What about warnings of false teachers, increasing lawlessness, etc?
How can the bible contain foretelling of sin if sin is not inevitable?
Do all such passages assume continued sin?
Hi Ben,
Freewill doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want to do. It means you are given the freedom to choose God, or reject him. It means you can love how you want to love, and hate how you want to hate, also.
For example, you cannot use freewill to decide you want to defy gravity. No matter how much you will it, it will not happen. But you can use it to choose to love your neighbor or not.
Our inevitability to sin is not a contradiction to the freewill God gave us.
It works like this:
You are born without sin = you are one with God
One day you sin (
because you know right and wrong i.e. the "law" and you break it) = you rejected God
Later you are saved = you once again accept God
The process of sin gives you the freedom to reject God. It is a part of the freewill test God uses to determine who is for him. When you sin, it is your decision to leave God, you're freewill decision. If you accept Grace, it is also your freewill decision to once again be reunited with him.
This is the system by which God has placed the world under.
Galatians 3
19 What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. 20 Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one.
21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. 22 But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
It isn't that some magic spell has been cast upon us all. But we all have the knowledge of good and evil, which is a law for us, telling us when we do right and wrong. Our conscience has been made perfect through the Law of Moses, scripture. It teaches us when we sin in black and white letters.
When we know what sin is, it causes us to sin eventually.
God has decided that this world needs a law, even though the law can make us guilty of sin. He did this knowing that his Grace would eventually save any who had faith.
So freewill is made perfect. We are completely free to take God or leave him, to choose love or to choose hate.
