“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (Heb. 9:27)
God knows when and how you are going to die, the question is, has He appointed that time. The question of God’s interdiction within His creation has been for all men that seek His face an unanswerable question, how much of what happens in a man’s life, or in fact in any of His creation, does God manipulate? “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” (Prov. 16:9)
Just this one verse points to a fact that God designs actions to occur, but too many look at verses such as these as they would a play, the script is written, the curtain rises and falls when it is supposed to, and the actors play their parts and say their lines as led to by the script. To put it in a more simple terminology, in a question, when you make a decision to turn either left or right, did the Lord know, have foreknowledge of the direction that you made or did He intercede and cause you to turn in the direction you are now going?
I firmly believe that we have no choice in the matter of our salvation, for there are far too many verses about the Lord doing the choosing, and I understand full well the aversion to this statement, for then the inverse would need to be true, that God has also chosen some for eternal damnation. But free will in the area of our salvation is not the question today, the verse in Proverbs 16:9 is, if God directs our steps, just how much free will do we actually have?
Did Moses have a choice to go to Egypt, could Jonah have walked down the beach and found another ship, could Paul have said “No, find someone else.” We who have been born-again are slaves to Jesus Christ, just how much freedom does a slave have, can the master force the slave while enabling the slave to believe that he is acting of his own free will?
I am compelled to write these letters, and as I have written before, I do not contemplate them either before or during the time I am writing them, the words appear on the paper from my hand through this pen, but I do not see them as mine, and I do not always like what I have written.
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” (Gal. 3:1) Do you think Paul stopped for a few moments and thought “I can’t write that, it sounds disrespectful.” Perhaps, and although I will not compare myself to Paul or to any that the Lord used to pen the words in His Holy Book, I write as I believe I am commanded to write. Are my steps being directed, do I have the free will to say, “No more,” to throw my pen in the trash, to stop making the videos? When I turn to the right, am I making that decision, or is the Lord turning me?
I ask you to consider Galatians 2:20 here, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Dead men can’t make decisions, those who have offered themselves as a living sacrifice to the Lord have no free will in matters concerning the Lord’s plan for their lives, they have given Him complete and total control and authority in this matter.
So, do we who have been crucified with Him have free will?
It goes against every fiber of our being to say no, our free will, our ability to choose our path in this life stands above all else we hold dear. So then, I will ask you this, what free will do you suppose you will be able to exercise when you get to heaven? I offer points of contemplation here, nothing more.
