THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Wednesday 5 March

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; Deuteronomy 30:19 (NKJV)

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” But the people said nothing. 1 Kings 18:21 (NIV)

One of the most amazing and yet simultaneously daunting realities is that God reserves the right for every person to choose their own final destination. It’s amazing because although He has the power to do it, He never makes anyone do anything even when He knows the outcome of the choices they make.

One of the scariest things about the love of God, is the lengths that He will go to ensure that your wishes are carried out to the letter. Grace is indeed amazing, but free will can be a frightening proposition when it is misused or abused. Let me explain.

Take the example of Adam. Adam or man, was given the opportunity of exercising dominion over the earth and he used His power of choice initially, under the sovereignty of God to do exactly that.

Sovereignty by definition means there is no one higher. On the earth Adam had authority and dominion given to him over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, over the cattle and every thing that creeped on the earth. He was not the sovereign as there was one higher than Him; God Almighty.

I want you to catch something here. As long as Adam’s will was in submission to God’s sovereignty, everything was perfect and good. The moment that Adam exercised his power of choice via his dominion outside of the parameters of God’s sovereignty, the wheels of man’s fall were set in motion by man.

This tells us that free will or choice is not evil in itself. The abuse of that right to choose, is. The truth is you have a God-given right to choose anything you want. That’s dominion over yourself. What you can’t control however are the consequences of the choices that you willingly made.

For example: you could choose to have unprotected sex with a lot of people but you could not stop the S.T.I’s that you would contract from engaging with multiple partners. You made the choices but would ultimately be unable to control the outcome of the choices.

It’s the same when it comes to accepting or rejecting the message of Christ in salvation. God will never force anyone to receive Christ. The truth is He can’t, because you have the power of choice that can be operated outside of the sovereignty of God as has happened before with Adam in the Genesis account.

‘And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.’

Matthew 10:28

‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Romans 6:23

So now there is a huge choice to be made. Death which is the second death, which is destruction, (the first death being seperation) or eternal life which means you will live on into the ages to come. There are two things here: the choice and the consequence of the choice. God will even allow us to go to our own destruction if we so choose. A harrowing thought.

Jesus when He said ‘if it be possible let this cup (of the wrath of God) pass from me, but nevertheless not my will but yours be done’, submitted His dominion as the Son of Man under the sovereignty of the Father’s will. The second and last Adam did what the first Adam failed to do. The wrath of God was put on Jesus. That was the Father’s choice.

APPLICATION

Choose to continue to outwork your salvation from the inside out and learn to use the dominion that you have in Christ within the safety of the parameters of God’s Word.