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Discussion Forum : Devotional Thoughts : Free will in Men and Angels

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Joined: 2006/1/31
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 Free will in Men and Angels



"But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably [wicked], but not because God had created them so. So that if they repent, all who wish for it can obtain mercy from God: and the Scripture foretells that they shall be blessed, saying, 'Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not sin; ' that is, having repented of his sins, that he may receive remission of them from God; and not as you deceive yourselves, and some others who resemble you in this, who say, that even though they be sinners, but know God, the Lord will not impute sin to them. We have as proof of this the one fall of David, which happened through his boasting, which was forgiven then when he so mourned and wept, as it is written. But if even to such a man no remission was granted before repentance, and only when this great king, and anointed one, and prophet, mourned and conducted himself so, how can the impure and utterly abandoned, if they weep not, and mourn not, and repent not, entertain the hope that the Lord will not impute to them sin? And this one fall of David, in the matter of Uriah's wife, proves, sirs," I said, "that the patriarchs had many wives, not to commit fornication, but that a certain dispensation and all mysteries might be accomplished by them; since, if it were allowable to take any wife, or as many wives as one chooses, and how he chooses, which the men of your nation do over all the earth, wherever they sojourn, or wherever they have been sent, taking women under the name of marriage, much more would David have been permitted to do this."

When I had said this, dearest Marcus Pompeius, I came to an end.

Justin Martyr


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CHRISTIAN

 2008/11/13 0:19Profile









 Re: Free will in Men and Angels

I remember reading that now. It is a gift from God, especially in our time.
I recently read something by Balthasar Hubmaier who was a martyr is Germany in the 1500's. He helped spell out the understanding of free will and God's foreknowledge in a similar way showing how the scriptures seem to contradict themselves to one who is foolish enough to think he can fathom God knowing all things. I confess I have been this foolish in the past but now I am grateful for the opportunity that God has given me to repent. It's wonderful to honor and bless God for his foreknowledge. It's also spiritually fatal to forget that we have the ability to choose good and evil now thanks to Jesus Christ.

I was about to post a writing by the man I mentioned. It is specifically on free will and goes into detail about the condition of all men and it's totally based on scripture as far as I can tell. I think it's a gift from God just like this writing of Justin Martyr's.

 2008/11/13 0:49





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