If you read all of the study it says
1 God made man with the right and ability to choose to obey Him or not
2 Adam chose to disobey
3 GOD did not just kill them and start over because God gave them the right to choose.
4 God made a way to renew fellowship and return to God.
Why COULD man fall?
If man was to be a truly Free Moral agent, which could “Choose to fellowship with God “OR NOT” man had to be able and free to choose not to know God!
The point here is God wanted a being that could and would, choose to know Him, to Love Him, to serve Him, TO FELLOWSHIP.
The Danish Theologian/ Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard says that this fact, the fact of our free will, “is the cross that philosophy could not carry but was left stumbling at”. What a paradox it is—that it is up to us whether Omnipotence’s will may be done!
But that is what freedom means.
There is one thing that even Omnipotence cannot give to Himself:
Our own free choice to love him.
Why did God not just kill Adam and Eve and start over?
God gave them the Right to choose .
They may not have had the “knowledge of Good and Evil”, but they had the word and command of God, They lived in the garden with God and had God’s direct revelation on all matters of life and obedience that much they knew, they knew the result “you will surely Die”. Adam and Eve were to follow the direct revelation of God, they were not prepared or required to use their own wisdom and knowledge. They had Free Will to obey the revelation from God.
It is interesting how when they knew the result, they knew what God Said, they put the desire for knowledge and power above obedience. They were not so different from so many millions through History who made the same choice. God did not just kill them and start over because God gave them the right to choose.
IT says God separated Adam from the “tree of life”. Adam still had to deal with the result of disobedience, till the ground by the sweat of his brow, with weeds in his field. But, the covering blood left him in right standing with God. Adam knew what he had to do to obey God. Adam had the free choice to obey. Still a free moral agent with the right to choose to obey GOD or not!
It may be well here for us to correct a misapprehension which largely obtains in the common conception of what redemption is. When this word is used, most men’s minds go back to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and think of something already accomplished and complete in the blessed facts of the blessed Saviour’s history. This is well enough as far as it goes, and touches indeed, the great central particulars on which redemption reposes. But, viewed as a whole, redemption is a vastly wider and more wondrous thing. It stretches back through a history of six thousand years, and yet its sublimest part is still future. It includes all past dispensations and theophanies, and the coming and achievements of Christ in the flesh; but it embraces still other dispensations, and more wonderful theophanies, and a more glorious advent of Christ, and vastly more far-reaching achievements, of which His miracles were the symptomatic preintimations. There is already much of redemptive power and blessing in the world. The truth is, that everything on earth rests on a mediatorial basis. The world stands, and man exists, only because of Christ and His undertaking to be our Saviour. But for His mediatorship, Adam would have perished the day that he transgressed, and never a human being would have been born. The very ungodliest of the race owe whatever blessings they enjoy to the blood and engagement of Christ. The Apocalypse Lectures on the Book of Revelation By Joseph Seiss Originally copyrighted in 1900. This work is now in the public domain.
Adams disobedience caused All MANKIND to be separated from God.
This separation is the problem.
“SIN” is disobedience to God and the resulting separation.
God is absolute Good, to turn from God in any way is Evil.
Evil leads to sin and living like one wants.
Salvation is in Obedience to God.
Sin, all sin, is to disobey God.
Which “SIN” you do is not important.
When you turn from God you are as LOST as you can get.
If God is in you and you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, you are Holy because of His presence not anything you have done.
When we obey God and keep HIS COMMANDMENTS,
when we love Jesus and serve Him as LORD it means something.
We did nothing to save ourselves,
but Jesus DID.
When Jesus paid that Debt and we are saved by grace through faith; we are RESTORED TO FELLOWSHIP with GOD;
we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit,
Adopted into the family of God.
Jesus is our intercessor at the throne of God and we are in His Blood Justified Innocent before eternities Judge.
Old things are passed away and all things are made new.
This body becomes the temple of God
and we are Priest of the Most High God with Jesus as our High Priest.
Ok let me say this a little different.
We are saved by OBEDIENCE to GOD,
To love the LORD your God with all your Heart, Soul, and Might is to KNOW God. We were made to FELLOWSHIP with God.
But this is about putting GOD first.
IF you choose to reject GOD that is not to believe in GOD,
you are as lost as you can be,
all the rest fails to change that truth.
Please do not get lost in always looking for (Gal 5:19) … “deeds of the flesh”, the list of actions we call sin, in every step of life. Failing to Love the LORD our GOD, to KNOW HIM and FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM makes all else we do of little meaning.
… Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last. Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on God’s side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble.
There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made . When we choose to live for God we are to “Hear His voice and keep His commandments, LIVE IN His will. “By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice.
Beyond that we cannot go.
If the best you can do is still failure, still not good enough, still a sinner that is not very much to rejoice about. But, if we can see that in Jesus, we are new creatures, saved by Grace through Faith adopted into the family of God, indwelled by His Holy Spirit, this body becomes a temple of God and we Are a Priest of God. Old things are passed away and all things become new, we may go directly to the Father with our request. God made us for Fellowship and He wants to Fellowship with us.
God in His own time decided to make man for fellowship , a creature able and willing to by choice come to Fellowship with GOD.
Did God need man? NO!
Did man in any way add to or complete God? NO!
God made man because He wanted too. He needed no other reason!
In the beginning God created the heaven and earth and it was good.
God created man and woman, and it was good.
The next point we jump to in the study is man disobeying God. And we often come to some, I think, unfounded conclusions.
Possibly we need to start with WHY God created all the world and Mankind in the first place.
We need this foundation before we get to “The Fall” and a medieval intermix of ideas from many sources.
We so often look at the creation and jump right to Adam disobeying God that we miss the point of the story, and the foundation of all the rest of our understanding and theology.
The question has been asked, “Why did God create the world and man if He knew man would sin?” Like so many questions this one may be placing the emphasis in the wrong place.
Look at a few ideas that may help us understand.
The universe, the milky way, our solar system, the Earth were made by God for MAN to have a home, A place where God and Man could fellowship. God, self-existent, eternal, Holy, unchanging, all knowing, sovereign, made the world and man because HE WANTED TOO. God was making a creature for fellowship, love, and service. Someone to commune with,
This fellowship, I think, is the key!
-
God did not gain from, have too, or need to make man. All this is about fellowship. Fellowship with a creature that could and would choose to fellowship with Him.
-
God is self-existent (eternity, space, and time, exist in the self-existent God). He does not live in eternity, minute by minute, day by day, God INHABITS eternity, self-existent, NOW. All of eternity, every second of time, is now present before God. Yes, He saw the broad way, He saw the choices people would make, not to love and obey and fellowship with Him. Yes, He saw all the ones that by free choice would choose not to love or know Him. God gave man enough free will so that he could and has the right to make choices on his own, and God will honor the choices . IS 57:15
-
But, so long ago when God looked at eternity, He saw the ones that choose to love Him. Yes, He saw the narrow way that few find, He saw all our sins and failures. But, He looked beyond all that and saw fellowship with the ones that choose to follow Him. He saw in eternity that there would be some that elect by their free moral choice to serve and fellowship with Him.
-
Yes, He saw His holiness and righteousness and He knew the price of man’s sin would have to be paid. God had said if you disobey me you will die, separation form God’s fellowship, a price that had to be paid. Yes, He saw the Cross. Before time He knew He would go to that old rugged cross in my place…HE DID IT ANYWAY!
I do not know where in your theology you need to place this, but it is a fact of the Bible story,
The Relation between God and man is FELLOWSHIP not Grace! Grace comes later to fix a problem and restore fellowship.
Everyone in Gods eternal Kingdom will be there because they chose to be,
It is all about fellowship with God, CHOOSING to FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD!
Punishment, Wrath, even HELL are about choices people made; GOD, according to His desire and promise will honor our choices!
I feel the best definition of the Image of God in man is,
The ability to, “With knowledge of result”, MAKE A CHOICE.
No other creature in all creation has such an ability. I will further state that for God to truly and personally fellowship with man, man must have the reason, emotion, and free will, (that is to say the Image of GOD);
“AT LEAST TO A LEVEL TO TRULY FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD.
Think about this the Self-existent infinite sovereign God made finite sovereign man with a Free Will to FELLOWSHIP. They had to have enough in common TO FELLOWSHIP!
What we need in worship is to return to that fellowship!
The teaching on this subject; apart from “everyone” having their own description of “The Image”, the teaching has been very poor and fails to show how wonderful God is. The Self-existent infinite sovereign God made finite man with a sovereign free will and moral responsibility. But, more than just free will “The Image” includes the moral attributes of God*, holy, wise, good, merciful, loving, and sovereign.* Man was made to fellowship with God.
When “the fool” said in his heart, using the free choice God gave him we get to result listed in Psalms 14:1 and 53:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God . They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. This one in his darkness and folly, says in his heart, “There is no God.” Saying There is no God is his sin; the actions and corrupt behavior is only the symptoms of a disobedience.
This Fool does not represent or include the entire race of man .
There are two groups
“Natural Man” who made a CHOICE to say there is no God, the Fool and
“Spiritual Man” who made a choice to Hear God’s word and keep His commandments, a change of mind from ME to GOD, saved by Grace.
A second point . We, that is mankind in Adam failed. See Good is to know God. God is absolute Good, to turn from God in ANY WAY is evil. Adam failed and God made a way for us all to be restored to Fellowship.
The FIRST GOSPEL and SHEADING OF BLOOD.
Gen 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
God, in the garden, shed blood to cover sin and shame. He taught Adam about the sin offering and that the Messiah would one day come. ADAM LEFT THE GARDEN UNDER THE BLOOD, IN RIGHT STANDING WITH GOD! Looking forward to the PROMICE! (Gen 3:15 The First Gospel.) Still a free moral agent with the right to choose to obey GOD or not! Adam knew that he could choose to obey God this time and make the sacrifices God told him to make. He was still the highest of God’s creation, still had dominion over the world, and still could make Free Will Choices.
