By free will, I mean that human beings are responsible for their actions, they can cooperate in the grace God offers.
Do you reject free will as an illusion? Is God’s grace, or damnation irresistable and is either course predetermined by God in advance. Is this your position?
Ut
There is a mystery in this that I do not think we can understand - God’s sovereignty and man’s will/responsibility. Consider how these line up with eachother…
Ex 4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but
I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
Ex 7:3 And
I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
Ex 14:4 And
I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.
Ex 10:1 ¶ And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for** I have hardened his heart,** and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:
Then we have…
Ex 8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite,
he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.
Ex 8:32 And **Pharaoh hardened his heart **at this time also, neither would he let the people go.
Ex 9:34 And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more,
and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
Ultimately, God was behind the scenes but Pharaoh had a will in the matter as well. Ultimately, it is God who calls the shots…
Romans 9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires,
and He hardens whom He desires. 19 You will say to me then, “
Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” 20 On the contrary,
who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
Hardens translates sklērunō, which literally means to make hard and metaphorically means to render stubborn and obstinate. The Exodus account of Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh speaks ten times of God’s hardening that ruler’s heart (some of these are above). That same passage also informs us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (again - see above), confirming God’s act by his own. Such passages point up the humanly unreconcilable tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s will. Esau was rejected before he was born, and, also before he was born, Judas was appointed to betray Christ (see Acts 1:16; John 6:70–71). Yet both men themselves chose to follow sin and unbelief.
During His incarnation, Jesus clearly revealed that God’s choosing of men always precedes their choosing Him. He told a group of unbelieving Jews, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). On a later occasion, He explained to His disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you” (John 15:16). But He also said to unbelieving Jews, “You shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In the familiar words of John 3:18, Jesus said that “he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Because of men’s natural and willing unbelief, God is just in condemning those who already deserve it.
