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…
