Choice

Proverbs 8:10 NIV

Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold,

Is The Choice Yours?

When I was twelve or so, I was hanging out at my friend’s house when he suddenly went inside and brought me something to see.   I was not psychologically prepared for what I was about to encounter; no one had gone over with me such a time as this and I reacted reflexively rather than thoughtfully.  He had a pornographic magazine in his hand that he had pulled out of his father’s closet.  I had never seen pornography before; never encountered it, never in my life had to decide if I was going to look at pornography.  I didn’t know what the long term ramifications would be if I leafed through it with my friend.  It was of course a moral choice for me long before I understood the concept of moral choices.  I believed in God, was already a born again Christian, had been baptized and taught the Ten Commandments and the basic stories of the Bible.  Pornography was new to me though.  I liked girls, noticed them, was attracted to them and already had picked out several I wanted to like me.  Pornography though was several steps beyond my previous moral choices and I was the one who had to decide if I would look or not.

Life is filled with choices.  All living creatures have choice…plants and single cell organisms and bugs make mechanical choices.  They set their roots down here or there, move into this section of the water or not, leave the ant hill or stay and build the tunnels.  These choices though are mechanical; there is no thought given to them.  Squirrels and crows also make choices but their choices are instinctual, perhaps they think about what they choose but it is not highly organized thought, not strategic.  Dolphins and chimpanzees are able to make choices and think more about what they decide than crows certainly.  They show signs of loyalty and care in their choices sometimes but how much of what they decide is based on values of right and wrong we cannot say.  Can any animal choose to rebel against God or reject His will for it; it doesn’t seem so.  The Bible though tells us who certainly can choose for or against God; who has the ability to say “yes” or “no” to Him.

Our discussion today is not centered on all choices but one kind of choice—the moral choice. Let us make clear what a moral choice is.  A moral choice is the decision to agree or disagree with God in what you do.  Because God determines what is right or wrong and we don’t; it does not matter what our opinion is about something; the moral choice is built on how we respond to God and what He says to do or not do.  Some moral choices are easy to comprehend…do I commit adultery or not, do I steal from my brother or not, do I beat up the guy who took my parking space or not.  Other moral decisions take work to get at them.  We have to study the Bible carefully to get at them.  Do I have an abortion or not?  Do I party with my friends at a bar or not?  What sorts of movies should I watch? 

We all make moral choices, perhaps daily or even hourly but why is that so?  It is because God has made us free to make moral choices.  Consider the moral choice God gave the Israelites as they began their new life in the Promised Land.  "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV) Not only do natural beings make moral choices because of God’s freedom granted to them, so also do supernatural beings such as Satan.  Satan has freedom to obey God or not as seen in the ancient book of Genesis.  Satan enticed Eve to disobey God and after Adam and Eve did make the moral choice to eat the forbidden fruit, God punished Satan for that moral choice of disobeying Him.  Of course Adam and Eve also were punished and for the first time in human history, sin became a part of the existence of mankind.  What was Satan’s first moral choice?  We do not know but we are told about the one involving mankind.  Satan was given freedom by God to support Him with regard to Adam and Eve’s moral development or rebel against Him and of course He rebelled.

If God were not morally free to choose right and wrong, then the universe would be run by a mechanical engine bound by limitations such as a computer has.  God however is free and therefore His decisions are real decisions He makes.  So why did He choose to make Satan morally free?  Why make people morally free?  What is the good in that if evil has a way into the universe through that freedom?  Now we must examine this question honestly and with care.

Consider our Lord’s options.  He could live forever within the Trinity with never another being in existence.  Clearly His love moved Him away from that option.  He could create other beings who were not morally free, who were mechanical in regard to morality.  They could only do what God said to do but then they would never have fellowship with Him in the same way those who are morally free can.  There are certain parts of a relationship that are not possible if you are not morally free.  You cannot have faith if you are not morally free.  You cannot hope without moral freedom.  And you cannot love if you are not morally free.  To hope, you must be able to choose not to hope.  It is the same with faith.  To have faith, you must be free not to have faith.  Most importantly, to love, you have to be able to not love.

Let’s examine this matter of love.  Love can be mimicked mechanically.  A creature licks your hand because that is what that sort of creature does.  Another creature can wag its tail when it sees you because that is the mechanical response.  We can trick ourselves into believing it is love because it looks like love and we feel love toward that creature but we know it isn’t love it has toward us.  Perhaps we even like that sort of thing more than the risk of real love but we have chosen something much less than love.  We have gone for a mechanical licking creature rather someone who chooses to love us.  Imagine a woman with a man only because he is rich and provides her family a house.  She may kiss him and hug him and write him love letters but she does it so that he will continue to provide for her.  We would never call that sort of relationship love because it is mechanical…it is forced, either by greed or need.  Love is a freely chosen response to another and must be so for it to be love.

God makes us morally free because that is the only way He can enter into a love relationship with us.  And here is the risk.  If we are free to love, then we are free to hate.  We are free to manipulate and free to ignore, disrespect and mistreat.  We are like the prodigal son, free to reject the one who loves us and again like him, free to come back to him in humility and a new sense of appreciation of what we have in that one we love.  If we are morally free, then we can do anything we wish to holiness, love and goodness.  We can hate, destroy, use, ruin, cheat, lie or kill ourselves.  We can do these things because we are morally free.  Here is the rub though.  Many are angry that God would create a universe where evil is possible.  They wonder what sort of cruelty would lead to a creation where corruption can take a seat alongside goodness, love and kindness!

Consider this.  Because God is love, he is free to love at a level that goes beyond our ability to fathom.  He took all our evil, all the sin we have produced through our moral freedom and absorbed it into Himself.   To understand God in this, we must listen carefully to the first part of John 3: 16.  For God so loved the world…  Not only did God love us so much that He gave us moral freedom, He loved us enough to take all the evil our moral freedom has produced and accepted the punishment Himself for it.  He took in Himself the damage our unholy choices have caused and died with them so that we would not have to live with the consequences of our moral choices.  God’s choice was to let us be free to make moral choices of good and evil. Even supernatural beings like Satan he gave moral freedom to choose good or evil.   Because we all have chosen evil and unholy living, God also chose, out of His moral freedom to take upon Himself the consequences of our sin…to die for them.

Some are angry with God for letting us choose evil.  They are mad that others can sin freely, can hurt people and wreck their lives.  That is the cost of being free to make moral choices.  Imagine though someone being mad at her mom for giving her a ride to school or being mad at his son for making him breakfast or being upset with his wife for being loyal to him and declaring her love for him.  How terrible would that person be?  Our God is so full of love for us that He gives us the freedom to act hatefully and bitterly and despise the freedom He has given us and then take all that hatred and bitterness into Himself and suffer the pain it has caused.   More than that, He chooses when we let Him, to join with us and make us completely new.  He gives us His life joined with our life and we gain His will to be holy and His strength to love completely.  What is the grace of God?  It is God’s choice to suffer the consequences of our moral choices, to give us the freedom to make those choices and then give Himself to us to be a part of us without, eventually, any of the damage our moral choices have caused us.

There is an old story of a little dog that loved a lion so much that after barking at the lion to stop heading into a hunter’s trap, he went after the lion that ignored his warning and jumped in front of the arrow that was intended for the lion.  As the dog lay dying, the lion roared at the little dog, complaining that the dog didn’t stop his headlong dash into the hunter’s trap.  He cursed the dog and complained about his wickedness for letting the hunter shoot his arrow.  The little dog smiled and simply whispered with his last breath, “I love you lion.”  How would that lion greet the little dog if three days later, the dog came back to life?  Would he hate him for his sacrifice?  Would he walk away from the dog’s warm embrace?  Would he realize what a great treasure that dog’s love is?  Would he forever be loyal to such a friend as that?  For God so loved the world…

Holy, Holy, Holy

Is there any religion in the world that so completely recognizes the need of mankind more than Christianity?  If all that was necessary for a good life was a better list of self-help suggestions or moral platitudes, then we would be fit for any challenge before us.  The world would be nobler and more reasonable than at any time in history for there has never been a time that such a proliferation of advice has been available.  Suicide should have long been eliminated along with drunkenness and violence.  Yet we are not better off than before...perhaps not worse off but that is certainly debatable.  It is a modern absurdity that religion can help us without a radical transformation of our soul.  Give any system of thought a societal landing spot and it will do nothing to make the people there better.  Cannibalism did not spring up in a vacuum; it originated in a religious subsystem that could not redeem the people who lived its tenets to its logical conclusion.  The treasured and time-honored practices of wife-burning, child sacrifice, abandonment of elders and prostitution all sprang out of religious cultural mores.  We are ignorant of the facts if we think we can make ourselves better people by getting something taught more effectively.  Religious atheism brought us the wonders of genocide and death camps.  The problem facing all mankind is the deadly plague of sinfulness that permeates every level of each society on earth.  One can read the Proverbs day and night, meditate all one wants upon the Decalogue and nothing good will come of it but a more subtle and pervasive sinfulness petrified by pride.  We need a savior completely .   The most common mistake we make is to assume we can gain Christ and then figure out everything else .  Your soul is not fixed by you in any way; only Christ entering you through the Cross can make you actually right...perfectly right.  As more of you becomes engaged with Jesus crucified, more of you becomes pure and holy.  Say "no" to Jesus Christ even for an instant and the wreckage of sin stiffens its neck and won't let you pass any further.  Your temper will stay, your lust will stay, your despairing fretting will stay, your arrogant self-righteousness will stay, your argumentative piety will stay, your cursing heart will stay.  The unbeliever generally can care less if he changes a whit...He is too comfortable to move off his twilight roosting.  But the Christian, who has tasted the sweetness of real holiness will never be able to rest contentedly with his sin self still established.  The only way to be done with it, and it will be eliminated fully, is to give the crucified Savior His way in each part of your doings, to make His life the life you live day in and day out.  Let your body be the Holy of Holies for Christ the King to rule...never say "no" to Him as He works out of you habits sin has worked into you.  Never trust yourself but never doubt the power of God working through you and in you.

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.    Galatians 6:14-15 NIV

Nothing Lost, Nothing Gained

The sinfulness of man is not a physical inheritance...in other words the newborn baby is not already built with sin in him.  But sin all about makes him inherit a nature plagued by sin.  We are not launched into this world sin ruined but we are brought into it sin surrounded.  As soon as we begin making our way about morally we give temptation its way and then we are cooked.  Sin has us internally and externally.   Only Jesus resisted sin fully from the moment he first began to act morally.  At no point did He let temptation hold sway over a decision of His.  The average person gives so little thought to sin, let alone temptation that he hardly notices the evil he lets wreck him.  The cross of Christ is more than just a cleanser of sin, it is a redeemer of the sinner.  By faith in the Cross of Christ, we gain the nature of God living throughout us.  We no longer are the slave of sin but the destroyer of both temptation and sin.  We are not weak little children just trying to get by spiritually, we are wunderkind, powerful conquerors who have the capacity to live pure and holy lives.  The question is not will we but when will we let the might of Christ have full sway in the parts of our day.  We don't have to be a slave of lust or anger or greed or deceit or pride; we are because God dwells in us the overcomer in each place we find ourselves.  We cannot choose the temptation but we can submit ourselves to the might of Christ  and be done with that sin at that moment.  Nothing good comes of relying upon yourself...it always turns bitter for you...but when you turn to God to take back your moral place and live again in holiness, the joy of your redeemer will swell within you and you will feel the very goodness of Christ sweeping over you.    The heart has been raped and scourged and pummeled by sin but in Christ you can determine "not this time" because the Holy Spirit will as you turn to Him protect you from that tormenting temptation.  We laugh at sin and make light of it at the bar or at the club or in the gym or as our employer begins to manhandle us but it is even disguised, the beast that takes you apart.  Confess your sins rather than  belittle their magnitude.  God will forgive them immediately and scrub you clean of their poisons.  Just don't pretend they aren't there or don't matter.

"Why are you sleeping?" he asked them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation."  Luke 22:46 NIV