Freedom of Choice
Freedom of Choice
Recently, someone commented on a post I wrote saying, “One might argue that none has a freedom of choice really either, and no one has ever had the freedom to choose to be born or not, yet we are held accountable for being born in sin nonetheless.”
The idea that one who does not exist has some sort of right to decide whether they will exist is fallacious. That which is not, does not exist. Rights cannot be attributed to or conferred upon things that do not exist.
Had our ultimate grandfather (Adam) not chosen to violate the single restriction placed upon him by his Creator, we would not be born in sin. It is through Adam that sin and death came into the world as we know from Romans 5:12 "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned" (NASB 2020)
The ultimate question then is, "why did God give Adam any choice at all?" The best answer I know to that question is that God is Love and Love is a relational thing that is made perfectly complete when eagerly returned by the one who is loved. Love cannot be forced, or it is not love. Love garnered through manipulation or coercion is nothing more than a feigned pantomime engaged in for the purpose of escaping retribution.
Many see God in exactly that way, but He is the exact opposite of that. He offers a loving relationship. He says that He is not holding our obstinate refusal to believe in His goodness against us. 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 put it this way, "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." (NASB 2020) He has decided to put all our trespasses against Him aside and love us anyway. We see this in Romans 5:6 “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” This is expanded upon in Romans 5:8–11 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” (NASB 2020)
This is the reason that salvation is given freely by God's grace and appropriated by faith. If it were by anything we did, then we would have been manipulated and coerced into specific behavior, and as Ephesians 2:8-9 point out, we could then brag that God was required to accept us because of how we behaved. Instead, through the Lord Jesus, Father freely provided righteousness as a gift. Our only part in it is to take Him at His word about that.
So, we absolutely do have a choice. We can choose to remain alienated from God because we lack and cannot produce righteousness or we can choose to trust what God has said and become the recipients of His Life, entering into a Love relationship with Him because He has given us His righteousness--see 2 Corinthians 5:21.
We all have the same choice Adam had. We can listen to God, agree to be reconciled to Him, and enjoy the fruit of the Tree of Life, or we can listen to ourselves (an idea that comes from that old snake from the garden) eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and remain dead to God and alive to sin. In Deuteronomy 30:19 God said, “I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live” (NASB 2020).
God is not threatening anyone with an ultimatum, “trust me or else.” Rather He is warning everyone that He is the only Source of Life and all other roads lead to death. Death is not properly understood when viewed primarily as God’s punishment for wrongdoing. Rather, death is the natural result of choosing to live in a way not conducive to Life. It is more akin to “if you consume poison, you shall surely die.”
"So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." Romans 6:11 (NASB 2020)
Choose wisely.
