I stumbled upon this forum wanting to vent some theological rage on those who use imperative commands in the Bible to pull together a belief of "freewill" in the Bible.
I'm not sure where you all stand on this subj., but there is no such thing as a Biblical "free will". Jesus says in john 6, no one can come to me except those whom the father draws, and I will raise him up on the last day. Rom 9:16 say that it is not of him who wills, not of him who runs, but it is of Him who shows mercy - expounding on the fact that God elects whom he chooses, and hardens whom he wants to harden (rm. 11:7). Why liberal and heretical Christians feel it is their job to "make God pretty" by putting philosophical makeup on his image is beyond me. That is exactly what it is too, philosophical make up. Free will is something originating completely in philosophy; there is never a mention of free will in scripture, or in early/reformed Christian writings.
Yet these Christians still feel it necessary to make God a God people enjoy; a non-judgmental God, a God that doesn't hate (mal. 1:1-3), a God that doesn’t care about homosexuality, abortion, etc. They feel it is their job to make scripture secondary to the mutable will of society. If the whim is for queers, then so is God? God the Rock? God the immovable, the immutable will of God swaying like a reed? This is the God that Christian churches of this day parade; For this God is the making of man, making it hard for man to hate it, let alone fear it.
The first thing you hear out of these people's mouths trying to give the impression of freewill is this: What of the verses that command to believe, repent, come to faith? What of those if there is not a will to complete the task?
Yet, Does not God have the power to condemn with these commands, knowing full well that we do not have the power to complete them, for apart from him we can do nothing. Does not God have the power to show that those who are "by nature objects of wrath" are deserving of such damnation because they have not heeded his command? Yet we see that it is always God that works good through us, Do we, as slaves to sin, have the power to do anything but sin? Have the power to do anything but spit at Christ's face? We have no power but that; no will but hatred toward righteousness. In John 3, Jesus says that those in the darkness hate the light, like the world hates him. Yet those who have been illuminated by God's illustrious light have no choice but to fall in love with the loving, yet all powerful face of the God-man, Christ the messiah of the Jews, and the gentiles second. These imperative commands in scripture could be piled miles high, yet the idea that a slave of sin could free himself from that bondage without the aid of grace is heresy! To believe that God elects on the basis of foreknowledge of faith is to butcher the weight of Romans 9. (We should indeed say that God elects based on foreknowledge, but we should know that knowledge [in the Biblical sense of the term] is better defined in a sense of intimate knowledge, for example when Jesus says, "depart from me for I never knew you.)
So we see that verses saying, "choose, and whomever believes" does not say a thing about the bondage of the will, or the moral and spiritual (heck, even physical) ability to actually fulfill those commands. Instead we see that God is behind it all, "A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps." We see that in our hearts we are evil, but it is God who works the good (jer 17:9).
So i urge you as brothers and sisters of the way, to follow the steps of all those on the narrow path. To stop making commitments to the world, and actually search for the will of God, to know the actual workings of the Lord in our salvation; To know, beyond all doubt, that God is the one that chose you, not you him (jhn 15:16). And above all else, to praise him for your salvation, knowing that it would have never come to you unless he had brought you to believe it.