Does man have free will to choose salvation?

[MisterE]

No one knows trillions of facts

I do. I know 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... 100 Trillion...

 

[follower]

Jesus' sheep don't know many facts, but they listen to Jesus and Follow Jesus. The facts blow away trillions of times daily.

 

[hawkman]

I have a knowledge of the capabilities man and can apply said knowledge. Logic dictates that the trillions of consequences of Adam's sin could not all be comprehended by Adam. No one knows trillions of facts, it's not possible.

Curious , have you ever counted how many facts you know ? If not what is the most facts one can know ? Full of questions , you know me .

Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web

I'm not saying Adam couldn't understand general concepts but Adam is not omniscient and that would be required to know all the consequences of his sin.

All God had to say to Adam was , " Hey bud , sin nature that is all on you " . Not in the KJV .

Chapter 3 of Genesis relates 50 or so facts/consequences of Adam's sin.

That is what I am telling you .

There are trillions of consequences. Adam also lacked experiencing said consequences and experience is essential for complete understanding ... like I know women experience pain in child birth but until I experience it I do not have a complete understanding and even if I did experience child birth I would only know my individual experience.

True .

Agreed ... so .... what point are you trying to make by stating this observation? That people don't have a 'sin nature' because we don't read about it in Genesis 3 ?

I am telling ya that was prime time for God to make it known to Adam sin nature was his fault . But we get nada .

Sin Nature definition: The sin nature is that aspect in man that makes him rebellious against God. When we speak of the sin nature, we refer to the fact that we have a natural inclination to sin; given the choice to do God’s will or our own, we will naturally choose to do our own thing. https://www.gotquestions.org/sin-nature.html

Were is this aspect stored in man exactly and who put it there ?

Was this sin nature aspect in Adam ?

My synapses need a nap , .

 

[jasonc]

Yes , no one is born in sin .

Then no one would need Jesus.

All can simply choose not to sin and be sin free.

The whole need not a physician.

 

[KV-44-v1]

Does man have free will to choose salvation?​

I define "free will" as the ability to do what you desire most at the time.

... so regarding salvation .... we have "free will" ... this leads to the question: what is the cause of our desires?

The first cause of our desires is GOD. The Law of Causality states: a rule of the universe that says every event that happens is the result of a specific cause. Imagine you have a row of dominoes; if you knock the first one over (cause), the rest will fall down in sequence (effect). This rule helps us figure out why things happen and what could happen next.
Application of the Law of Causality: When one who supports the idea of self-determinism is asked “why you did something he has no answer”. He will resort to a non-answer like “because I wanted to”. When asked why he wanted to he responses “because I choice to want to”; when asked why he choice to want to, he responses “because I wanted to choice to want to” … and on and on the circular reason goes. It contradicts the Law of Causality.
You don't pick your sex, your parents or your desires. I.E. Psalm 51:5

If one define "free will" as self-determinism (not influenced by others) the logic dictates that to be impossible. Empirical evidence validates this statement. Google "parent's influence on a person's religious beliefs" (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/shared-beliefs-between-parents-and-teens/) and you will find that children tend to follow the beliefs of their parents which proves self-determinism is false). (I assume the reader as elementary knowledge of statistics and and probability.)

Our freewill can be influenced. But that doesn't mean we cannot control ourselves. We can be unaware or aware of the influence/s. Even if we are unaware of something, we can still choose, our wills are still used

 

[brightfame52]

I didn't have Spiritual life or hearing when I was told by men of God what I must do to be saved.
I was a cigarette and dope smoking drunk with nothing on my mind but lust.
No regenerated man smokes cigarettes or dope.

My post wasnt about you.

 

[Tenchi]

Does man have free will to choose salvation?​

I think each person has the freedom to choose to be saved or not, to love and obey God, or not. I think this is, in part, why God put in Eden the Forbidden Tree and Fruit and allowed the devil to tempt Eve. If these things had not been present in Eden, Adam and Eve would have been prisoners to God's will, essentially, unable to choose anything other than what their circumstances permitted and perhaps never thinking to do otherwise, content as they were in the beauty, bounty and comfort of Eden. In order to give them a genuine choice to make for God, or for themselves, God placed the Forbidden Tree in Eden and then provoked a moment of decision about it when He allowed Satan to tempt Eve. It seems to me very unlikely, given the plenitude of Eden, that the Forbidden Tree would ever have strongly enticed Eve and Adam had the devil not made it a focus for them in his temptation of Eve. In any case, it looks to me that, right from the beginning, God wanted His human creatures not only to possess free agency but to exercise it fully in their relations with Him.

This remains the case today, of course, too. Instead of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, we are offered by God the choice to walk with Him forever as one of His own (in and through Jesus Christ - John 3:15-18; Romans 10:9-10; 1 John 5:11-12), or to play at being our own god and die the second death in hell. Because the choice is real, that is, we have the categorical ability to refrain or not refrain from a given moral action (i.e. libertarianism), we are rightly responsible for the choice we make - unlike the person who is acting according to their desires which have been meticulously ordained by God (i.e. compatibilism) and so cannot be said to be properly responsible for what they want, or for the steps they take to achieve their God-instituted desires.

In any event, my (soft) libertarian view of Man's "creaturely freedom" does not, in my case, anyway, extend to saying God does not need to be involved in enabling the lost sinner to understand the Gospel, or that God is compelled by the lost person's choice to accept them. Not at all. Scripture is clear that God initiate things with the lost in order that they might be able to freely choose to be saved (Titus 3:3-7; John 6:44; 2 Timothy 2:25; John 16:8). And their choice to be saved does not compel God to save them any more than the Prodigal's choice to return home to his father forced his father to accept him. The choice of son and father are separate from one another, any obligation the father has to accept his repentant son originating from within himself, from his own mercy, compassion and grace, not from the son's choice to repent of his foolishness and return home.

This subject will tie back to what one believes if they are born in sin or not, are we born with a corrupt or good nature.

In short, is man basically good and able to choose to be saved.

What do you mean by "born in sin"? We are all of us born into a sin-cursed world, yes. Our parents are all sinners, yes. But no one is, I believe, born bearing the sin of any other, guilty from birth of sin.

Ezekiel 18:20
20 "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Adam's sin separated Man from God spiritually, cutting humanity off from the fully-orbed experience of God that Adam and Eve enjoyed initially in Eden. But I don't know of any place in Scripture that says that newborns are born guilty of sin before God, though they have themselves committed no sin. Each human being has a propensity for selfishness, they are naturally self-interested, which is necessary to their survival. However, this natural self-interest, unregulated by the Holy Spirit, leads inevitably to sin. A newborn, though, cannot comprehend the idea of morality, or God, or the Gospel; they haven't the wherewithal to be self-controlled, let alone Spirit-controlled. How, then, can they be guilty of sin?

I am aware of the following verse that is sometimes used as a proof-text for "original sin."

Psalm 51:5
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

The Psalmist wrote here of the iniquitous nature of his being "brought forth" but he doesn't say he was himself born iniquitous. He says, too, that his mother conceived him "in sin" which speaks to the nature of the Psalmist's conception and perhaps to the condition of his mother, but says nothing directly about the Psalmist himself, as a newborn baby. Only if one is reading this passage through "sin-from-birth" lenses can one construe this verse as proposing such a thing.

In Psalm 51, the Psalmist - King David - is offering a larger context within which his sin with Bathsheba occurred, his own birth (though, not himself) characterized by iniquity and sin. This isn't offered as an excuse for his sin, however, only as an observation of the sin-riddled circumstance in which he had existed from birth.

In any event, what does it mean to be "born with a corrupt nature"? I take this to mean a naturally and necessarily self-interested nature unregulated by the Holy Spirit, by God. Without the control and guidance of the Holy Spirit, a human being will inevitably follow their self-interest to an inordinate and destructive degree, helped in doing so by the devil who seeks to produce in the lives of you and I the destruction sin always produces (Romans 6:23; James 1:14-16; Galatians 6:7-8; 1 Peter 5:8; Ephesians 6:11-12). If this is what you mean by a "corrupt nature," I agree that this is what I see spelled out in God's word and observe in concrete experience.

If one takes up a deterministic view of God's sovereignty, human responsibility doesn't merely become a "mystery" but an absurdity and even a blasphemous obscenity. We would think it an extremely unreasonable and silly thing for a man who'd built a robot to chop down trees, to destroy the robot when it did exactly what the man had built it to do. We would rightly object to a dog-owner who'd trained his dog to bite mail carriers, beating his dog when it did what it had been trained by the man to do. When God behaves in this way, as He must under a deterministic view of His sovereignty, we are urged by the theistic determinist simply to think of it is a "mystery" rather than the immoral and absurd thing that it actually is. This appeal to "mystery" is, as far as I'm concerned, just a conveniently facile deflection from the irrationality and immorality of proposing a God who makes a man as he is and then punishes the man for being as God made him to be.

 

[electedbyHim]

Does man have free will to choose salvation?​

I think each person has the freedom to choose to be saved or not, to love and obey God, or not. I think this is, in part, why God put in Eden the Forbidden Tree and Fruit and allowed the devil to tempt Eve. If these things had not been present in Eden, Adam and Eve would have been prisoners to God's will, essentially, unable to choose anything other than what their circumstances permitted and perhaps never thinking to do otherwise, content as they were in the beauty, bounty and comfort of Eden. In order to give them a genuine choice to make for God, or for themselves, God placed the Forbidden Tree in Eden and then provoked a moment of decision about it when He allowed Satan to tempt Eve. It seems to me very unlikely, given the plenitude of Eden, that the Forbidden Tree would ever have strongly enticed Eve and Adam had the devil not made it a focus for them in his temptation of Eve. In any case, it looks to me that, right from the beginning, God wanted His human creatures not only to possess free agency but to exercise it fully in their relations with Him.

This remains the case today, of course, too. Instead of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, we are offered by God the choice to walk with Him forever as one of His own (in and through Jesus Christ - John 3:15-18; Romans 10:9-10; 1 John 5:11-12), or to play at being our own god and die the second death in hell. Because the choice is real, that is, we have the categorical ability to refrain or not refrain from a given moral action (i.e. libertarianism), we are rightly responsible for the choice we make - unlike the person who is acting according to their desires which have been meticulously ordained by God (i.e. compatibilism) and so cannot be said to be properly responsible for what they want, or for the steps they take to achieve their God-instituted desires.

In any event, my (soft) libertarian view of Man's "creaturely freedom" does not, in my case, anyway, extend to saying God does not need to be involved in enabling the lost sinner to understand the Gospel, or that God is compelled by the lost person's choice to accept them. Not at all. Scripture is clear that God initiate things with the lost in order that they might be able to freely choose to be saved (Titus 3:3-7; John 6:44; 2 Timothy 2:25; John 16:8). And their choice to be saved does not compel God to save them any more than the Prodigal's choice to return home to his father forced his father to accept him. The choice of son and father are separate from one another, any obligation the father has to accept his repentant son originating from within himself, from his own mercy, compassion and grace, not from the son's choice to repent of his foolishness and return home.



What do you mean by "born in sin"? We are all of us born into a sin-cursed world, yes. Our parents are all sinners, yes. But no one is, I believe, born bearing the sin of any other, guilty from birth of sin.

Ezekiel 18:20
20 "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Adam's sin separated Man from God spiritually, cutting humanity off from the fully-orbed experience of God that Adam and Eve enjoyed initially in Eden. But I don't know of any place in Scripture that says that newborns are born guilty of sin before God, though they have themselves committed no sin. Each human being has a propensity for selfishness, they are naturally self-interested, which is necessary to their survival. However, this natural self-interest, unregulated by the Holy Spirit, leads inevitably to sin. A newborn, though, cannot comprehend the idea of morality, or God, or the Gospel; they haven't the wherewithal to be self-controlled, let alone Spirit-controlled. How, then, can they be guilty of sin?

I am aware of the following verse that is sometimes used as a proof-text for "original sin."

Psalm 51:5
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

The Psalmist wrote here of the iniquitous nature of his being "brought forth" but he doesn't say he was himself born iniquitous. He says, too, that his mother conceived him "in sin" which speaks to the nature of the Psalmist's conception and perhaps to the condition of his mother, but says nothing directly about the Psalmist himself, as a newborn baby. Only if one is reading this passage through "sin-from-birth" lenses can one construe this verse as proposing such a thing.

In Psalm 51, the Psalmist - King David - is offering a larger context within which his sin with Bathsheba occurred, his own birth (though, not himself) characterized by iniquity and sin. This isn't offered as an excuse for his sin, however, only as an observation of the sin-riddled circumstance in which he had existed from birth.

In any event, what does it mean to be "born with a corrupt nature"? I take this to mean a naturally and necessarily self-interested nature unregulated by the Holy Spirit, by God. Without the control and guidance of the Holy Spirit, a human being will inevitably follow their self-interest to an inordinate and destructive degree, helped in doing so by the devil who seeks to produce in the lives of you and I the destruction sin always produces (Romans 6:23; James 1:14-16; Galatians 6:7-8; 1 Peter 5:8; Ephesians 6:11-12). If this is what you mean by a "corrupt nature," I agree that this is what I see spelled out in God's word and observe in concrete experience.

If one takes up a deterministic view of God's sovereignty, human responsibility doesn't merely become a "mystery" but an absurdity and even a blasphemous obscenity. We would think it an extremely unreasonable and silly thing for a man who'd built a robot to chop down trees, to destroy the robot when it did exactly what the man had built it to do. We would rightly object to a dog-owner who'd trained his dog to bite mail carriers, beating his dog when it did what it had been trained by the man to do. When God behaves in this way, as He must under a deterministic view of His sovereignty, we are urged by the theistic determinist simply to think of it is a "mystery" rather than the immoral and absurd thing that it actually is. This appeal to "mystery" is, as far as I'm concerned, just a conveniently facile deflection from the irrationality and immorality of proposing a God who makes a man as he is and then punishes the man for being as God made him to be.

So you are sayiing you were born sinless.

When did you choose to start sinning?

 

[electedbyHim]

I could neve understand why humans what to take part in salvation, thinking that they can choose to be saved.

Salvation is all of God and His glory, why would man want to take that from Him?

Pride, is very subtle at times.

Perhaps I should start praying for my unsaved relatives to choose to be saved instead of asking the Lord to take the stoney heart out and replace it with a heart of flesh and cause them to walk in His statutes.

Ezekiel 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols.
Ezekiel 36:26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.

 

[MisterE]

Rom 11:32
συνέκλεισεν γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τοὺς πάντας εἰς ἀπείθειαν ἵνα τοὺς πάντας ἐλεήσῃ.

Here Paul tells us that God has consigned all to disobedience SO THAT he may have mercy on all. By God condemning all people, he now may extend mercy to all. Condemned at birth, we are born recipients of God's grace and mercy. Anyone is now free to accept Christ as Savior.

 

[Fastfredy0]

Curious , have you ever counted how many facts you know ? If not what is the most facts one can know ? Full of questions , you know me .

Well, we live approx. 1 billion seconds every 32ish years. So if you live to say 64 you would have to take in 500 new facts a second. Naturally, one has to define a fact. MisterE defines an example of 100 facts as knowing numbers knowing to count numbers from 1 to 100 (giggle). If that be true and I didn't know a quadrillion was next group of numbers after trillion, then upon hearing of quadrillion I instantly learn 999,000,000,000,000,000 new facts (too lazy to double check my math).

Aside: Cool thing to do is congratulate a person with Happy Birthday when they turn a billion or 2 billion secs old (32ish or 64ish). My father-in-law just turned 3 billion (96ish)

Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web

Interesting ... but how much data can be stored in say 10 conversations of an hour each and how much is re callable?
We're getting off track ... I don't know what the point is now ...lol

I am telling ya that was prime time for God to make it known to Adam sin nature was his fault .

That's your opinion. For all we know God told Adam about the "sin nature". If God did or didn't tell Adam about the "sin nature" of men as a consequence of Adam's sin.... how does that change things and can you prove it?

My synapses need a nap , .

Wow, not many people know the word "synapses" ... been a long time since I last heard it ... giggle ... as I recall, information travels through the body at the speed of light except at the synapses were it takes more time to travel from 1 nerve to the next ..... now if I could just recall my middle name

 

[Fastfredy0]

Our freewill can be influenced. But that doesn't mean we cannot control ourselves. We can be unaware or aware of the influence/s. Even if we are unaware of something, we can still choose, our wills are still used

I agreed you can chose according to your desires. When/how did you self-determine your desires?

 

[Tenchi]

So you are sayiing you were born sinless.

When did you choose to start sinning?

Yes, all human beings are born innocent of having committed sin.

I chose to sin, I think, the moment the "Law of God written on my heart" (Romans 2:14-15), my conscience, began to act upon me such that I became conscious of violating it.

 

[Fastfredy0]

I think each person has the freedom to choose to be saved or not

How did a 1482 North American Indian choose to be saved given he never heard of God or Christ? The answer is obvious, the Indian is in hell as he had no saving knowledge.

Similarly, how did a person who died as he was born have a choice? The answer again is obvious.

 

[Fastfredy0]

Anyone is now free to accept Christ as Savior.

How did a 1482 North American Indian choose to be saved given he never heard of God or Christ? The answer is obvious, the Indian is in hell as he had no saving knowledge.

Similarly, how did a person who died as he was born have a choice? The answer again is obvious.

 

[KV-44-v1]

Similarly, how did a person who died as he was born have a choice? The answer again is obvious.

If you are implying that the baby is burning forever, that is false. The indian unintentionally did sins in his life, but the baby did nothing.

 

[Fastfredy0]

I chose to sin, I think, the moment the "Law of God written on my heart" (Romans 2:14-15),

If the world population is truly free to decide to sin or not, why does 100.000000% of people choose to sin.
(where "free" means one self-determined to do something)

 

[Fastfredy0]

If you are implying that the baby is burning forever, that is false.

The point is the baby was not free to choose. If the kid is in hell or heaven is not relevant to the premise that "all people can choose to be saved".

 

[Tenchi]

I could neve understand why humans what to take part in salvation, thinking that they can choose to be saved.

Never? Interesting.

Why shouldn't the lost person make a genuinely free choice to be saved? I don't think God coercing the lost into His kingdom illustrates His glory and power very well. I'm far more impressed by a God who allows His creatures to act freely and still sees that His will is done whatever they may choose. To analogize: Is the chess "master" who must control and order every move his opponent makes in order to win, better, more impressive, than the chess master who wins every game no matter what moves his opponents freely choose to make? It seems obvious to me that such a "master" is no master at all. It is this sort of divine sovereignty, though, that I often see espoused by proponents of Reformed doctrines. I can't understand why such a diminished conception of God is at all attractive to folks...

Salvation is all of God and His glory, why would man want to take that from Him?

Who's taking that away from God? I'm not. It is possible for me to freely choose to be saved AND for God to get all the glory for saving me.

If I choose to believe my dentist can fix my cavity, go to his office and sit in his dental chair, is my cavity fixed? No. I can believe powerfully in the skill of my dentist to fix my tooth, and I could sit in his chair 'til I became a lifeless husk and my tooth would not be fixed. Only if my dentist actually fixes my tooth is it fixed. My faith in his skill and my choosing to place myself in his dental chair have no power to repair my cavity; they simply put me in the place to have my tooth fixed by my dentist. Am I "stealing" the responsibility for his work when I say I chose to go to my dentist to have my cavity fixed? Not as far as I can see.

In the same way, my saying that I chose to be saved, doesn't steal anything from God as my Savior. If He doesn't save me, I cannot be saved, no matter how much faith and choosing to be saved there is on my side of things. Just like with my dentist.

Pride, is very subtle at times.

Yes, I've encountered it many times in past discussions with Reformed folk. And a great deal of angry Strawmanning, too.

Perhaps I should start praying for my unsaved relatives to choose to be saved instead of asking the Lord to take the stoney heart out and replace it with a heart of flesh and cause them to walk in His statutes.

False dichotomy. It isn't either-or but both-and.

 

[Tenchi]

If the world population is truly free to decide to sin or not, why does 100.000000% of people choose to sin.
(where "free" means one self-determined to do something)

I've already answered this in an earlier post.

How did a 1482 North American Indian choose to be saved given he never heard of God or Christ? The answer is obvious, the Indian is in hell as he had no saving knowledge.

Read Romans 1:18-22. We all have an awareness of God. Even the 1482 American Indian. If he pursued that awareness of God, seeking to find Him, God promises in His word that he would be found of that man (James 4:10). Being all-powerful, God can do this, of course, quite apart from any missionary preaching the Gospel to the Indian, or any Bible being handy.