscience.
I think you have the biblical perspective just right. "So then, it does not depend upon the man who wills or the man who runs, but upon God who has mercy...So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires."
I missed your post. To answer:
As I said, we have ‘free will’, but not the kind free will to choose like the angels had: a one time, one shot deal to either be a permanent, completely perfect good, or a permanent, completely imperfect evil. We cannot choose the state of our nature.
Our nature is set, but no one or outside force is coercing us to make choices in one direction or the other. In that respect we have ‘free will’, or maybe a better term is ‘free choice’. However we are slaves to ourselves and we are our own worst enemy. We cannot make the right choice even if it is a free choice. Yet it’s because of that fact that we can be saved, while the demons cannot.
To get out of that state, we have to be pulled. I’ve had Arminians try to persuade me otherwise, that we have responsibility for a person’s eternal fate. To which I always respond that I wouldn’t want that kind of eternal power in my flawed, imperfect hands. How could I live with myself if I made the wrong choice and that person paid with their soul? That kind of power belongs in God’s hands alone.