TL

Mark,

”But let’s explore what a ‘free-will’ is. First it is not in the Bible, at least not in the way that we often describe it. So what is a free-will?”

Actually ‘free will’ is one of the first things described in Scripture. God creates humans with the capacity to learn and gives them a “blank slate” mind, a naivite. It takes ‘free will’ to learn. God sets them in a place of purity and gives them only one command, that is to not eat of a specific tree. It took two naïve’ humans to choose two different options in response to the situation. They used their “free will” to make their choices. Unfortunately, both were wrong choices, for which we all have suffered since.

”That is why the Bible speaks about needing a new heart. God gives us a new heart, so that our desire might change from sin to him.”

Quite right! And then with our new heart we hopefully will make better ‘freewill’ choices. 🙂