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Commentary on "The Power of Choice"

MARTIN L. CAREY

 

Day 2: Sunday, April 4, 2010 - HAPPY EASTER SUNDAY, HE IS RISEN!

 

Overview

The lesson today discusses the meaning of freedom, and although a definition is never provided in this week’s material, the following assertion is made:

“When God created humans, He made them moral beings, and in order for humans to be truly moral, they had to have moral freedom.” Moral freedom includes the ability to choose wrongly, if one desires.

The rebellion of man is visited in more detail, and we see how the perfect man and woman, placed in a perfect environment, chose wrongly. The lesson asks how the first couple could have chosen better, and what we can learn from their choices.

The lesson concludes that our moral freedom is a sacred and fundamental gift, and very important to God. On page 19, under “The Student Will,” the lesson states that the Cross demonstrates the extreme measures God will take to “guarantee our right to free choice.”

 

Observations

The lesson states that moral freedom lies at the very foundation of human existence, and this was made apparent in Eden. The lesson fails to make clear what Adam and Eve lost after they sinned. Their powers changed, along with their world.

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Romans 8:20, 21

Both man and nature were cursed together at the Fall. Sentenced by divine decree to painful survival, painful childbirth, and death, nature would no longer serve him. He was to work in the dirt like a slave, and at last, return to the dirt. As a rebel, God also gave him over to serve his rebellious, futile desires, while obeying the dark powers. He would now be enslaved to these powers willingly, unable to obey and enjoy sweet communion with his Creator. Adam’s pure, free nature was replaced with a servile, vicious nature that we have all inherited. This nature is what the New Testament calls “the flesh.”

“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:6-8

What can we learn from Adam and Eve’s choices and experience in the Garden? We learn that we have all sinned in Adam, that we continue to rebel against God’s authority, and that we are totally incapable of submitting to His law. “None seek after God (Romans 3:11).” This is why Paul says in Ephesians 2:2, we are “by nature children of wrath.” We can fool ourselves into thinking we can choose well, but we will only add to God’s wrath by trying to please Him.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

We can see that our desires and wills are corrupted by sin. There is no part of us that stands aloof from our cursed condition and coolly chooses good or evil. The human will is not some little sovereign thing, acting autonomously outside of God and nature. We choose out of the abundance of our sick hearts, which are full of deceit. We are certainly free to choose what we desire, but in our enslavement to sin, our desires will never choose to submit to God’s law, indeed, we cannot. We have no natural endowment of freedom, as we read in the American Declaration of Independence. Before God, we lost our “inalienable rights” in Adam when he rebelled against his King.

So, we do not possess a sovereign free will which can choose God. Only the Son can make us free in a new birth, through the quickening power of the Spirit. This is not a freedom to reject Him, as many suppose. No higher purpose is ever served by rejecting God’s grace. Throwing away His gift is no small thing:

“How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” Hebrews 10:29

Any “freedom” apart from God’s loving ownership is only evil and enslavement. Someone might object to this demotion of our precious freedom, and say, “But what if I want to leave it all later on? Doesn’t a just God have to respect my wishes?” If you belong to Him, God will honor your wishes, but your wishes will be in perfect harmony with His will. We cannot ever become unborn-again. He is faithful and just to fulfill His promises to let nothing snatch you out of His hand.

When we are born from above, we are adopted as sons and given a spirit that cries, “Daddy!” to our eternal Father in Heaven. It is absurd to think that our Lord would “respect” any suicidal gestures of His blood-bought children. We are not our own, we are bought with a price (I Cor. 6:19). Christ does not give us only a small slice of eternal life. In Him, we have it all, or we have no part of Him at all. This was the purpose of the Cross; not to preserve some abstraction called “free will,” but to redeem His own, “in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.” Romans 9:23

 

Summary

  1. At the Fall, mankind lost his freedoms and his powers over nature. He was subjected to the “futility” of a brief struggle for survival.
  2. Because of the Fall, man was also given over, by divine decree, to his own rebellious passions. He serves the dark powers.
  3. We lost our “free will” in Adam, so man’s natural self hates God’s authority. His will is sick and deceitful, so he cannot choose God or obey Him.
  4. We must be born again so that God can preserve us from our self-destructive desires, and replace them with a spirit of adoption. Then we will not reject Him and “outrage the Spirit of grace.”
  5. At the Cross, the Father bought us at an infinite price. We were purchased, not for some abstraction called free will, but to make known the riches of His glory.

 

GO TO DAY 3

 

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