The Option to Choose

I heard it said, ‘if (God) knows what choice we’re going to make then it really isn’t a choice anymore is it?’  But, that’s not true.  Just because He knows the choices we will make in life doesn’t mean we don’t really have the ability to choose.  God created all of mankind with a free will.  I guess the question to ask ourselves is if it bothers us that our choices don’t surprise Him.

And knowing that we would make bad choices didn’t cause God to take away our power to choose—our free will.  We can see that by looking at Adam and Eve.  God knew ahead of time that they were going to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that He told them not to.  He knew they would before He even created them.  But He still didn’t take away their free will.

In fact, God so supports man’s free will that He sent Jesus to give each man, woman and child the option to choose life.  Instead of taking away man’s free will choice and instead of deciding not to create man in the first place because of their bad choice, God decided that He would not only go ahead and create man despite their bad choices and He would not only continue to give man a free will despite their bad choices but He would send His only Son—the Word of God Himself—to allow each person to have the option to choose.  God provided a way for each one of us to have the option to choose life or death for our eternal destiny and He provided us with the option always before us to choose life or death in every situation we face.  He did everything possible to provide a way for us to always have the option of a choice that leads to victory!

Adam and Eve’s choice to disobey God brought about the spiritual death of all the children born after them.  Notice that their choice was not simply to eat the fruit, but it was a choice to disobey God.  God had said, ‘you shall not do this,’ and they made the choice to say, ‘yes we will.’  But even so, God still provided a way to bring the choice of life back to mankind.  If He wouldn’t have planned to send Jesus but if He would have forsaken mankind and left us all to our own devices then we wouldn’t have the option to choose life.  All of us would have been ruled by death our entire lives with no hope of spiritual life.

But thank God He didn’t forsake us.  He gave us the power to choose.  He gave us an option.  He gave us the choice of receiving His Son, Jesus Christ.