Do you really think you have absolute free choice now?
Did you select your parents, the place of your birth? Your race or sex? Your intellect? Your parents financial situation? Our live choices are limited by the circumstances of our birth..If you had been born in the bush in africa you would not be posting on FR right now most likely..
God made those choices for you. And even now your choices are not without restrictions . You chose within a certain set of choices.
Your lifes choices have been restricted by God's decisions before you were born..Do you think a God that carefully crafted your life would have no care for your eternity? He knows how many hairs you will loose today..He knows because He has fashioned you.....to His good pleasure When you hop in your car, why are you given the choice to go anywhere, or to just sit there? Sure God knows what you would do, but why should you have a choice? God is giving us choices for what purpose?
We all have free choice but it is not without bounds..If you jump from a 100 story building you can not change your mind at the 50th floor..the law of gravity takes precedent..you go smush....
You can get in your car and choose where to go..but your choice is limited by the time you have, the gas in the tank or the limit on your credit card.....God does know the man he made ....He crafted you quite carefully.....he knows your personality and your strengths and your weakness......in effect you were created to make certain choices..
Have you ever seen the Identical twin study where they examine two men separated at birth..both love firefighting..One has it as a job..the other is a manner of a volunteer unit..they both drive the same car..had the same IQ's and have the same educational level....both of their wives are named Jean...both wives are blondes and both men have the same number of children.
Now the world will call that genetics..an accident of birth...I say God knew them before they were born and he created them in such a way that they would have make choices..They do choose what they want..but God has governed what they want before they were ever born
The problem is that because of the fall men do not really want God..they will not choose God..
Men love darkness more than the light
The grace of God makes man born again..it makes him the perfect creation that God had planned him to be before the fall.....once the man is born again his desires change and he now not only can choose God ,but he desires to choose God..
Does this make sense so far?
God does not demand that we desire to choose Him, but that we obey, whether we desire to or not. There is no virtue in doing what one desires. Virture is in doing right, in spite of our desires.
This Calvinist idea that sin has to do with desire is very destructive and deceptive. One does not need to desire God to choose to obey Him, one only needs to understand what is right, and to do it.
If you only ever choose what you desire, and never choose what you do not desire, you are not a child of God.
Hank
It does make sense, but I don't agree completely.
Having freewill that is freewill, but only within the choices set out by God isn't freewill at all.
God is outside of our time. Yet his presence his everywhere in the creation sustaining it. God can see our entire life because to him past, present and the future are indistinguisable. In that sense, I agree that we are limited in our choices...we've already made them and God knows what those choices are. He knows who his people are and always has. But he didn't make those choices. We did.
But paradoxically since we are within time, we truly have not yet made our choices. We still have complete freewill to make any decision we want. In fact, we need free will or we would not be created in the image of God.
We were created to be images of God. God's essence is love. A major part of God's character is complete free will. If we don't have free will, then we don't have Godly character.
The choice of following God is available to anyone. Anyone at any time could choose to follow God's calling and become one of the elect. The danger of us believing that only "we" are the elect is that a frame of mind is introduced that leads to an attitude of ONLY we will EVER BE the elect. This was exactly the problem that the Roman Catholic church had for so long. Only *they* were God's chosen, thus they were justified in anything they did or any attitude they held. What they failed to see was that persecuting anyone for their beliefs is the same as persecuting a brother in Christ, or at least a potential brother in Christ.
I appreciate your sharing your views on this. I think we are going to be destined to disagree, but I sincerely believe that God has the same destiny in store for us.