The Authority Of Our Will

From the very beginning we can see that God has given man a free choice. Adam and Eve were disobedient against God’s specific commandment. The result for them was spiritual death and eventually physical death. Why didn’t God stop them from this disobedient act knowing full well the outcome? He certainly had the power to stop them, yet He didn’t even try. It wasn’t His will that they sin, He specifically told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them the day that they ate of it they would surely die. You might wonder why He didn’t just stop them. His most precious creation, man would not have died. God allowed them to sin because He gave them the authority to do what ever they wanted to do. This is not saying He commissioned them to sin, God forbid, but He most certainly allowed it to happen didn’t He? God gave man the ultimate authority to do whatever they wanted to do. In this sense He made us just like Him, we have the power of choice. It is always in our best interest when we choose to do what He has told us to do.

There is great authority placed in our freedom of our choice. We have the authority to choose life and we have the authority to choose death. He will not make us choose life. It has to be our choice or we would not have a free will would we? This may seem like a very obvious point, but if we only had one choice, we wouldn’t have to choose would we? God gave Adam more than one choice for a reason. If Adam did not exercise a free will and choose to sin there would not have been judgment. On the other hand if he had obeyed there would have been a different outcome and he would not have had to die. This is the ultimate authority that we have been given.

God wanted Adam as well as us to choose obedience of our own free will. He didn’t create robot children. The authority that Adam was given, was given to Satan when Adam sinned. Adam had the legal right to turn the keys of the planet Earth over to Satan. Morally he didn’t have the right but legally he did, and God had to honor that decision. God could not go back and say well I changed my mind. God can not lie, He had to honor Adams decision or that would make Him unjust, and He is not. Adams decision had consequences, just like our decisions have consequences. Sin is a choice just like obedience is a choice. We could say it like this, sin would not be sin if it were not by choice would it? We have to choose to separate ourselves from the fellowship of God. Most people would never consciously acknowledge this fact but it is true none the less. Sin is a choice and always has consequences. We don’t always consider the consequences but they are there.

Thank God, He has not left us without a way back.

1 John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Sin breaks fellowship with God, we have to acknowledge the sin in order to restore broken fellowship. If we won’t acknowledge the sin we are self deceived as the Word says. Yet when we confess sin He forgives, and fellowship is restored. Even in this we have a choice.

Another area we have free choice in is we each have gifts and abilities that He has given to us and He wants us to use them for His kingdom of our own free will, yet again He will never force us to do anything. Even as there are negative consequences for sin, there are positive consequences for obedience. Many Christians have not come to the point where they have seen this truth. They only see the consequences of sin and think God is up in heaven with a spiritual baseball bat waiting to smack them as soon as they get out of line.

That is so far from the truth, God wants us blessed that’s why He’s given us His Word. He’s given us a set of instruction for success. He personally backs them up and He knows that we can not succeed without them.