I'm sure you've all heard it before. That free will is the reason that our Love to God has any power at all. God didn't create us, the elect, as robots, to Love Him. That would not be Love at all. Love is a free will choice, for Him, and this is the very reason He gave us free will in the first place, by Adam. God Loves us and yet, He is a respecter of our free will. Our will to choose life in Him through Christ, and our will to reject Christ for the things of this world and the deceptions of the evil one. And yet God loves each of His creation still.
In the Garden of Eden, we died in Adam, and sin was imputed to all men. Christ redeemed us by His blood. Animal sacrifices were but a foreshadow of Christ's atoning sacrifice, and this is why blood had to be shed at all. Because of Him. Christ became as man, so that man may be reacquired through Christ, in spite of our rebellion. Jesus took upon Himself our sin and was made sin for us so that we might become the sons of God. This is penalty substitutionary atonement. This is scriptural.
One day in the future we are told that we will be freed from all sin and taken out of the bondage of the corruptible, and to put on, as it were, sinless incorruption. Our new bodies, living lives of perfect obedience and communion throughout eternity? But then how will we live? If free will is present, then how will sin be put away forever? Would we not be then made like the atomaton who cannot choose evil? How does that work? If the sin nature is gone by our union with God, would that not make us robots again? Does free will exist in Heaven?
In the Garden of Eden, we died in Adam, and sin was imputed to all men. Christ redeemed us by His blood. Animal sacrifices were but a foreshadow of Christ's atoning sacrifice, and this is why blood had to be shed at all. Because of Him. Christ became as man, so that man may be reacquired through Christ, in spite of our rebellion. Jesus took upon Himself our sin and was made sin for us so that we might become the sons of God. This is penalty substitutionary atonement. This is scriptural.
One day in the future we are told that we will be freed from all sin and taken out of the bondage of the corruptible, and to put on, as it were, sinless incorruption. Our new bodies, living lives of perfect obedience and communion throughout eternity? But then how will we live? If free will is present, then how will sin be put away forever? Would we not be then made like the atomaton who cannot choose evil? How does that work? If the sin nature is gone by our union with God, would that not make us robots again? Does free will exist in Heaven?