Genesis 2:15-17 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” From the very onset, God created man with the ability to make a deliberate choice. For that to happen, man had to have the free will to do so.
Thus, the instruction that God gave man concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil points to this. Otherwise, how could man choose to eat or not to eat unless he had the free will to choose. The exertion of this free will, therefore, can either be worship or rebellion. It is worship if we are joyfully choosing to obey God, and it is rebellion when we outrightly disobey.
Unfortunately, Adam and Eve exercised their free will by being rebellious. Of course, we know what that led to. Throughout the Scriptures, God gives man the opportunity to choose Him over others, to choose life over death (Ex. Deuteronomy 30:15).
It is incumbent upon us to choose Him and thus to choose life. Moreover, we are faced daily with multiple opportunities to make various choices. How we exert our free will speaks to our relationship with God. When you consider the greatest commandment, then you realise what God intended all along. That our free will and its proper usage was meant to express worship and love to Him:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (affections) and with all your soul(will) and with all your mind(intellect)…” (Matthew 22:36) Reflections 1. Do your choices in life communicate worship and love to God?
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