Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “For What Nation is There So Great?”. And in Tuesday’s lesson, once again, there is a reference to “choice”. A topic I would like to address in this week’s thoughts. Some fundamental concepts (and even questions) for us to consider.
When I first started to consider faith-in-God and “free choice” (as a teen), I pondered this seeming dichotomy. That as a sinner, captivated and held captive by my sinful self, how was it possible for me to have truly “free” choice? As a sinner, how was it even possible for me to have any platform on which to be able or capable of weighing ideas, weighing concepts and making informed decisions? But more. Deceived and depraved by sin, wasn’t my decision-making features of my brain inoperable? It seemed that God was putting into my hands (my mind) a responsibility that was utterly impossible for me to perform.
But then I remembered what Paul tells us in Romans… “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Romans 5:18). Paul makes it clear that all… ALL… have been given this “gift” of being “set right” (justification of life). PRAISE GOD! We do have a platform upon which to make decisions after all!
But we must not make Paul’s very clear statement mean something it does not mean. This verse has been used by some of our Christian brothers and sisters to mean that all will be saved (healed). Not so. The real question is, “Has the ‘gift’ been a welcomed gift?” “But you are not carnal but spiritual if the Spirit of God finds a home within you” (Romans 8:9). Does it find a home in you? Is it welcomed by you?
The “gift” of being “set right” is ours. We are able to think and decide and choose. But we cannot choose the natural consequences of those choices. Our very “free will” choices can take away that “gift”. Can negate that “gift”. The natural consequences of those choices can set us very wrong and can destroy the “gift”. “Every act of transgression reacts upon the sinner, works in him a change of character, and makes it more easy for him to transgress again. By choosing to sin, men separate themselves from God, cut themselves off from the channel of blessing, and the sure result is ruin and death” (1 Selected Messages pg. 235).
If not for God’s intervention, beginning for humanity in the Garden, we would not be able to exercise choice. We would be doomed to illogical, rebellious, destructive thinking and subsequent choosing. God stepped-in to the void left by Adam and Eve (and by extension, you and I) and overshadowed the destruction in their minds caused-by that rebellious, self-serving act. He intervened because we did not know what we were doing. But in the free-will choosing that comes from God’s intervention, we are either strengthening our trust in God and His ability to change us and lead us into the light... OR… strengthening our rebellion and our distrust of God neutralizing His ability to change us, leading us further and further into the dark. “Through persistently cherishing evil, willfully disregarding the pleadings of divine love, the sinner loses the love for good, the desire for God, the very capacity to receive the light of heaven” (The Mount of Blessing pg. 92).
Free-will choice. A gift from God that is a part of our Edenic heritage. Part of God's intervention of justification... of setting-us-right. But, like the Holy pair in that Edenic paradise, we can use that gift to destroy that gift. We can lose “the desire for God” … even “the very capacity to receive” the things of God (quoted above). Let us value God’s gift of being “set right” and not use that gift for our own destruction, leading us to be hardened and “set wrong”. Let each of us allow God to “find a home within you” (quoted above).
With brotherly love,
Jim