Bible Free Will Quotes & Sayings

God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver ... From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who is seriously wronged can "just forgive" the perpetrator ... But when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly. — Timothy Keller

Two great prayers;
Yahweh, grant me grace for my daily activities.
Yahweh, protect me from all evil, so that my life will be free of pain in Jesus name. Amen! — Lailah Gifty Akita

Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it. — Andrew Carnegie

Do what's right. Be on time, be polite, and be honest; remain free from drugs; and if you have any questions, get out your Bible. 2. Do your best. Mediocrity is unacceptable when you are capable of doing better. 3. Treat others as you want to be treated. Practice love and understanding. — Lou Holtz

They brought the Bible and syphilis, they made people believe that life was easy, mother, that everything is gotten with money, that blacks carry a contagion, they tried to convince our soldiers that the nation is a business and that the sense of honor is a brother invented by the government so that soldiers would fight for free — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I don't have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful. — Billy Graham

While the Bible has nothing to say about how ethnic distinctions came to be, it does have definitive statements about how we are to regard them: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). — John H. Walton

God says, 'One woman, one man,' and everyone says, 'Oh, that's old hat, that's that old Bible stuff,'" he said. "But I'm thinking, well let's see now. A clean guy - a disease-free guy and a disease-free woman - they marry and they keep their sex between the two of them. They're not going to get chlamydia, and gonorrhea, and syphilis, and AIDS. It's safe. — Phil Robertson

I believe if I Piss God off one more time. I'll be eligible to win a free Bible — Stanley Victor Paskavich

It is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."
For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.
By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.) — David K. Bernard

The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood — Gerald Massey

In the Bible, God offered the Pharaoh freedom if he would just let the oppressed people free to go to the land of milk and honey. But the Pharaoh disobeyed, and he was destroyed. — Malcolm X

In the Bible, man is only free to submit or be damned. His one freedom is the renunciation of that freedom. He finds his "salvation" by freely accepting his subjugation. The Christian ideal, says Saint Paul, is to be freely "subservient to God" (Romans 6:22). — Alain De Benoist

I think that people in the Bible Belt are far less monolithically religious than many people imagine. There are lots and lots of people who are free-thinking, secularists, or atheists in the so-called Bible Belt. — Richard Dawkins

We are free to feed our minds from every good source, but there is no source like the Bible. It is a written revelation of who God is and of what God's purposes are for humanity. No book comes close to it in influence or significance. Eugene Peterson writes, "Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love." Yet consumer researchers say that the average Bible owner possesses nine Bibles and is looking for more. Something is lacking. — John Ortberg

Just a thought for all you God-fearin', gun-lovin', Bible-thumpin' 2nd Amendment patriots. If it turns out Heaven's a gun-free zone, what's plan B??? — Quentin R. Bufogle

Sometimes, we are unable to break free because we are held captive by divine assignment because in our problem God has given us a unique purpose. — Shannon L. Alder

Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now; people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God. — Kurt Vonnegut

Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith. — Charles Spurgeon

God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again ... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme. — Sarah Arthur

The Bible says, 'The truth shall make you free.' But let's not forget it was Spiro Agnew who said that a good lie will keep you out of jail in the first place. — A. Whitney Brown

God Child is a free and inspirational translation of Adam. Adam means 'human', not 'man'. The Hebrew for 'man' is 'aish'. In English man can mean both man and human, which may have caused the confusion in the first place. If Adam isn't the first male Homo sapiens, who or what is he? — Stefan Emunds

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. — Herman Melville

Faith should be a tool to set us free, not a means to fuel a fascist agenda seeking to impede the civil liberties of the "us"s. The first shall be last and the last shall be first ... therefore, those who stand for their Pius self-righteousness in order to trample those they deem inferior will be the 'last' and the poor and oppressed shall be 'first.' If the self-righteous want a lesson on morality, then actually take a lesson from Jesus whose best friend was a former hooker and whose mother was a single parent. — Cristina Marrero

There's a whole history that never appears in the Bible, Detective. A secret history you can only find in Canaanite or Hebrew legends. They talk about the marriage between Adam and a free-spirited woman, a cunning temptress who refused to obey her husband, or to lie beneath him as a docile wife should. Instead she demanded wild sex in every position and taunted him when he couldn't satisfy her. She was the world's first truly liberated female, and she wasn't afraid to seek the pleasures of the flesh. — Tess Gerritsen

Just so we're clear the words "free will" are not actually in the Bible. Predestination, on the other hand ... — R.C. Sproul Jr.

If we read the Bible asking first, 'What would Jesus do?' instead of asking 'What has Jesus done,' we'll miss the good news that alone can set us free. — Tullian Tchividjian

In areas where the Bible has left us free, when we carry out Christian ministry, we should be constantly engaged in cultural adaptation - refraining from certain attitudes or behaviors to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks from the paths of people with culturally framed perceptions. — Timothy Keller

America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness, which are derived from Holy Scripture. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask of every man and woman in this audience that, from this night on, they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book of revelations. (The Bible) That if they would see America free and pure they will make their own spirits free and pure by the baptism of Holy Scripture. — Woodrow Wilson

The truth was always the truth, but until I knew the truth for myself, I couldn't be free. — Shelley Hendrix

You are really and truly and completely free. There is no kicker. There is no if, and, or but. You are free. You can do it right or wrong. You can obey or disobey. You can run from Christ or run to Christ. You can choose to become a faithful Christian or an unfaithful Christian. You can cry, cuss, and spit, or laugh, sing, and dance. You can read a novel or the Bible. You can watch television or pray. You're free ... really free. — Steve Brown

something happened to me. God heard my deep cries of anguish. A feeling of lightness flowed over me, and I knew a change of heart had taken place. I felt different. I was different. At last I stood up, placed the Bible on the edge of the tub, and went to the sink. I washed my face and hands, straightened my clothes. I walked out of the bathroom a changed young man. "My temper will never control me again," I told myself. "Never again. I'm free." And since that day, since those long hours wrestling with myself and crying to God for help, I have never had a problem with my temper. That — Ben Carson

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's Word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written word powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The truth shall set you free only if you cherish the taste of freedom. John 8:31-32 — Felix Wantang

If you want to free your soul, you acknowledge that there is a spiritual order that God has designed for you. You are not the center of the universe. You are not the master of your fate. You are not the captain of your ship. There is a God, and you aren't him. True freedom comes when you embrace God's overall design for the world and your place in it. This is why in the Bible you see this strong connection between God's law and soul-freedom. — John Ortberg

In fact, there are all sorts of great institutions and human enterprises that the Bible doesn't address or regulate. And so we are free to invent them and operate them in line with the general principles for human life that the Bible gives us. But marriage is different. As the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship says, God "established marriage for the welfare and happiness of humankind." Marriage did not evolve in the late Bronze Age as a way to determine property rights. At the climax of the Genesis account of creation we see God bringing a woman and a man together to unite them in marriage. The Bible begins with a wedding (of Adam and Eve) and ends in the book of Revelation with a wedding (of Christ and the church). Marriage is God's idea. — Timothy Keller

Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty and free grace; Arminianism emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts the saving grace to the elect; the other extends it to all men on the condition of faith. Both are right in what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. If one important truth is pressed to the exclusion of another truth of equal importance, it becomes an error, and loses its hold upon the conscience. The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them. — Philip Schaff

Doesn't the bible say "blessed are the pure in the heart, so they shall see God?" when?
Only when there is purity in the heart; a heart peaceful and free from egoism
the "I" and the "mine." Purity of heart and equanimity of mind are the very essence of Yoga. — Swami Satchidananda

We are not free to pick and choose the parts of the Bible we want to believe or obey. God has given us all of it, and we should be obedient to all of it. — Billy Graham

Christ is to the souls of men what the sun is to the world. He is the center and source of all spiritual light, warmth, life, health, growth, beauty, and fertility. Like the sun, He shines for the common benefit of all mankind
for high and for low, for rich and for poor, for Jew and for Greek. Like the sun, He is free to all. All may look at Him, and drink health out of His light. If millions of mankind were mad enough to dwell in caves underground, or to bandage their eyes, their darkness would be their own fault, and not the fault of the sun. So, likewise, if millions of men and women love spiritual "darkness rather than light," the blame must be laid on their blind hearts, and not on Christ. "Their foolish hearts are darkened." (John 3:19; Romans 1:21.) But whether men will see or not, Christ is the true sun, and the light of the world. There is no light for sinners except in the Lord Jesus. — J.C. Ryle

The Bible is a record of sin, deceit, immorality of every kind, disobedience, hypocrisy and God's amazing grace and love. The heroes we admire were people just like us. They failed miserably at times, they sinned regularly, and yet they found love, acceptance, forgiveness and mercy to be the free gifts of God. His love drew them into intimate relationship with Him, empowered them to do great things, and taught them to enjoy the life that He has provided. — Joyce Meyer

The truth will set you free (The Bible) — Robert Baohm

I have a new nickname. A few of the guys have noticed that I am reading the bible on my free time. I am now 'preacher.' Not very fitting, if you ask me. Don't preachers have to stand up and teach people? I guess it could be worse. Some of the guys were talking about their favorite kind of music. Nobody said classical. I wasn't surprised, and I didn't volunteer my preference. Later on, I was talking to Tyler Young, and he asked me what I liked to listen to, so I told him about Beethoven. He asked me what songs I liked. I told him I especially liked Air on a G String - big mistake!! He thought I was talking about women's underwear. He's calling me 'G' now. I think I prefer Preacher. Tyler has a big mouth, especially when he thinks he's going to get laughs, and before I knew it, he'd told everyone about Air on a G String. Now I'm 'Preacher G. — Amy Harmon

But you'd get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word."
"I thought God gave everyone free will. Which would presumably - and evidently - include the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another."
"Stop making me think. I'm believing over here. — Jim Butcher

Some religions, such as Catholicism, fully endorsed slavery, as Pope Nicholas V made clear when, in 1452, he issued the radically proslavery document Dum Diversas. This was a papal bull granting Catholic countries such as Spain and Portugal "full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property ... and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery."10 These last few words - to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery - sound not just sinister to us, but also psychotic. They make perfect sense, however, in a Christian context, given that the Bible is itself a heedlessly proslavery tome. — Michael Shermer

The bible doesn't say Jesus had a power to command, only to recommend, which leaves each one of us with an individual freedom of choice. Maybe it's just that there are too many of us making too many bad choices for the good of the whole." He took a bite out of his apple. "Too many people and none of us wanting or able to hear the harmony. — Bryan Islip

The Bible is the best of books, and I wish it were in the hands of every one. It is indispensable to the safety and permanence of our institutions. A free government can not exist without religion and morals, and there cannot be morals without religion. Especially should the Bible be placed in the hands of the young. It is the best school book in the world. I would that all our people were brought up under the influence of that holy book. — Zachary Taylor

If we are talking about a loving God, we are talking about a God who asks us to trust him, whether we get what we ask for or don't. But he will never force us to trust him. That is entirely up to us. We have free will and we can accept his love or reject it, or claim it doesn't exist at all. We can trust him or distrust him as we like. But if he really and truly is the God of the Bible, who loves me with an unchanging and self-sacrificial love (agape), then I really and truly can trust him in all circumstances, which is tremendously freeing. In fact, I can go one step further than trusting him. To use a biblical phrase, I can rejoice in him. But is only possible if we really do know that God has our best interests at heart at all times. Of course, we have to decide on our own whether we believe that. But if we come to see that, that is true and do allow ourselves to believe it, we are precisely where he created us to be: in his loving hands. — Eric Metaxas

Well, that's not what the Bible preaches. It says if you know the truth, it'll set you free. — Sue Monk Kidd

The Bible consistently denies free will. — Gordon Clark

Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error. — George Holyoake

The greatest gift God gave us is also our greatest curse, which is the free will. We are made in God's image, the Bible says, which means we have the ability to love him or not love him, to reject him or not reject him. — Rick Warren

You are free to reject God. Make sure that you're really rejecting God, not some caricature of God that the church has shown you. But I, one, respect a God who not only allows us to reject Him but includes the arguments we can use against Him in the Bible. I respect that. — Philip Yancey

The Christian is not free to do what the Bible forbids. Christian freedom does not entail the right to fornicate or to steal or to lie or to persist in an unforgiving attitude or to do anything else the Scriptures explicitly prohibit. And a person who lovingly points this out to you is not a legalist for having done so! — Sam Storms

At least 200 dates have been suggested, varying from 3483 to 6934 years B.C., all based on the supposition that the Bible enables us to settle the point. But it does nothing of the sort. The literal interpretation has now been entirely abandoned; and the world is admitted to be of immense antiquity. On such questions we have no Biblical evidence, and the Catholic is quite free to follow the teaching of science. — Thomas Murasso

No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain. — Peter Enns

I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible. — Thomas Huxley

Once, long ago, Jesus had called her name, breaking through the darkness of her oppression to set her free from the seven demons that bound her. now He broke through the hopelessness of her grief and despair. Mary might not have recognized His face, but she could never forget the sound of His voice, not when He called her name.(From "I Have Seen The Lord!") — Sherri Gragg

Dullness of hearing is hearing without faith and without the moral fruit of faith. It's hearing the Bible or the preaching of the Bible the way you hear the freeway noise on I-94, or the way you hear Muzak in the dentist's office or the way you hear recorded warnings at the airport that this is a smoke-free facility. You do but you don't. You have grown dull to the sound. It does not awaken or produce anything. — John Piper

You will find, if you seriously study Scripture, that outside of the idea of hell, there is no more terrifying idea in the Bible than God setting you free to run in the imagination of your heart. — Matt Chandler

God did not force Salvation on humanity; He made it a gift dependent on the free will of the recipient because He is not interested in numbers. Mega Churches are numbers. Matthew 7:13-14. — Felix Wantang

As God took me through the journey that became the Bible study 'Breaking Free', He taught me to look for a common denominator among the things that triggered my destructive habits. — Beth Moore

God created philosophy for all the intellects that got bored of hearing the same bible stories every Sunday. — Shannon L. Alder

The first known prosecution took place in Egypt around 1300 BC, for a crime that would today constitute practicing medicine without a license. (That supernatural medic was male.) Descended from Celtic horned gods and Teutonic folklore, Pan's distant ancestor the devil was not yet on the scene. He arrived with the New Testament, a volume notably free of witches. Nothing in the Bible connects the two, a job that fell, much later, to the church. — Stacy Schiff

The fact was, as a story - even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean - the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning. I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalogue of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are now the inescapable plot of the story we're in. The — Andrew Klavan

I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail. — Thomas Paine

To church congregations and denominations that are weary of strife, of continually arguing things out in a tense, judgmental atmosphere, it may come as welcome news to learn that they, too, are allowed to say 'I know not' with regard to the Bible, free to not use it to justify taking sides in every issue that comes along. — Kathleen Norris

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. — Robert G. Ingersoll

No one can speak of the beginning but the one who was in the beginning. Thus the Bible begins with God's free affirmation, free acknowledgment, free revelation of himself: In the beginning God created... — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We cannot resolve a conflict if we are not willing to break loose from its bondage. In order to solve a conflict, we need to free ourselves from its strings of conflict and let our souls free. According to the teachings of Jesus, one cannot be free from the conflict of this world if he/she is not ready to free him/her own self from the conflict. Christians are supposed to break loose and from conflict by ceasing to do bad things and seeking repentance. In the bible many several people such as Kind David, and Jesus himself were able to break loose from conflict thereby promoting peace. — Austin V. Songer