We are designed as unique human beings with free will and the ability to choose. This was the DNA that God implanted into Adam and Eve during creation.
It is an indication of the regard God had for man that He built into our chemistry the capacity to think independently of God. It was a risk that He was prepared to take to enjoy the maximum pleasure of fellowship with a sentient creature. Before the creation of man the creation was declared as “good”. After He created a thinking being called man God described His new creation as “very good”.
When He gave the garden to them as a stewardship vocation God set limits. The boundary that God gave applied to one tree in a garden that was “very good” and full of all manner of other trees. It is true that His boundary was extreme and they knew what tree was not to be touched and the heard the result of breaking that boundary “on the day that you eat of the fruit you will die”.
The consequence for mankind was that we died, not as a physical being but as a spiritual one. God gave Adam and Eve the “breath of life” as a spiritual being, to enhance the communications between Him and mankind. With the exception of our spirit life which died God left mankind unchanged as beings with the capacity for autonomous determination.
Even today we still possess this ability; it is what makes us the unique individuals that we are. God still permits mankind to choose to decide for Him, or to not to, we are not struck by lightning when we go against God’s standard. There are results for such a decision that are very personal; we actually cause our own problems for deciding to go our own way.
Jesus is God’s solution for our decisions that are contrary to the ones He would have us make. His death on the cross creates the environment which God can renew the fellowship with us. We do not have to suspend out thinking faculties. We do not even have to give up our free will. All we need to do is to relate personally to Jesus, and determine to live the sort of life that Jesus our Master has demonstrated for us by His own life.
We are renewed by Jesus when He returns to us the Spirit who communes with God. This is the defining moment in our ability to choose for God as well against Him. There are many verses about light in the New Testament and quite a few about the children of the darkness.
Children of the darkness are those who are yet to meet the Master. They are able to choose between right and wrong but it is short of a God sized right, because their hearts have not been enlightened by Jesus.
We bear a responsibility as lovers of the Light to show to others how to make God honouring decisions. This is so that they may be drawn to the Lord of light. The Spirit tells how to make these decisions, not in a plastic way but with integrity of heart and mind. If we make these calls for any other reason than to honour Him then the people we do it to impress will see right through our show of righteousness.
We need chose to set our life to honour God and live for Him. This decision is the one where we move from living in God and living for God. Many in the Church live for God by doing the “right thing”. When we live in God His Spirit enables us to choose what God would have us chose, and it will show out to those we affect.
No comments:
Post a Comment