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Deuteronomy 30:15  (King James Version)
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<< Deuteronomy 30:14   Deuteronomy 30:16 >>


Deuteronomy 30:15-20

God is urging us to make serious and deliberate choices to propel us toward the conclusion of His purpose. He requires us to commit and make decisions. In matters of morality, remaining neutral is not an option. The issues are sharply defined: obedience, disobedience; life, death; good, evil. He especially points out that He will not tolerate idolatry. Idols are useless vanities that people choose to submit to rather than the sovereign God.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Sovereignty of God: Part Six



Deuteronomy 30:15-20

God—by His calling, granting us repentance, giving us His Spirit, helping us understand the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and the revelation of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice—has brought us to a place that is spiritually identical to that of the Israelites after the Old Covenant was confirmed. Thus, this passage cries out to us with great forcefulness.

The world, and even some who claim membership in the church of God, tell us that salvation is secure once we have been justified by God's grace. They say that salvation from that point on is unconditional. If salvation is unconditional from justification on, why does God admonish us to choose between life and death? Why does He command us to choose to keep His law so that we may live and inherit the land? Why does God threaten us, His children, with the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:15)? Are His threats hollow? Are they lies because there really is no Lake of Fire?

If salvation is unconditional after we receive God's Holy Spirit, then the death of an entire generation (except for Joshua and Caleb), lost because of faithlessness, is nothing but a misleading waste. God, then, expended over a million lives for no good reason. But I Corinthians 10:11 says, "Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."

John W. Ritenbaugh
After Pentecost, Then What?



Deuteronomy 30:15-20

God Almighty has given man the power to make choices regarding his ultimate destiny. As a free moral agent, man has the awesome responsibility to choose between a hapless, physio-chemical existence with a dead end or a rich and rewarding eternity as a member of God's Family. Though the choice appears easy, the challenging road to the Kingdom of God dismays many because they are unwilling to undergo the rigors of the journey.

God has set before us the choice to obey or disobey, hoping we will choose obedience and giving us reasons and promises that persuade us to that end, but He wants us to make sure that it is our intention, without coercion or brainwashing on His part. It takes a free moral agent, making the right choices, to create the mind of Christ in us. Though He has a good idea how we will choose, God ultimately does not know what we will decide when given the choice. He will do all He can—short of rescinding our freedom to choose—to convince us to choose Him.

David F. Maas
Fasting: Building Spiritual Muscle



Deuteronomy 30:15-20

One of the Bible's greatest principles is "choose life." God sets before us two ways of life—His way and the wrong way—and gives us the freedom to choose which we will follow. He commands us to choose life so that we may live fully, both now and in His Kingdom, but we can opt for the other way of sin just as readily.

With the receipt of the Holy Spirit, we truly have free choice or free-moral agency. Before conversion, as the apostles wrote, we simply lived like everyone else, that is, according to the course of this world (Ephesians 2:1-3; I Peter 1:18; 4:3). Now, able to judge between the two ways of life more accurately, we have the power to decide to go God's way.

It is in our choices that we sin or live righteously. James is very clear that we do not sin when tempted but "when desire has conceived" or when we choose to act on it (James 1:14-15). The sin begins with the choice and continues with the act. Thus, all sin has a spiritual basis.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Sin Is Spiritual!



Deuteronomy 30:15-19

A tenet supposing that "the truth lies in the middle" in most matters is an ethically dangerous one. Applied universally, it guarantees a person a life—and communally, a culture—of compromise. Such a person or community will take a stand on nothing. Every decision will be a negotiation between whatever is perceived to be at the far ends of the spectrum. This is life in the gray land of rootless vacillation. It is living without convictions, without belief in the existence of truth.

The peril in living by this principle reveals itself most readily in matters of morality. In His Ten Commandments, God outlines truths regarding human conduct, both toward Himself and toward fellow man. These rules are not guidelines, as many seem to consider them today, but non-negotiable standards. As He patiently explains in places like Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, if we live by them, we will receive all sorts of blessings, but if we reject them and violate them, we had better brace ourselves for calamity. With God and His laws of happy, successful human behavior, there is no middle ground.

Yet, those who try to walk a centrist road often consider the Ten Commandments to be one of the extremes and begin backpedaling toward antinomianism, otherwise known as anarchy or lawlessness. For example, God instructs us, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13), an unambiguous statement. In other places, God explains that manslaughter is an exception to this, but even one who commits manslaughter must pay a stiff penalty for ending a human life (see Exodus 21:13; 22:2-3; Numbers 35:16-28; Deuteronomy 19:4-6). As clear as this is, though, centrists rationalize further exceptions to reach personal comfort zones.

Abortion is a sad case of such compromise. As the murder of a human life, abortion falls under the umbrella of the sixth commandment. A centrist may not agree with radical, pro-choice advocates that abortion should be on demand at any time and for any reason, yet he might allow the use of RU-486 (mifepristone), the abortion pill, because he concludes it does not technically cause an abortion (in many—but not all—cases, it is used to prevent conception).

Another concession on the abortion issue is the ubiquitous proviso, "except in cases of rape or incest." If one believes that abortion is murder, accepting this position opens a crack in the dike. It assumes that the life to be extinguished is of lesser worth due to the manner of its conception. Ultimately, this exception operates on a belief that it is permissible to end a pregnancy if it can be determined—somehow—that the child would not enjoy a certain quality of life. Thus, it also becomes allowable to abort malformed and retarded babies, and the next step would be to abort potentially chronically ill children, say, those with genetic markers that point to certain debilitating diseases and syndromes. How long is it before abortion is tolerated for reasons as basic as gender (already common in India and China) or hair or eye color?

This is the proverbial slippery slope that eventually ensues from living "somewhere in the middle." The apostle Paul maintains in Romans 8:7 that human nature is essentially hostile toward God and His law; it recoils from submitting to divine standards, which are, admittedly, oftentimes difficult to observe. The Bible shows that people have an innate tendency to compromise to placate the human drive to live by its own rules. Every day in myriad situations, men and women repeat the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden (Genesis 3:1-6), rejecting God's command in order to fulfill their own desires. Seeking "truth" through compromise will only end in sin and its destructive consequences.

Fundamentally, those who seek the "truth" between extremes are playing God. They have taken upon themselves the job of determining what is right and wrong, a position that the great Sovereign of the universe has not abdicated. Truth be told, we have all been guilty of this usurpation of God's throne, and there is no time like the present to give it back to the One to whom it rightfully belongs.

This suggests that we have to adjust our thinking. Men have formulated a spectrum of choices, all of which are legitimate to human minds, yet this is not a biblical construct. The Bible reveals, not a continuum with extremes bracketing an expansive center, but a simple alternative: We can choose between God's way and the wrong way. This is why God has established the process of conversion, so that over a lifetime of overcoming and growth, we can repent of our lives of compromise and begin to live by His righteous standards.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Somewhere in the Middle




Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Deuteronomy 30:15:

Genesis 6:5-6
Genesis 25:34
Leviticus 16:21-22
Joshua 9:3-15
1 Corinthians 6:9-12

 

<< Deuteronomy 30:14   Deuteronomy 30:16 >>



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