Excerpt D from Chap. 1 in FOR HIS GLORY
Free Will, God’s Way with Man
The ability to choose our god and to then make moral choices, is the hallmark of the spectacular, spiritually colorful, God-man relationship that we were created for! The spiritual intimacy and abundance portrayed in FOR HIS GLORY is hardly possible otherwise.
God intends that we will display His superiority over Satan, the other god. The heavens, the flowers and the birds glorify Him by design, but man must choose to. We call that “free will,” and its effect in both entering the Kingdom of God and experiencing life there, stands in vivid contrast to that of the predestination or “unconditional election” that some Christians hold to.
We love and serve Jesus, not as a bride in an arranged marriage but as the abused woman who had said “Yes!” to a wonderful man who loved her as she was and promised to make her whole again. The holiness that springs from free will’s personal, spirit-intimacy with Jesus is very different from that which comes from obligation. Love that does not flow freely from the heart, by choice, is not love at all.
We glorify God every time we choose to please Him. Even 1,000 times a day! Part of His glory is that He, contrary to Satan, allows us to choose which god we will serve, and His sovereignty is preserved in that He alone determines the outcome of those choices.
Rejecting the Biblical truth of free will creates vulnerability to forming a man-made religious belief system with a distorted view of God, man, and the God-man relationship. It hinders our entering deeply into the spiritual Life of the Kingdom of God and handicaps us in the humble self-examination that could lead to the repentance that we so desperately need.
The challenge for those who profess to believe in free will is to apply it with integrity in obeying the commands of Jesus regarding holiness, lifestyle and mission, and we have a lot of work to do on that!
Ken Stoltzfus
Kidron, Ohio USA
March 22, 2022
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