Freedom of choice?

God gave us freedom of choice. If we had no choice, there would not have been the forbidden tree in the garden. 

Our choice involves the freedom to pursue him or attempt to be our own god i.e. not pursue the only true God. 

God continues to give us freedom of choice. 

He does so for two reasons. He wants us to choose him 

1. Freely

    AND

2. Willingly

Freedom of choice allows us to experience why we are not designed to be our own god i.e. To let us see firsthand that being our own god does not work. It allows us to experience firsthand "the knowledge of good and evil."

Allowing us to experience the fruit of our free choice persuades us to also willingly choose to pursue him; to operate according to his design (as dependent creatures) versus being our own god i.e. He leaves our choice intact and seeks to change our "¹wanter" not stifling or removing our "chooser." 

The bottom line… God wants us to choose to be who He designed us to be willingly and freely. He does not force us or program us to do so.  

Love that is not freely chosen is not true love, it is programmed. There is no true love without real choice. 

An old expression says, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." However, this expression fails to recognize that you can also "salt their oats" i.e. a thirst (desire) to choose what is vitally needed. 

This is not a violation of the will but the creating of awareness; an awareness of need. God allows us to experience our true limits-need-condition so that we will freely choose Him who is the best option.

Adam and Eve had never experienced death-evil and could not fully appreciate the benefit of all the good received from God until they had lost it by turning away from their dependence on Him. Eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil resulted in them experiencing evil-death (harm) firsthand.

• For a further discussion on choice click here.

• Why freedom of choice is important click here

• How sovereign is God? click here.

• The practical importance of God's electing grace click here

• Do we have a "free" will or are we heavily influenced? click here

• The value of paradox and truths in tension click here.

• The question of fairness click here.

• The necessity of mercy click here.

• Is the election and wrath of God unreasonable? click here.

• For a discussion on how we are free to choose yet also bound, click here. 

___________________________________________Footnotes:

¹Our ability to choose always remains; however what we want changes. And we want what we think-believe will best give us what we need. It is what we believe is the best option out of all possible options to choose from. 

As long as we are open to truth - to what truly is - we will increasingly discover God is our true and best end. He is why we exist - the cause and the purpose of our existence. He is the Alpha and Omega - for from him, through him, and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen! - Rom 11:36

the necessity of God's mercy

We are told we will not and can not come to Christ unless the Father draws us. 

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day... And he (Jesus) said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." - Jesus. Joh 6:44, 65

Why are we in this condition? How did it come about? 

We died spiritually when we chose to rebel from our dependence on God. When we did we unplugged from God, if you will, who is the source of love, life, and the sustainer of all things. 

The life (Spirit) of God departed from us at our rebellion. We immediately #died spiritually. Evidence of this is Adam and Eve's attempt to cover their shame, hide from God and blame-shift (a fruit of shame/guilt). Prior to their rebellion there was no shame. 

#We are told that we alone had God directly breath his life/breath into us. Not just any life but the very life/breath of God himself.  

Gen 2:7  then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 

The Holy Spirit will not and does not live inside rebellious (¹impure) image bearers. When we choose to rebell and rejected God (and our dependence on him), he left (we could say his life/Spirit left. Though a residual of life lingered, as evidenced by our not immediately dying physically). 

Why did the Spirit/life of God depart from us? We are real beings with real choices that have real consequences. 

God honors us, our dignity, our being in his image, when he honors our ²choices.

Because of these realities, we not only died spiritually but we eventually died ³physically as well. 

Generally death (separation/ disconnection) is a permanent condition. We remain in this state unless something is done to reverse it i.e. unless God intervenes. Without God's intervention all men and women go into eternity separated from God spiritually and physically. 

Consider angels

When we consider angels, this is exactly what happened to them i.e. we have no indication that any of the fallen angels turned, can turn or ever will turn back to God. The only difference between them and us appears to be God's intervention (i.e. his mercy); his reversing the "natural" outcome of their rejection of him.  

The fact that our choosing to rebel from God was so complete/final, has nothing to do with the justice of God (at least, by God's mercy, it was not final as it was with the angels, yet no one thinks God unjust in leaving them in their chosen state of rebellion). God clearly warned our first parents (Adam directly and Eve via Adam) that the day they eat (a choice to no longer depend on God) they would die. By eating from the forbidden tree, they cut themselves off from God. It was their choice and they were warned of the consequences. Though certainly possible, we have no indication such a warning was given to the angels. 

Did Adam and Eve understand the consequences?

Whether they understood the full significance of this is neither here nor there. In fact not fully understanding the significance only affirmed the importance and necessity of complete trust by Adam and Eve in God's promise/warning. God requiring they trust him is simply expecting them to be who they were; finite and dependent creatures in his image. God was only asking them to believe he was all wise and knew what was best, not them. They certainly had no indication/evidence otherwise. They simply doubted this to be true based on a lie they were told ("...you will be like God..." i.e. no longer dependent but independent) and chose to believe it. 

Why would and did God create us in such a way this could even happen. Because love forced is no love at all and a choice forced is not a choice. In other words, if I follow you because I am programmed to do so, it would not be me choosing you out of trust and love for you, it would be the program directing me to do so. Without real trust there is no real love or real choice. 

If a husband is programmed to bring flowers to his wife, how does his wife feel (knowing his programming was the reason)?

When God reveals himself to us, he is intervening in and reversing our fallen (self imposed and deserved...after all they were clearly warned) condition/blindness. He's not violating our choice, he's awakening our hearts again to his love. Once awakened, we naturally go after the one who is all lovely and beautiful. This is in fact our response (choice) to seeing and experiencing his love and beauty. But it is God in his mercy opening our eyes so we might see him again as he truly is. A blind man can not heal his own blindness. 

To illustrate, what if you were blind and deaf (better yet what if you were dead) and someone placed a pot of gold in front of you and told you this is yours and it's value is a billion dollars. How would you respond? What would you do? Well, you would do nothing simply because you wouldn't be aware this had just occurred. Now, what if by some miracle all your senses were restored (or somehow you came back to life) while this pot of gold was there in front of you and now in this restored state, the offer was made again. How would you respond? Well, I dare say you would say YES and thank you. 

What changed? We're you forced to take the gold? Were you somehow given the will to choose the gold that you didn't previously see? No, you were now able to see what was there and responded (chose) based on how you were already designed i.e. you were attracted, draw to and choose that which is highly valuable (because we were designed to be attracted to God who is all valuable/worthy). 

Christ tells us unless we are born again we can not see the kingdom of God (the beauty, glory and joy of the King and being reunited with him). Birth and sight go hand in hand. The capacity for life was still there but dormant (dead). We just needed God's breath, breathed into us again, just as the original Adam did after being formed from the ground. 

Given this set of conditions/ circumstances, if God were to do nothing to remedy the problem (our spiritually dormant/dead state) created by the rebellious choice of Adam and Eve, it would have been perfectly just. To do anything to remedy the problem they created is rather an act of mercy by God. He was and is in no way obligated to resolve the dilemma they had created. 

Adam and Eve's choice was clearly a violation of trust on their part. A choice that totally ruined and destroyed their trust through which their relationship with God was sustained, alienating themselves from him, themselves, each other as well as the rest of creation.

Thank God our choice was not the final word, his mercy was. 

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
    or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
    that he might be repaid?”

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Romans 11. 

·       The question of fairness click here. 

·       Is the election and wrath of God unreasonable? click here.

·        "Free" will or heavily influenced? click here

·        Why Calvinists and Arminians are both wrong click here, 

·        Our "wanter" is broken, not our "chooser" click here 

·        Why freedom of choice is important click here

·        The primary end for which we are chosen click here

________________________________________________________________

¹not singularly focused on the source of true and lasting life but believing life can be found outside and apart from God.

²God still honored our choice when he called us back to himself. He simply opened our eyes to see his beauty resulting in our choosing him again. He did not override our choice in so doing he simply removed our blindness so that we might truly see him again and choose rightly.

³Some have questioned the warning from God as untrue since man did not physically die immediately upon eating the forbidden fruit. But possibly this is because physical death is all we can relate to (since we are now born spiritually dead so we have nothing to compare it to), when in fact spiritual death was the primary caution God was giving which lead to Adam and Eve's death physically. 

This also may say something very significant regarding what is more vital: spiritual life or physical life? Both are certainly important but spiritual death (the loss of God's life/Spirit) was more vital as everything else (physical death, the curse upon the ground, pain in child bearing etc) flowed out of our disconnect spiritually (death) to God. 

The necessity of choice

Choice is essential. It is a ¹vital part of why we have innate value. Our worth and dignity are tied to our freedom to choose i.e. free choice is an essential part of our significance. Without it, we are like programmed robots who do not pursue God freely.

However, choosing disobedience (i.e. rebellious independence) with its negative consequences shows the critical importance of choosing God over attempts at being our own god. Though we are free to choose, we are ²not free from the consequences of our choice. It is through painful consequences, we hopefully learn to willingly and delightfully choose God's way - as we were designed to - over our own way i.e. the way of independence from God...the way of Adam. 

Both our free choice and our choosing the right direction are vital, i.e. we can choose whatever we wish, but that doesn't change that the consequences of our choices are according to our design. To act contrary to how God designed us is to suffer loss and bring harm to ourselves i.e. to lose God, and all that comes with knowing Him. 

Our freely choosing the right direction is God’s aim. He wants us to choose freely, but also correctly. He doesn't want us to choose to live contrary to our design, but neither does he desire us to be automatons. He lets us choose freely, even if it leads to our own destruction. But He also desires we choose correctly as well as freely. 

It is truly our choice whether we pursue God or not but our dignity and the ³greatness and strength of ¹our value – our innate worth - make this a ³difficult and ongoing process. 

After we accept his offer of restoration from our rebellion, we still must be weaned from being our own god and persuaded to freely pursue the only true God. To keep our dignity intact, God does not force or program us to choose him. It is only in freely choosing God we can truly and fully experience God's glory to the greatest extent possible, as well as our own, i.e., to experience all He intended and designed us to be and partake in. 

This process is not difficult for God but for us. Choosing to be our own god is so ³deeply and subtly bound up in our heart of rebellious distrust (unbelief), we are slow to relinquish our rebellious independence and freely submit to God in total dependence/trust - as we are designed to - even after we've been reconciled by His grace. We are slow to believe someone is wiser than us and trust He cares more about us and is better able to provide what's best for us than we can - especially when circumstances look like the opposite is true.

Our challenge is we are free but also dependent at the same time - far more dependent than we are usually willing to recognize or admit. 

And this is the heart of our sin… refusal to admit our dependence on God for all things - even our very existence and breath itself. 

If we are brutally honest with ourselves we believe to be truly free we must be independent of God and if we are to be dependent we can no longer be free. God however knows our greatest joy - and his greatest glory in and through us - comes when we freely and delightfully (willingly) choose dependence on God and not on ourselves. Not to minimize us, but just the opposite... so we will fully be and experience all he created us to be and freely recognize God for who He truly is - the source of life, love, and all things. 

The irony is, when we do, we experience our greatest purpose and meaning - i.e. we are maximized - if you will - when we are most humble/ dependent; when we act according to who we are, dependent image-bearers of Almighty God. To say it concisely as the bible does, to live we (to God) must die (to self). 

So on the one hand we must completely have free choice to be and ¹live as the true image-bearers God designed us to be. Yet our will must be totally submitted to our Creator ³in order to fully display that image and experience who we are to the maximum of our design, God's greatest honor, and our greatest joy. 

Our submission to God must be done both freely and fully to experience God to the greatest extent possible and properly honor Him according to His true worth. We are created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever at the same time. Though these may be distinct and appear in opposition,  neither happens without the other, because of how God made us.

The following links are a further discussion on related matters...

We are created for glory

Does God value us?

For a further discussion on choice, click here.

Why freedom of choice is important click here

How sovereign is God? Click here. 

Giving and receiving glory

Do we have a "free" will or are we heavily influenced? Click here

The value of paradox and truths in tension click here.

The question of fairness click here.

The necessity of mercy click here.

Is the election and wrath of God unreasonable? click here.

The practical importance of God's electing grace click here

How we are free to choose yet bound, click here. 

________________________________________Footnotes:

¹The more aligned we are with God's will and design, the more we experience our truest significance and greatest joy. 

Also the more we freely choose God, the more we honor him. 

For these reasons God will not violate our choice. This is so we might gain the most out of our participation in the community of Father, Son, and Spirit i.e. our experiencing God to the maximum of the potential God created us for without our being God ourself.

²We do not live in a random world. The universe and everything in it operates by design. If we go contrary to that design we are not aligned with reality. This causes harm to others as well as ourselves.

³The level of pain and suffering we inflict upon each other is the greatest evidence that we cannot function properly as designed without being united to our Creator.

⁴Our ability to choose is at the heart of who we are and an essential part of our innate value. If we choose wrongly, the necessity and importance of having choice does not go away, but is misdirected. The challenge is our being redirected to choose correctly again.

The primary reason for this challenge is choice is essential to our makeup, but the pull of our misdirection (rebellion) is equally as strong in the wrong direction as it is in the right direction (submission). The strength of our rebellion is equally as powerful as the joy of our willful submission. To have the ability to enjoy God as great, our ability to refuse God must be equally as great.  

⁵To fully appreciate what we have, the possibility of not having it must also exist. The *absence of good makes the presence of good all the sweeter.

*or the possibility of its absence 

God "needs" us?



Excerpt from my book "HOW WELL DO I KNOW GOD"

12. God by His own design and choice "needs us" in order to experience Himself fully again.

There is also another vital change that occurred within the person (not the essence) of God by His design and choice. He purposely disrupted that complete and perfect union and love within the Trinity - experienced from all eternity - in order to allow others to enter into and participate in that glorious community of Father and Son, in, by and through the Spirit. 

The significance of this is that presently not all who will enter in have yet done so. Until those God has designed to join in His union of love enter, the constant uninterrupted love He had from all eternity past is not at this present time fully complete in the same way it was prior to the incarnation. In some mysterious sense it will be  incomplete until all God has designed to enter into that community do so. 

Why? Since God chose to share His love with us God broke the circle of love within the Trinity as children in a circle might unlock hands to allow others to join in and play. The desire to open the circle and necessity to be fully united again wasn’t from need but choice; a choice to share the overflow of joy and fullness of Himself with us. He did this freely, but He also did this really and truly. This was not some symbolic gesture but a real severing of something vital within His very being. (Otherwise, why would Christ have cried out in agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”). Yes the Father and Son are reunited but the reason Son came and the Father sent Him is not finished yet. The sending of His Son was and is a real and true sacrifice by God the Father as well as God the Son. The very God of the universe gave up that which He valued above all things -- His Son and the uninterrupted union, fellowship and community of His Son from eternity past in, by and through the Spirit in order that we might share in what He had (yes, He loves us that much!!!). A union He will again have, but in some mysterious way doesn't presently have with *complete fullness (though the union of the Father and Son has certainly been restored). Until all those that God intends to join in do so, His love is some inexplicable way will not be *totally complete and whole again in the same way it was before the creation and the fall of man and will be once again throughout eternity. In short, there is an element added by God Himself that is **not yet fully complete because it now includes those He has set His love on, who are not yet fully participating in that love in the way the Father and Son are. This union is presently incomplete - not just for us but also for God in some way - until all those He has set His love on have joined hands, so to speak, to reunite and complete that circle again. This is simply an extension of the loss God was and is willing to experience so that others might participate in the very Being of God in His endless love.

It may be argued that to ensure this complete reuniting of the Godhead again there had to be a certainty of it occurring. Something of such magnitude and so fundamental to God’s being would not be left to chance. The surety of God’s “reunion” could only be guaranteed if it was determined that all who were intended to enter into the community of God would, in fact, do so while at the same time giving those creatures real choice. This is an infinite concept of which the finite, you and I, cannot now fully grasp. A mystery of man's choice and God's choosing, which we will not understand until eternity or possibly may never fully understand.

But even in our finite understanding, there is God's design and a reminder that we are not God or entirely independent of God. These things humble us and require us to trust God in a way we wouldn't if we comprehended all things. And isn't this the heart of fallen humanity's dilemma? Isn't this the essence of pride and unbelief and even in part explains why He does not tell us everything? With every fiber of his being, fallen humanity resists having to be dependent on and totally, unconditionally trust God in all areas including our understanding of His ways.  In truth, the thought of not fully understanding these things scares us for it requires us to trust instead of control.

So there is a sense in which God presently acts out of need, but it is not a need for us but a need for Himself (you may wish to review my earlier section on God's "dependence" on himself). What makes God independent is the interdependence of the Trinity. And it is the perfect giving and receiving of value/worth/glory within the Trinity that gives God the greatest joy and pleasure. But by His choice and design, He has temporarily disrupted that inter-dependence along with the complete fullness of the love and joy of it in order to allow others to share in it. And by our sharing in it we reflect back to God that love and glory that originates within Him alone. God was simply so happy, joyful, and full of love, that He longed for others to know and experience what He had been experiencing within the Godhead from all eternity. The overflowing joy, love, and delight of beholding and delighting in the glory of each other within His triune being. As a result, He was willing to set aside for a time, the completeness of it so others could enter into it. Sacrifice became an inherent part of God's makeup through the incarnation of Christ. Now, the reuniting and the fullness of the flow of God’s love again - by His choice and design - require our union with Him. So by His design i.e. His self imposed choice we are now a part of His experiencing Himself fully and perfectly again. The end result is not just our rejoicing in God's perfect and complete love but in His rejoicing in it again (“Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began) and our rejoicing in it along with Him. This will be the ongoing celebration throughout eternity beginning at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

The wonder of God’s perfect plan is truly beyond our understanding. Praise Him for He is full of wonder! To Him be all worth and majesty both now and for all eternity, for from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory!

In summary, when we think about how God made us exactly as we are so we would best be able to commune with Him; to love Him and to be loved by Him most, we had to be like Him as much as possible while at the same time still dependent creatures. And the way man turned out from the creation to the fall to procreation and our present state of rebellion (a choice) with all the suffering and pain it has caused is all part of God’s perfect overall plan to bring about our greatest possible union with Him and His greatest possible glory. This is God’s plan; that we might know and experience Him as He experiences Himself as much as possible for created beings to do so. In order for that to occur, I would suggest every aspect of how things have occurred and will occur is the deliberate design of God toward that end. Nothing is an accident or by chance, but deliberate and purposeful. Every aspect of how we were created, our ability to doubt God, to rebel, fall, and the consequent suffering to mankind and the rest of creation were all necessary and intentional, to satisfy this overriding purpose for our existence, which is for as many as possible to be conformed to the image of His Son as much as possible in order that we come to know and experience all that God is to the greatest extent possible thereby glorifying Him. In short man’s rebellion and fall along with the consequent pain and suffering and God’s redemption of man was not God’s backup plan to a messed up original plan but was the original plan from eternity past in order for God to achieve this end. All things occur in order for us to enjoy and appreciate God in all His love, joy, splendor and glory to the greatest degree possible. Of course, this is only the reasoning and speculation of a finite mind within the boundaries of scripture and no doubt falls far short of grasping the fullness of one of the greatest mysteries of God.

*Or possibly God is fully in union now but will experience it in a greater way by our being united with Him in quantity as well as quality. 

**It could be argued that since the complete number of those who will eventually join in this union is already decided, the union is actually complete as far as God is concerned i.e. in His mind, however, just as something real in time occurred in the incarnation of Christ (though already complete in the mind of God) so too, those coming to Christ who have not yet come is a real occurrence as well. Since we are touching the fringe of the garments of the infinite; these thoughts are only a feeble attempt by finite minds to grasp the infinite within the boundaries of scripture. We not claim perfect understanding by any means, but we can seek to reason within the boundaries of scripture and attempting to grasp what we may never fully understand. But in doing so we must hold to these things lightly i.e. not dogmatically. And that is ok. The need to make everything work out logically may have more to do with pride than a necessity in order to be true i.e. we can not rule it out as true because we can not make it work out logically.

Why explore things that are only inferred in scripture and not stated explicitly? Because some explicit statements and teachings appear to contradict other explicit statements. For example, there is no evil in God yet God knows good and evil. Also, Christ is fully man yet fully God and God are one in essence yet three distinct beings. What do we do with these paradoxes and seeming contradictions? We should not ignore them because we can not fully make sense of them but attempt to see how they might work and fit together and what, if any, benefit can be gained in doing so.

Some may feel this is fruitless. I would suggest the opposite. Click here for a discussion of the value of paradox.