Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Bad Choices Motivated by Carnal Desires
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Genesis 2:15-17
Beginning in Genesis 2:15, God gives man two clear instructions. First, he must "tend and keep"—or as some translations say, "cultivate and preserve" or "adorn and guard"—the Garden. He would have to choose to work the Garden to produce food, as well as to keep it from deteriorating. Almost the very first things said to him involve Adam having to choose to do or not do. Did God instruct any animal to do anything remotely similar? They are not in God's image. The second command involves an even greater responsibility to choose. God commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that was in the midst of the Garden because in the day they ate its fruit they would surely die. This represents God's first clear expression of His will for man involving a moral choice. It could not have been more plainly stated. The story of the first sin in Genesis 3 involves four characters: God, who had instructed and set the standard; Adam and Eve, who have had the standard clearly taught them; and the Serpent, who arrived on the scene to test them. The outcome of the test is decided in a clash of wills: Satan's, who uses his ploys to persuade nascent humanity, and Adam's and Eve's, who choose to allow their desires for the fruit and to be like God to override their knowledge of the moral standard and to indulge in the self-expression of their wills. Conversely, animals cannot sin; they are not free to choose to sin. They truly are close to puppets on a string. This is the eternal picture of man's moral life. God tells us what is right but then allows us the freedom to determine what we will do. There is no evidence at all that God tricked Adam and Eve into sinning. He did not stack the deck against them, nor did He overpower them. They were free to choose either way. The same act of creation that creates the possibility of moral character also opens the door to sin. Does not God say to Cain in Genesis 4:7, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it"? The cause of man's plight is not ignorance of the right but his own desire, which leads him to substitute his will for God's. This simple story illustrates why man's relationship with God has run afoul. By deliberate choice, man separates himself from God, who created him and gives him the freedom to choose. Nothing changes regarding the free-moral agency of the person called by God. When one is forgiven and receives God's Spirit, He does not overpower them. The right to choose freely remains, even as with Adam and Eve. To take away this privilege would truly make the individual a puppet on a string and destroy God's creation of him or her in His spiritual image. God is free to choose, and so is man created in God's image. It is this freedom of choice that opens the door for man, through redemption and conversion, to be like God in character.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Genesis 1 and Free-Moral Agency
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Proverbs 14:12
At its heart, Proverbs 14:12 instructs mankind in a vital truth: No truth is clearer, more direct, and more rewarding than God's truth. Nobody else's truth can exceed the reliability of God's truth, and in fact, it is impossible for Him to lie (Hebrews 6:18). The Amplified Bible provides this expansion: “There is a way which seems right to a man and appears straight before him, but at the end of it is the way of death.” Yet, no deception is present when God and His Word are involved. The word “death” at the proverb's conclusion is a clue that its instruction deals primarily with a choice in any circumstance of whether to sin. Within Proverbs, this verse is only one among many dealing with the human proclivity to make bad choices motivated by devious carnal desires to get the most and best for the self. We all fall victim to the truth expressed in Proverbs 14:12. Adam and Eve, after being warned directly and personally by God, nonetheless almost immediately did what God had said not to do. The urge to satisfy our desires despite warnings exists for us just as it did for them. That we, too, sin after He reveals Himself to us is significant evidence that we truly do not respect and believe God as we should. A great deal more evidence exists within Proverbs of how deeply pride is engrained in our character, persuading us to forge our way ahead rather than follow the wise counsel of men, let alone that of God. We may not fall into immediate death, but we do fail to achieve the success we had hoped for through carnal impatience, avoiding hard work, or even sheer hardheadedness because we refuse to follow sound counsel. Proverbs 14:12 depicts a person following a path on a journey, which applies directly to all of us because, since our calling, we are on the way of salvation (Acts 16:17; 18:25-26). The Hebrew term underlying “right” more specifically means “straight” or “level,” but it also contains moral implications. The same Hebrew word is translated in verse 11 as “upright,” clearly showing its moral connotations. Notice the strength of the scorn the proverb projects onto the traveler: The first phrase of the verse is singular (“a way”), but in the second phrase, it is plural (“ways”). Since no wise, human counsel appears in the context, it is safe to assume that in this case the counsel comes from God. Regardless, the fool will not listen to His advice. Thus, as he begins to walk, he perceives a way open before him. This path shows promise of delivering happiness, power, and a long life, despite his being warned that things can easily go wrong in many ways with his preferred choice. Even so, he is blinded by his pride from the lesson God is teaching, which is clear: In God's way of life, there are no shortcuts to success. His instruction must be followed if one seeks to avoid the pitfalls that will arise. Proverbs 12:15 follows the same basic path of teaching as Proverbs 14:12, reading, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.” The Revised English Bible [REB] translates this more strongly in alignment with Proverbs 14:12: “A fool's conduct is right in his own eyes; to listen to advice shows wisdom.” The REB moves the focus from a person merely thinking, which may lead to rejecting counsel, to literal conduct, showing that he clearly rejected the good counsel God made available. Some are so proud that they tend to think of themselves as rarely wrong. In relation to God, the humanist thinks of himself so, always thinking he knows best. Yet, those who really do know God recognize that the humanist is unaware of the weakness of his relationship with God, and thus they know he is foolish.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Eight)
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Matthew 6:21-24
This passage contains metaphorical usages of the heart, the eyes, and light and darkness, teaching us about spiritual blindness. Jesus' basic theme is our focus—the things we set our eyes or hearts on or the thoughts to which our minds continually return. We should understand the word “mammon” broadly and not limit it just to money. Because Jesus presents only two options here, we can define mammon as “anything other than God”! Mammon can be anything “under the sun” and thus include countless things that we cannot necessarily hold in our hands yet are still of the flesh. We may feel good about ourselves for being content with a middle-class lifestyle and not pursuing wealth. However, if our hearts pursue praise, popularity, position, power, or prestige, we are still serving mammon. These are still cares of the physical life rather than the conduct of the new life. Jesus teaches that our clarity of vision depends on our focus—on what gets our attention. Whether healthy or diseased, our spiritual eyesight is directly related to what we treasure and whom or what we serve. Having the wrong treasure or serving the wrong master equates to having a bad eye and walking in darkness. His illustrations mean that blinding ourselves can be as simple as letting God slip from our view or not retaining God in our knowledge, as Romans 1 mentions. We stumble and sin when we lose our focus on God and what matters to Him. Then, our understanding begins to regress, if only a little. We may start down that pervasive path of sinning, further damaging our understanding, and sinning again. Perhaps this scenario seems overblown or excessively dire. However, it seems so only because we think of it like a sped-up, time-lapse video of a seed that germinates, grows, blossoms, and fades in a matter of seconds. In real life, this process of darkening our own eyes may take substantially longer, during which time we face many opportunities to choose differently. Jesus' brother, the apostle James, also describes this process quite simply, beginning with an enticement or desire (James 1:13-15). The temptation is the equivalent of the earthly treasure, the mammon, taking one's eyes off God. He writes, when “desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (verse 15). This process sounds like it progresses rapidly, and in some relatively rare instances, like with Ananias and Sapphira, death can result in a matter of hours. In other cases, as with Judas, that wrong focus—a form of blindness—may persist for years before the internal suppression of truth breaks out in an act that God may allow to happen as a judgment. That does not mean we are lost, unlike Judas. It means we could have taken a better road and kept ourselves—and maybe others—from extra grief and regret.
David C. Grabbe
Spiritual Blindness (Part Three): Choosing a Curse
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John 8:44
Jesus describes Satan as a murderer in addition to being a destroyer. A murderer destroys life. Jesus also calls him a liar. He does not dwell in the truth at all, deceiving all the time. We are human beings, created in the image of God. We have tremendous capacity and potential, but we have used our powers just as the father of destruction, the father of lies, would have used them. The Hebrew word ruach (translated as "spirit"), Greek pneuma (also translated as "spirit"), and the English "spirit" all mean basically the same thing. The same general implication underlies all of their applications: that of an often powerful, invisible, immaterial, motivating force. This unseen force inspires or encourages people to do something, good or bad. Its quality is not relevant at this point. Thus, the Bible will use the Hebrew or Greek word for "spirit" for such invisible, motivating forces as "feelings" and "attitudes"—even "talents." E.W. Bullinger says in his Companion Bible that the Bible gives the word "spirit" eight different applications. Human spirits are not always invisible—they can be observed on a face or felt by those nearby—but they work as a force to motivate behavior or reaction. For example, if we walk into a room where people are scowling or perhaps even angry, we are affected. We might wonder, "What got into them?" meaning "What inspired their attitude?" "Why the angry spirit?" If we stick around for even a short while—it will not take long—that negative spirit will begin motivating us to react. Depending on the person with the negative attitude, the motivation to reaction could be swift! If that person happens to be our spouse, we can probably tell immediately that they are in a different spirit, and it will affect us right away. A spirit has flowed from one person to another. This flow of spirit also works positively. If we are around someone who is really up and happy and congenial, an outgoing person, his or her spirit will affect us in a positive way. We enjoy being around such people because we feel better and their spirits motivate us to be like them. These may be simple explanations, but that is how a spirit works. A spirit is invisible and immaterial, but it has powerful motivating effects. Because we have a spirit too, we can pick up on the spirit and attitude of other people—and of supernatural beings as well.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Right Use of Power
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