Free Will & Godly Love

By

Lee

Free will and Godly love are necessary for human beings to be made after Gods image and according to His likeness.  Adam was not the fulfillment of God’s purpose for humanity, Adam failed to become that purpose as it was offered to him in the tree of life.  If you examine the Hebrew words for likeness and image used in the creation of Adam, you will see that Adam was a shadow or phantom image but Jesus entered this world as a great light. Adam was only a shadow of what God had in mind for humanity and man’s true potential was in the tree of life.  God knew in eternity that Adam would sin and acquire the knowledge of good and evil and God withheld immortality from Adam that was in the tree of life.  Having the knowledge of good and evil is not sin because God and the holy angels have this knowledge but it was the taking of this knowledge against Gods command that was sin.  Adam would have acquired the knowledge of good and evil from the tree of life but with this knowledge the Holy Spirit of God, and this without ever having sinned.  Adam would have become what God wanted for him and us.  Humanity has the knowledge of good and evil but without God cannot control this knowledge and will sin and sin brings death.  This is how sin entered the world and death by sin.  What we have to always keep in mind is that God will complete His will in us regardless of which tree Adam would have eaten.  For God to have known in eternity that Adam would sin and yet allowing Adam a choice between the two trees demonstrates to us that God wanted Adam to use his free will to make the choice.  If humanity is to be made after God’s image and likeness then we must have free will because God does.  Godly love is righteousness and cannot sin for God is love and God is righteous, this is how God has always existed and He never changes.  The Holy Spirit that was in the tree of life would have shed abroad in Adam’s heart (human spirit) the love of God, Adam would be like God in this way and he would have never sinned and would have been made unable to sin just as God and Jesus are unable to sin.  Remember that Godly love does no harm or evil and is the fulfillment of the law.  In the process of time, God would later change Adam into a spirit being with everlasting life and the children of Adam and Eve would follow the same path.  If Adam had obeyed God, he would have been the messiah.  We know things did not happen that way and because of this, a second Adam would have to come and do what the first failed to do.

Jesus was the second Adam and was created by God as a perfect man in righteousness and true holiness, Jesus was what Adam would have become if he had obeyed God and ate of the tree of life.  This is why Jesus is the tree of life.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life and our access to God the Father.  God desires that in faith we believe this and eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood otherwise we have no life in us.  Jesus is the tree of life.  All of this proves that God in eternity always had Jesus in mind as His plan and not Adam.  Scripture declares that Jesus was God’s eternal purpose and that all things God created were because of and for Jesus.  Jesus was the only righteous man who ever lived and he became the sacrifice for our sins.  We who believe need not suffer everlasting death but because of faith in what God did through Jesus we can have everlasting life.  The death Adam and all humanity dies would have been everlasting – forever but God in eternity provided for us His only begotten son through whom there are two resurrections.  This means that the death we die now is as temporary as the physical life we live but the death Jesus saves us from is the second death that can come only if we with spiritual knowledge reject God.  God has free will and God is love, this is the key to understanding God’s plan for humanity.  At the second advent and the millennium, it will be as the garden of Eden again with the second Adam ruling the Earth.  All people will have the Holy Spirit and hear the message of the law and the gospel.

The law was to teach us our problem and the gospel is to show us the answer.  We have to know both to know the whole story.  The law contains the knowledge of good and evil and requires humanity to live by it because it was the choice Adam made, whatever a man sows that shall he also reap.  The gospel is the new covenant message of the tree of life who is Jesus Christ.  If we can come to the understanding of our problem, Adam’s sin, then come to hear the message of the gospel, the answer to our problem, then we have hope.  When we are converted and receive the Holy Spirit, we Passover into a new covenant and the power of God’s Holy Spirit takes over and replaces the law with grace. It will then be God who works in us by Godly love and God who gives us the ability both to will and to do His good pleasure.  We worship God not with physical works like keeping days, abstaining from certain foods, paying tithes or any other physical thing because God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth.  If the law can save us, why would we need Jesus?  Many try to combine law and grace but doing this cancels out both it is one or the other and law will save no one.  You are save by grace through faith without the deeds of the law.  The law is for unrighteous people until God shows them His grace; it is a deterrent to sin but cannot eradicate sin.  Grace leads us to the kingdom of God where the saints will be changed and sin finally ended.  This will be the fulfillment of what God said, “let us make man after our image and according to our likeness.”  Jesus was the first born of many, the first new creation, a human being who was in God’s image and likeness.  Jesus is the beginning of this creation God had in mind in eternity, not the physical but a spiritual creation.  Once God’s will is done this physical will be burned up and replaced with a new heaven and Earth wherein dwells righteousness.  God’s intent has always been to have other beings similar to Himself in righteousness, love and everlasting life.  God alone remains omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and eternal and no other being will ever have these things.  The other beings will have God’s character or nature and this because they agree with God’s will for them.  God will not force anyone against his or her will to have salvation because God wants what He has for us to be our will also.  Jesus said, “not my will but your will be done.”  We must be of the same mind as Jesus.