Blue wrote:Brookside wrote:Hi Dennis,
"that without His will they cannot so much as move."
Nor can they even breathe or think their next thought!
Does that not make us mere puppets? Seems a very fatalistic view.
Blue
Hi Blue,
The answer to your question is not a simple one. It could take up a lot of space and be a very long Reply. To simplify a little we need to start with this truth from God's Word from
Ephesians 2:1-2, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air . . ."I'll stop there -- although you're welcome to read to the end of verse 3.
The death being discussed here cannot be physical because dead men don't walk around, nor do they follow the world's ways, nor do they follow the devil (prince of the power of the air). So obviously there is another kind of death in view here -- the condition of spiritual death. That means the inability to NOT sin. It also means the inability to do what is right, the inability to obey God's laws.
Can you see from there where we're going? In verse 4 we learn that even when we were dead (spiritually) God made us alive. We had nothing to do with that loving act of God's mercy except to come alive spiritually by His grace . . . just like Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave without any help from Lazarus.
Once the soul has been made alive in Christ, it has the desire for Him because He is infinitely desirable. There is a new freedom that was not there previously -- the freedom to choose to obey God out of love for what He has done to set the soul free.
That's certainly not fatalism nor is it being an unwilling puppet.
I said I'd keep it short, so I'd better stop here and give you a chance to thnk it through and come back for more explanation if you have some further questions about it.
The Lord is my light and my salvation. (Psalm 27:1)
