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What the Bible says about Freedom to Choose
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Genesis 9:5-6

Though we see only a small, essential portion of what God instructed Noah about life after the Flood, this context is enough to know that He is providing a basis for the establishment of laws regulating social conduct.

Why is that necessary? The reason given is because man is in the image of God. Man is being prepared for something far exceeding that of any other part of God's creation.

Man, like God, is a being who can make choices. Unlike the rest of the physical creation, man is not a creature of instinct, reacting according to preset patterns, but one who must analyze and choose to do the right as stipulated by law.

Animals do not react by understanding and analyzing law and then making a rational decision. Yes, they react to laws, but they are reacting to ones set within their brains, instinctive patterns according to which they must react.

Man does not react instinctively. Because he has mind, he is free to do the wrong thing! But he is also free to do the right thing, as stipulated by law.

John W. Ritenbaugh


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 30:15-20

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

Mark 1:14-15

Jesus taught the good news of the coming Kingdom of God to anyone who could hear Him, and the world rejected it. He knew that most would not pay heed to His words, as this was part of God's plan from the beginning: Only those whom the Father called would follow Christ (John 6:44) because He opens their minds to the truth.

Since the Garden of Eden, God has allowed Satan to deceive humanity. During this time, He has allowed people the freedom to choose to live from the work of good or suffer from the toil of sin. The first Adam failed to depose Satan, and every human has failed similarly ever since. God allows people to choose because it is necessary to accomplish His purpose.

Then, in keeping with the principle of “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17), in the seventh millennium, humanity will rest from sin, and those who have been converted will enter into God's spiritual rest. At Christ's return in all His power and glory, Satan will be chained, unable to deceive the world any longer. Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, will rule through His now-immortal saints, forming the world-ruling Kingdom of God. God's benevolent government will replace every government on earth and its evil religions, economies, and society. Then, His future “political” policies will be established forever.

Martin G. Collins
Would Jesus Christ Vote? (Part Two)

Luke 6:6-10

An honest evaluation of what Jesus teaches will show that He gives very few rules, if any, for keeping the Sabbath (or for that matter, for anything). There is a reason for that. For one thing, the rules were already laid down in the Old Testament. Also what He came to do was to magnify the spiritual application of that law, that is, teach and expound the spirit of the law, the intention for the law.

There is hardly a law that He paid more attention to than the Sabbath, magnifying its use. There are at least seven different occasions in the four Gospels in which the Sabbath is the issue, when Jesus magnified its use for us. Every one of them has a theme of redemption in it.

What He teaches us are principles for applying the rules that have already been given in the Old Testament. For some of us, that is kind of disconcerting. We would like to have something like a bus or an airline timetable to take us through life in which every possible avenue is detailed as to exactly how we should go, where we should do something, when we should do it in every possible situation that might arise.

God allowed the Jews to try that. They eventually came up with 1,521 rules concerning the Sabbath, which they felt would cover every situation that one might possibly get into. What God is showing us through Jesus Christ is that this is unnecessary. In short, it does not work, or God would have done it. A person is not free when he is bound to those kinds of regulations.

Living in the twentieth century is not quite the same as living in the first or second centuries. Besides, that approach does negative things to a person's character; it produces an extremely narrow, intolerant, and critical casuist. What Christ did in giving us principles is that He gave us things that will last unalterable to the end of time and allow us to be free. They allow a person not always to do exactly the same thing each time. Every situation has to be judged on its own merit.

What does God want to do with our lives? What is He trying to form? He is creating in us an ability—an expertise—to judge. We are going to be kings and priests (Revelation 5:10). What does a king do? A king judges in civil matters, things that pertain to the community. What does a priest do? A priest also judges, but he judges in things spiritual. God is teaching us how to judge.

How we use the Sabbath is an integral part of His training program, and so He has purposely left out all kinds of details. But what He did through Jesus is magnify things so that we can see the intent. What we are seeing is that the intent for the Sabbath is to free. It is to liberate. It is not to bind people with rules.

There is a risk involved in what God is doing. In one sense, it puts a person at very grave risk. Blundering, foolish, and self-centered as we are, there is a grave danger of taking our liberty and turning it into license to do virtually anything we want. Or, on the other hand, to take our liberty and do as the Jews did, becoming so restrictive that we turn the Sabbath into bondage.

But God has to do that! If we are going to become judges, trained in the purpose that He wants, He has to allow us this liberty to make the judgments. So it is a risk that must be taken if a person is going to grow in judgment and character, so one will be prepared to be a king and a priest, knowing when to act and when not to act. God offers to us His Holy Spirit to give us counsel and to guide. But we must apply the principles in the circumstances of our lives.

In no case did Jesus give any indication of doing away with the Sabbath. Always the examples show Him magnifying the Sabbath's intent by doing an act of freeing someone.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fourth Commandment (Part 3)

John 8:32

An implication of this passage is that freedom is always relative. Nobody is ever really free from responsibility in his relationships with others, especially in his relationship with God. Political freedom leapt to the Jews' mind in this instance, and they replied, "We have never been in bondage to any man." But even at this time, they were in a kind of bondage to the Romans, though they did not consider themselves to be so. But political freedom is not the only kind of freedom that one can have, and in reality, it is far from the most important. Nobody is ever free to do everything that he might think to do. He will always be constrained by law, principles, tradition, and even safety factors to choose to direct himself in a certain way.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Submitting (Part 1)

Ephesians 2:1-3

Satan subtly persuaded Adam and Eve that by taking the knowledge of good and evil, they would be like gods, and by this he inserted himself as a rival to God for man's loyalty. He implied that they could institute their own ways and standards. However, he concealed from them that he would influence mankind in establishing those ways and standards so that he, the ruler of this world, would be sovereign and obeyed. The result of this is that those who submit to him are made in the Devil's image, rather than God's.

Satan, eminently successful in his ruse, has been imitated by all mankind. By the time God calls us, we are thoroughly in his image. We are so indoctrinated into his way of life that even by nature we are children of wrath!

Satan cunningly hides something else from Adam and Eve: His brand of freedom to establish standards and to choose creates tremendous diversity and thus a constant and wearying confusion. When vanity enters this mix, the result is divorce in the family, social problems in the community, and on a larger scale, bloody warfare. Mankind has paid a horrible price for wrongly choosing Satan as sovereign.

From His nature of love and wisdom, God pre-determined what is right and beautiful, and He taught Adam and Eve His way of life, instruction now included in His Word. If we want to achieve His purpose and be in His image, unlike our first parents, we must limit our free moral agency to choosing whether to submit to the universal, life-encompassing standards He has already determined.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Sovereignty of God: Part Six


 




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