11 am!
God does not want robots. This is precisely why He gave us free will to either choose to eat the forbidden fruit or not. Adam made a free will choice to eat it.
While we are here, we can choose, morally, what we want to do. We have moral free will. We can choose the good or we can choose the bad. Our whole life is made up of this type of choosing.
Heaven, OTOH, consists only of GOOD. There is only the Tree of Life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the Garden...it will not be in heaven.
In that case, there is no possibility of being able to choose evil/bad. Revelation 21:27 --- nothing unclean will enter into heaven.
So does this mean we will have no will? Many aspects of our soul will be different in heaven. We will have a will - a desire to do this or that, which is a function of the soul and the will of man is in the soul --- but we will not have moral free will since our Will will be perfectly aligned with God's and He is all-good and nothing evil is in heaven.
By "if no will was His goal"...surely you don't mean all the way to heaven?
God wanted us to have a free will....but heaven will be different.
Do you not agree?
I agree that God does not want robots. And much of what I say concerning the 'will' is me thinking out loud. It is a complicated issue to me and I doubt will be understood completely down here.
The point of my questions goes back to 'eternal security'. Will we have eternal security in Heaven? The obvious answer is yes, we will. But why? What has God provided for us that gives us eternal security there but not here, as you say, as believers? You say it is because you have the life of Jesus in you. True. But you have that now. Thus it is not the life of Jesus in you that secures your salvation...you say.
Your emphasis is on your 'will'. What you decide. Thus you said in #207 that you agree with (Rom. 8:28-39). Then you added 'but'. But what? 'Ourselves' you say. Once you added the 'but' there, you changed all that Paul was saying. He says 'nothing', you say 'but'.
Because your emphasis is on your 'will', then your eternal security in Heaven must also take that into consideration. Therefore your solution is to remove anything bad so that man cannot make the choice. No choice to make. All is good. But removing the visible tree of the knowledge of good and evil, does not remove man's will.
satan willed wrongfully in heaven before there was any sin in the universe. And many angels willed with him. Adam and Eve willed being perfect, and without sin. Neither satan and his angels or Adam and Eve were secure in Heaven or in paradise because they had a will. So, what secures you and I in Heaven?
My position is that it is our 'faith', which was exercised down here on Earth at a specific point and time. Because of that, and the grand work of salvation that was created by God, we are forever declared righteous 'in Christ'. Note I said 'declared' righteous. Not righteous of ourselves.
Here I believe that faith trumps the will. Faith precedes the will. The will is certainly involved but it follows our faith. We do not chose to believe. We believe and chose. And our faith comes from God alone.
So the very things that secure us eternally in Heaven have been accomplished here on our part. Our faith, which comes from God, causes God to move on our behalf and places us in Jesus Christ. That secures us not only here and now, but in Heaven also.
Stranger