FREEWILL

THE DIVINE RESCUE OF HIS DESIGN

As in the Bible, so it is.

Only God can have freewill. All else has its imposed bounds relative to their construction and purpose.

Man was constructed with a free will relativetive to his relationshiip to God.

Adam and Eve used it categorically, and in a sense naturally, held in the throes of doubt and devilish deception.

  It was part of their equipment enabling them so to do if so desired. God alone designed and God alone could in this inter-personal grant,
vexatious as was this use of so precious a gift .

When man fell, this freedom fell with him. He (and she) were thus and now subjected to forces they could not control. God according to the Bible which never fails to be vindicated as truth (we are indeed not left as orphans -  John 14:18) surveyed the scene in His foreknowledge (time is simply one of His creations). As a sequence, this was  before man or man's sin or warping in various planes as a result of it) in the  glorious integrity of His own mind and heart. With the character of man crippled, He thus in His proto-history foreknew our race, each one, without the warped will of Fallen Mankind to obtrude

He  took over this matter of human choice (Ephesians 1:4). It was on the part of accurately envisaged pre-time man, in its reality. So He chose His own on His own premises (in both senses of the term).

Thus it stood and still stands. 

Events are separable without using our concepts of time and space (Romans 8:39) as in foreknowledge, and vast is God in His understanding, and of course, not only so, but He is infinite in His modes of knowing, perceiving and implementing His desire.

As to the pre-time divine perception, concerning our race, the clear Biblical indication is that this item of information was in fact so discerned by the One God, by Him who would become the source of events in the space-time world upon its invention.

This He observed before our universe's beginning in His creation of it. This He also proceeded to implement in history; and that not only existentially and volitionally for man. Supernaturally in Himself, He chose to sustain this divine manifestation (Ephesians 1:4) which appeared before Him and in His knowledge before creation was ordered. By His choice He proceeded to warrant, validate and endorse this discerned action concerning man. For  mankind, essentially one by one, He proceeded to exhibit the result in His own integrity when He made time (as in Romans 8:37-38).

This item of man's choosing his relationship to God when he was made, therefore, being in the design, and man acting contrarily to it, this spoilt this precious freedom. Yet was made operative by the Maker of mankind; and that He actually does the choosing Himself makes no difference to the standing of what He puts His mind to sustain.

The cost of valldation to divine standards was staggering in both immensity and intensity, and truth is costly when it means not that the shoulders are shrugged, but that the body is broken and bu

Such was this manifestation in man, all things being open with Him with whom we are constructed to deal personally in a massive privilege involving the creation of human freedom. Construction of such a being is not only uniquely divine but divinely unique: none else has this power, authority and awe-inspiring awareness. As Hebrews 4:13 puts it:

"There is nothing hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom  we must give account."

In the divine mind, this was a supervised happening just as in our time and space world, we perceive the actions registrable in it. Indeed, that the Divine King chose not only to authorise but even to authenticate and validate the discernment in this foreknowledge of His, is a thing of beauty.

So it stood. So it stands. Thus, it is a thing most wonderful that the Lord God not only has the resource for whatever He wants, but the desire as expressed in Colossians 1:19, that emphatically all things, whether in heaven or on earth, should be reconciled to Himself. He has done the appallingly horrible utmost on the Cross and weeps for those despising, degrading, dismissing this delectably free offer of Divinity Himself. Indeed, in God's foreknowledge, we are told, He chose among the sheep in the parable "My own." They are so recognised and most markedly different for example, from goats, and for that matter, those who are not in fact His own. It is based on the divine rescue of liberty, in some part, for  mankind.

This was in the Lord provided for each member of our race a proto-happening as in Ephesians 1`:4, an actual occurrence regarding man, observable, conservable and confirmed for ever. God made the choice, man indicating even in that state what was his preference, as in John 3:19, before the woeful, warping and marred vision of this fallen member of creation. The volition was God's so to discern, with such Gospel in such a format, beyond time; so to authenticate this knowledge, this foreknowledge into an observable entity, guaranteed in standing by that magnificanvt Maker of freedom so significant and yet so limited from the first.

The resultant registered, was an exhibit of man in the very mind of God.

In God it was an actual event and made its nature clear to the God who made not only man at the first, but an answer to the Fall, and this not only in terms of guilt, but delivering man from becoming a mere pawn of ungovernable and malign powers or bereft of the freedom aspect of his design. This was thus rescued: man's autonomy which had been granted in this field, no longer aborted but effectually recovered by  the God who could see the shape of things in this, His creation, before it was misshapen. It was His discernment within Himself of what being before time, could only be perceived in His innermost being, and this He validated and exported into time with all its disfiguring woes.

It was moreover not only a matter of discerning the things unique to the knowledge of divinity, manifestly unique and indeed uniquely  manifest - since none other could or would do it. Nor was it just leaving man lacking standing, knowledge and self-knowledge, for it meant restoring man to meaning and meaning to all of mankind.

It was costly in meeting divine standards: to cover the case for man, in and within that one and only God who IS, will be and has been. To do so in that eternal Being and source of all else, all that is not by nature God, but His product:  there was a case to be met. Why is this so ?

It is because truth and justice require it, and God requires these! It is His will. With all this talk of human freewill, it is necessary to remind ourselves that of necessity God alone has freewill without limit in all things He pleases; and we have a donated selection of parts of it. One of these aspects was from the first to reject God, and even if he would,  to believe Him a competitor with the devil for divine honour and glory.

Here was in a spiritual fraud and propaganda lie of sophisticated seduction; but it let man speak on this issue.

Indeed from the first creation, man fell. He did not delay. That he was tricked and seduced by someone created pretending to run things is a type of hilarity suitable for a drunken party. But it happened like so  much else in its time, moving into the world of events. as here.

This is an appropriate time to remind ourselves of the apologetic aim of this study. as at the first, in 1964. That aim  is also to  exhibit that only with this biblical source of all the facets of the topic and theme, is its long-standing philosophic failure to be utterly resolved and clearly overcome.

It was by no means to intrude into divine territory, or to fall into presumption, but to resolve and show the harmony of all the biblical facets in this fascinating and magnificent element of freedom within the creation God that God gave and governed, one imparted to man.

To be sure, this gift was only partial, but as to man's relationship to God, in much it was decisive, decisive enough for sin to send man into all but unspeakable darkness  or for his rescue with this gift through the supernal grace of God (John 1: 12-14, 3:17-18, 15:21-23, Isaiah 50:8-11, Ezekiel 33:11, Colossians 1:19, Matthew 23:37).

Such has been the aim as likewise the result of this investigation, using all the Bible as the resource, in this Christian Apologetics.

Without God, there is no hope even of rationality, as has been shown; with Him, there is no resolution of the need to blend harmoniously all the features God exhibits, in the terms and atmosphere He uses, on the part of man. Ruthless extremes are invented which distort not only the word of God, but contradict it; neither for that matter, do they resolve the issues which physicists face, between determinism and the appalling misnomer called chaos, a mischievous muddle which interprets a universe run by investigable law: the basis of the predictions of science!

Overcoming every dilemma, resolving every issue is one basis and one only empirically, found in the Bible in its themes and principles; ALL of those here relevant and not a mere selection from them. ALTOGETHER these, and not a rummaging check-up, governed in whole or part by the admixture of the world and word of man with that of God.

So it is found over the decades since this project began in 1964, and so it was to be expected. May God therefore be praised for who, and in whole words, can there be a better exposition of His words, their place as light and truth.

There is great gain in this, for God assuredly Himself has a monopoly on the truth, having the means and meaning for the task. There is also a cost in the provision in love of a solution to the personal problem man faces, in the scenario. He is not guiltless, nor is his evacuation from the tragedy of his sin, easy from the hand of God, the pierced hand of the Lord.

 

Certainly there is the cost in the divine provision of remedy.  It was borne sovereignly according to His own will: it meant facing all facts, cancelling the warranty of justice for some in grace,  and ensuring that these are those foreknown, His chosen ones.

That cost is just as unique as the divine depth of knowledge, and its only place of residence is mercy, which though a sublime additive, leaves the cost uncovered, though the pardon is sovereignly provided in the very heart of loving motivation.

How is this done, the cost paid ? All died for one item - sin, and Christ in offer, died in one for all (I John 2) and His death and burial had to be borne in this vast inter-personal domain, personally. The devil had to be manifestly ridiculed as Christ overthrew death (Hebrews 2:14-17) by the vivid and graphic reality of the resurrection, at the same time becoming a wholly prepared High Priest, aware of the dimensions of suffering in human life, by personally partaking of them.

To whom was this divine relief provided ? In John 3, we read it: it is to as many as received Him. I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked! He asseverates in Ezekiel 33:11. It is not this, but  a very different thing. Not that, merely one of the devil's deceits. but its nadir, antithesis existing in the realms of divine wonder.

What is the  reality, He proceeds in that verse of Ezekiel, then, to declare. It is this: that man should turn from his evil way and live. The current ones are of life obliterative. You can make a magnificent sponge cake, but after a time, when it is left, it sags. The hand that prepared it, however does not sag.

Thus, to pursue the analogy, in Isaiah 57:15-16, God, the High and Holy one dwells with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit, and will not contend for ever. Magnificent has  been both His thoroughness and patience, exhibiting in the laboratory of life, the realities of truth and mercy, pardon and hypocrisy and the wondrous world of operations by faith resting on His promises, in His premises and His pronouncement - faith in Him. Saving faith is faith in the Saviour and His word, which shows His heart, the heart of Him who is received.

How beautiful the spiritual depths shown in John 15:22ff., in company with the guaranteed goodwill of God to His own, who  receive Him, as in John 3, who so loved the world that He undertook this vast expedition, with readiness and desire that all be  reconciled to Himself!