Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
097 | Did God Set Humans Up to Fail
509 Plays2 years ago
In this episode based on chapter 3 of Every Woman a Theologian, we look at cosmology, anthropology and hamartiology: theologies of the universe, humanity and sin. You'll learn about the actual nature of the serpent in the Garden, why humanity had to be free to sin, what would happen if God did not permit evil, and how this impacts your daily life!
Books mentioned:- The Unseen Realm by Dr. Michael Heiser
- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
- If God Why Evil by Norman Geisler
- Every Woman a Theologian by Phylicia Masonheimer
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity Podcast. I'm your host, Felicia Mason-Heimer, and I am here to teach you how to know what you believe, to live it boldly, and to communicate it graciously to the world around you. I believe that women are ready to go deeper in their faith than ever before, and they don't have to go to seminary to do it. I am so glad you're here, and I hope you'll join me on this journey because every woman is a theologian.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi friends, welcome back to Verity Podcast.
Did God Set Up Adam and Eve to Fail?
00:00:33
Speaker
This week we're going to be talking about a question that I know a lot of you have asked. Did God set Adam and Eve up to fail when he put them in a garden
00:00:46
Speaker
with the option of sinning against him. This seems like a super specific question, but a surprising amount of people ask it and struggle with it. And so we're going to be talking about that today. And this question at its core is cosmological. It has to do with cosmology or
00:01:06
Speaker
the philosophy or theology of creation in the universe, which then also crosses over with anthropology, the study of or theology of humanity, and bonus theology, hamartiology, which is the theology of sin. So in dealing with this question, we're actually dealing with three different theologies. And all three of these theologies are talked about.
00:01:34
Speaker
in chapter three of my book, Every Woman a Theologian. And so this mini series we're doing these eight weeks is concentrating each week on a different chapter of Every Woman a Theologian. And I'm touching on some of the high points of the chapter, but it gets into a lot more of the nitty gritty details and answering those questions in
Cosmology, Anthropology, and Hamartiology
00:01:53
Speaker
the book. So this week we're going to concentrate on Adam and Eve and what was happening in the garden.
00:02:00
Speaker
So as I already said, cosmology is the study of the origin and purpose of the universe. Cosmology is not a strictly Christian discipline. There are a lot of secular scientists and philosophers who also study cosmology, but the Christian religion can't be separated from cosmology. Because we believe in a creating God, we view the world as a sovereignly structured entity.
00:02:27
Speaker
And so we have to wrestle with questions of origin and the meaning of life and what happens after death because the Bible speaks to all of these things. Now, in a general philosophical sense or in a scientific sense, cosmology has always been a part of theism or the belief in God. All three theistic religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity,
00:02:53
Speaker
have a cosmological element. They're all talking about the origin of the universe. They're talking about the meaning and the destiny of the world. And the Bible in particular speaks to the purpose of the universe. It wrestles with these questions of life and death and ultimately answers them in the person of God. So Christians uniquely view the world as a purposeful and richly endowed creation.
Christian versus Atheist Views on Morality
00:03:22
Speaker
But this is different than how our culture views it because our culture doesn't want the creator at the end of that creation process.
00:03:36
Speaker
When you have a creator, it requires accountability. If there is a moral lawgiver whose law disagrees with the morphing desires of my heart, I have to answer to him. And then I have to align my plans and desires and views of the world with his existence.
00:03:53
Speaker
So this then changes the standard of morality from subjective, defined by me and my feelings, to objective, defined by the God who made me, which is a big reason why the new atheists
00:04:08
Speaker
not the older atheists like Nietzsche, but more of your Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris types who were militantly anti-God. So it wasn't just that they didn't believe in God, they were anti-God. One of the reasons that they take such an issue with this idea of creation and why so many of them are staunch evolutionists
00:04:32
Speaker
is because if you have a creating God, you have a moral lawgiver. You have a lawgiver who gets to say, this is right and this is wrong. And so atheists are very logical, and they see that logically you have to have a moral code attached to this creating being.
00:04:53
Speaker
And so just like we talked about last week, they have to reckon with this idea of a righteous standard. And so this is a big reason why evolution plays such a big role in atheism, because you can't have a intentional creating, initiating God
00:05:12
Speaker
and have the subjective morality that a lot of atheists are looking for because atheistic morality often revolves around this idea of suffering. Don't cause someone to suffer. But how do you know what suffering is? You have to have a baseline. You have to have a moral
00:05:30
Speaker
code. So all of this to say Christianity is cosmological because it has to deal with the origin and purpose and destiny of the universe. It has to deal in this initiating God who then is able to say this is right and this is wrong.
00:05:47
Speaker
Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, okay, this sounds really philosophical and I don't really know how this relates to my everyday life, I want you to think about the non-Christian family member, non-Christian coworker that you have who maybe you've had a conversation with about what is right and what is wrong. They were to ask you, well, why is abortion wrong?
00:06:05
Speaker
you could go back to the cosmology of Christianity, the initiating, creating God who created humans with a very specific imprint on them that makes them holy, and it is wrong to kill that holy being, that immortal soul. And so that's what you could say, you could argue,
00:06:28
Speaker
with them and that's why you have to know why you believe what you believe about God as a creator, about cosmology and about sin and about humanity.
Impact of Cosmology on Moral Discussions
00:06:41
Speaker
So all of those ologies are a part of that single question and conversation and this is why it's so important that we understand why we believe what we believe.
00:06:54
Speaker
So cosmology matters. We have this beautiful intentional world created by God and he wants us to enjoy it. He wants Adam and Eve to enjoy it. He's created a garden. He's put them in it, given them purpose and life, but something happens. The creation does not stay perfect.
00:07:17
Speaker
In Genesis 3, we see the beautiful world broken. Genesis 3, 1 through 5, the serpent comes to Eve. He casts doubt on God's commands. He says, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die.
00:07:42
Speaker
Serpent says, you will not certainly die, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
00:07:51
Speaker
So, the first humans choose to believe this accuser instead of their creator, and the consequence was the loss of that unity with God. It says he used to come and walk with them in the evening. He used to be in perfect fellowship with Adam and Eve, his creation. They had no barrier between them and God. They were literally friends with God, family, his children. They could walk with him in the garden, face to face, and now they can't.
00:08:16
Speaker
because this disobedience breaks that fellowship and invites evil into the human realm. So quick note on this.
Satan's Role and the Nature of the Serpent
00:08:25
Speaker
Some people have asked, well, okay, Satan comes to them in the garden. He tempts Eve, asks her to contradict God's command. So wasn't sin already in the garden? The answer is no.
00:08:37
Speaker
Satan had rebelled against God earlier. We don't know at what point, when this happened, if it happened right before creation, or long before, we don't know. But we know that Satan is and was an angel. He's in a different realm. He's a different race of beings. And as a different race of beings, the evil he committed was confined to
00:09:00
Speaker
him and his race. It wasn't impacting humanity and humanity's realm because they had not participated in his evil. But because he's a spirit, he's permitted to come into that realm and tempt Adam and Eve.
00:09:17
Speaker
And so there they are. They have this choice between a God who loves them and that they have relationship with. They have a choice to trust him and his goodwill towards them or to trust this usurper, essentially, who's standing here. One quick note I want to make about Satan in the garden and the idea of the serpent. I don't agree with everything Dr. Michael Heiser says. I find him compelling on some things. Some things, I'm not sure. But one thing I do find compelling that he's written about is the Hebrew word
00:09:47
Speaker
for Satan or the serpent indicates that it wasn't an actual snake. It was an angelic being that was standing there talking to Adam and Eve.
00:10:02
Speaker
This would explain also why they were not surprised to be speaking to him because angelic beings, good angelic beings, were probably a part of their normal experience. So in Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm, this is on page 87, he says, the Hebrew word translated serpent is nahash. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Forgive me if not. My friend Ryan Coteney at Cross-Formed Kids can correct me.
00:10:29
Speaker
The most straightforward meaning is the one virtually all translators and interpreters opt for, serpent. When the Hebrew root letters N-CH-SH are a noun, that's the meaning. But these are also the consonants of a verb. If we change the vowels to a verbal form, recall that Hebrew originally had no vowels, we would have nohush, which means the diviner. Divination refers to communication with the supernatural world. A diviner in the ancient world was one who foretold omens or gave out divine information, oracles.
00:10:59
Speaker
We can see that element in the story. Eve is getting information from this being. The consonants N-C-H-S-H may also form an alternative noun, nihash, which is at times used descriptively like an adjective. This term is used in place names outside the Bible and once within the Old Testament. He goes on to say, The serpent, nihash, was an image commonly used in reference to a divine throne guardian, given the context of Eden that helps identify the villain as a divine being.
00:11:28
Speaker
The divine adversary dispenses divine information using it to goad Eve. He gives her an oracle or an omen. You won't really die. God knows when you eat, you will be like one of the Elohim. Lastly, a shining appearance conveys a divine nature. He says earlier that this particular word was used to describe shining things like copper and metal.
Understanding God's Sovereignty and Human Identity
00:11:53
Speaker
Lastly, a shining appearance conveys a divine nature. All the meanings telegraph something important and are consistent with the imagery from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. So basically what he's saying here is it doesn't change the story all that much in that it's still the enemy, a spiritual being, whether he's speaking through a physical serpent or
00:12:14
Speaker
The serpent is a word to describe a divine, throne, guardian, angelic being that they would have seen as an angel standing in front of them as an angel of light. Either way, he tells them a lie about God. He has raised himself up in pride. He wants to be like God, but he's not like God. I was just reading this this morning in a commentary about Job.
00:12:40
Speaker
that in the book of Job, when we see Satan come to God, he's reporting to God like all the angels report to God, which shows you that Satan is not God's equal. He's not the opposite of God. He is below God.
00:12:56
Speaker
He's always been below God. He remains below God. He's not equal in power to God. It's not like yin and yang, like there's the God of light and this God of darkness or like, you know, Zeus and some Greek God. It's not like that. God is God. He is all powerful. And then you have this lower being, Satan, that rebelled, took a bunch of angels with him, and then
00:13:20
Speaker
enters into the human realm to try and twist God's words and bring humanity down with him. Okay? So the question then is, if God knew that this could happen, why did he allow it? And we're going to get to that in just a second.
00:13:39
Speaker
I want to back up a tiny bit to talk a little bit about creation and sin before we get to answering that question. So on the topic of creation, in chapter three of Every Woman a Theologian,
00:13:55
Speaker
I talk at length about the different creation theories and why it's so essential that God is the initiator, the creator, the one who spoke the world into existence. And then I talk about different theories of creation and how that happened as well as the early churches stance on creation.
00:14:12
Speaker
when at the time of the early church there was actually a really strong group of Greek philosophers who had come up with an idea of a universe that didn't have a creator. So a creatorless universe. So not that different from our culture today. So I look at all of these different theories throughout the book and I'm not going to talk about them here because you can go back and listen to the five views of creation episode and that will give you everything you need to know.
00:14:42
Speaker
So I wanna pick up with the early church fathers, believing that God's identity as creator is the starting point for understanding human identity. This helps us answer the question of who are humans? Why did Adam and Eve matter so much? And why did God let this happen to them?
00:15:04
Speaker
The Bible tells us that God created humans a little lower than the angels in Psalm 85 and also in his own image in Genesis 1, 27 through 28. So the question a lot of scholars are asking is what does it mean to be made in God's image, right? We throw this sentence around regarding abortion a lot, but what does it really mean?
00:15:25
Speaker
So it could mean we have the capacity to reason, the possession of a free will, the ability to think, to love, but these are only part of the answer because we know that those who are unable to exercise reason and free will, such as the unborn or those with intellectual disabilities, are still made in the image of God.
00:15:44
Speaker
So image is not just referring to something inside of us. It's referring to the pattern in which a human is made. Humans carry the very essence of what they represent. They represent God. So at the time Genesis 1-3 was written, the authors understood image in the same way we understand idol.
00:16:05
Speaker
What does the Ten Commandments say? Do not make for yourself a graven image. What do they mean? Don't make an idol. Don't make an image of God. So an image represents and is a likeness of the God or King after which it is formed. In pagan religions, these images are worshipped. In the biblical narrative, this is important, the idols of the one true God are not made of stone or wood. They're made of human flesh.
00:16:36
Speaker
We are the idols of God. We are His images. Does that just blow your mind? So no wonder it's such a sin to kill another human in the womb, out of the womb. It is a sin to kill a human because that is an image of God. It is an idol of God. So you are attacking God when you kill a human.
00:17:04
Speaker
This is one of the reasons idolatry is so offensive to the God of the Bible. And why on earth would an image of God worship another image? You are the dwelling place of God in the New Covenant. Or before that in the Old Covenant, you were an image of God dwelling in his midst or with access to dwell in his midst.
00:17:27
Speaker
with Israel. John Wesley said that sin in Genesis 3 marred the image of God in humanity, but it didn't destroy the image completely.
00:17:39
Speaker
So to be a human then is to bear God's image. The divine imprint can't be fully removed from a human being, even by sin. Our humanity exists and is bound up in the sustaining existence of God. And so this is why I say again, murder.
00:17:58
Speaker
Abortion, hatred, all against God's laws. Racism, favoritism, bigotry, condemned by God. James 2, Acts 10, Exodus 20, Matthew 5, verse John 3. God condemns all of these things because humans are unlike any other living creature. They bear the mark of God. But because of sin, the image is broken.
00:18:24
Speaker
only in Christ is the fullness of that image restored. But I hope you can see now why Satan targeted these two.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yes, he's wanting, of course, to destroy these creatures that God loves, these creatures who are His image on this planet. He wants to destroy them, especially because they are the very image of God. They are idols of God on Earth.
00:18:58
Speaker
If someone asked you to explain the gospel, could you do it? If your coworker came to you with questions about why Jesus had to die, or your child asked you to define the Trinity, could you provide an answer?
00:19:13
Speaker
Regardless of whether or not we are in formal ministry, all of us are called to be witnesses for Christ. If you're nervous, you're not alone. The ministry of every woman a theologian exists to equip you for this task.
Felicia's Book Pre-order Announcement
00:19:29
Speaker
And now, we have a cornerstone resource to make that happen.
00:19:34
Speaker
My brand new book and video study is available for pre-order January 9th. Every woman, a theologian, know what you believe, live it confidently, and communicate it graciously is almost here. This book is everything you need to know in order to share your faith without anxiety in today's world. I wrote this to equip you with a confident and educated faith.
00:20:00
Speaker
The workbook and 8-week video study will also be available, and you can pre-order through Christian Book, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local indie bookstore and lock in the lowest launch price. We are the generation that will stand on both conviction and love because we know what we believe and why we believe it and how to explain it well to the world. Join me this spring by ordering every woman a theologian at bookstores near you.
Freedom and Moral Choice
00:20:33
Speaker
So did God then set up Adam and Eve for failure? Knowing that Satan is after them, knowing he's in the universe, he creates this world and he puts these people here and he walks with them for however long the time was before Satan comes to Eve. Why did he do this?
00:20:54
Speaker
So Adam and Eve's first mission was to care for the world, Genesis 2.15. They were free to enjoy the garden as they labor. They could eat from wherever they want, except for one tree. They were forbidden from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the disobedience was a heavy price. It was, you shall surely die.
00:21:17
Speaker
So let's look again at the command God gave Adam and Eve. Don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Keep in mind that knowledge of good and evil does not mean mental awareness of good and evil. So it's not like Adam and Eve were little innocent babies that just didn't know what was bad and what was good. That's not what this means. They already knew what was wrong.
00:21:44
Speaker
They had this ability given by God because he outlined it for them in Genesis 2, 15 through 17. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.
00:22:07
Speaker
First of all, I want to emphasize he says you are free. You are free. Everything is available to you. But he sets one boundary. And he gives a firm consequence if they cross that boundary. He says, Look, you don't have to touch it. You can have anything else here. But if you do touch it,
00:22:28
Speaker
If you eat it, actually didn't say touch it. That was something Eve added onto the command. If you eat of it, you will certainly die. So here they are with access to everything and they are drawn to the one thing they can't have. And when they show up there lingering around the tree, there is this, this nay hash, this divine being who says, Hey,
00:22:55
Speaker
Doesn't this look good? And then we find out that Eve, in talking with him, doesn't actually know what God told her. She's added on to the command. She said, God said, don't even touch it. And as a little aside, isn't that what we do with legalism? Isn't that what we do? We add on to God's commands and then God sounds so much more unreasonable than he actually is. He never told her not to touch it. He told her, don't eat it.
00:23:21
Speaker
And so even with this entire garden that she could have, and Adam, because he was with her, the whole garden they could have, they end up hanging around the one spot that God said, don't eat the fruit. Another thing that's important to know is that Adam and Eve intellectually knew about evil. So God had said,
00:23:45
Speaker
This tree, if you eat of it, you will die. There will be a consequence and it is evil. They knew something not great is going to happen if we participate in this. And so the test here is a test of trust. Now, many scholars believe that this wasn't like a long term thing.
00:24:04
Speaker
It wasn't like God's putting them there for eternity and is like, and for eternity, you may not eat of this tree. Some scholars believe that this was just a temporary command and that God actually planned to let them eat of that tree eventually, which is an interesting theory. But in this period of time, he was saying, don't eat of it.
00:24:26
Speaker
So they knew about evil, but they had not experienced it. Their disobedience opened them to the full, intimate experience of evil, something from which God was protecting them.
00:24:39
Speaker
Some scholars believe that maybe the knowledge of good and evil wasn't knowledge so much as it was the desire to determine good and evil, to take God's role for themselves. In both interpretations, humanity rejects God's protection and sovereignty and invites sin into the world.
00:25:00
Speaker
This then remains the struggle we face today. Will we accept God's protection and trust His will, or will we create our own moral guidelines? The fall of humanity at the beginning of time remains the fall we take every day since.
00:25:18
Speaker
when we don't trust God's kindness and his goodness. And instead we trust our own wisdom. And that's what Eve did initially. She looked at it and she said, practically speaking, this is good for food. Take care of me. I can take care of myself. It's beautiful. And I love beauty. I appreciate beauty. And I want to be wise, right? Like I want to be wiser, stronger.
00:25:46
Speaker
And so she took of it and then she handed it to her husband.
00:25:50
Speaker
And I think it's interesting too that Eve had a lot of power in her relationship with Adam. She had a lot of influence and she used that influence, that leadership in an unhealthy way. I think we see when people look at this passage, they often say that, oh, you know, this is an example of why women shouldn't lead. I wouldn't say it's an example of why women shouldn't lead. I think it's an example of how God had given Eve a healthy influence and power and she abused it.
00:26:20
Speaker
just as men do. So in both cases, Adam standing there, apparently not speaking up, not saying anything. So he's abusing his leadership and influence too. They both were at the same time. She's abusing hers, he's abusing his and together, they fall and they lead humanity into this, this sinful spiral.
The Necessity of Free Will and Redemption
00:26:43
Speaker
So God could have just started over right there. He could have wiped the slate clean and been like, oops, well, let's try again. How many more people can I create? But this is where we end up with this endless potential for humans being put in this situation. And how many times is God going to recreate creation to get a couple of people who don't give in to the temptation?
00:27:11
Speaker
I think God did know. I mean, knowing God is sovereign, like we talked about last week, he's holy, he's loving. And in every woman, the theologian, the book, I talk about God's sovereignty at length and how it works and how we understand that intention with free will in chapter two. But in chapter three, we're looking at the influence of that. God knew that this could happen and yet he permitted it. Why? And I love what C.S. Lewis says about that.
00:27:37
Speaker
This is from mere Christianity, chapter three. It's called the shocking alternative. Anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, I'm not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own. Then she goes up one night and finds the teddy bear and the ink and the French grammar all lying in the grate.
00:28:05
Speaker
That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy, but on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment or trade union or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.
00:28:24
Speaker
It is probably the same in the universe. God created the things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong. I cannot. If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why then did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
00:28:54
Speaker
A world of automata, of creatures that worked like machines, would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water, and for that they must be free.
00:29:19
Speaker
So what Lewis is saying here is that you can't have a free and loving relationship between God and man unless God allowed the option of sin. Otherwise, he's creating puppets, robots, even the angels had to be free to rebel in order to have relationship. What is your alternative?
00:29:39
Speaker
And that's why he says this is the shocking alternative. This is the option that you have. You have a God who loves enough to risk rejection, right? To love at all is to be vulnerable, he goes on to say, and the four loves. You have to be willing to be hurt, rejected. You have to be willing to see evil exist for love and goodness and beauty to exist.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so instead of ending the world at the beginning, he chooses to redeem it at the beginning in Genesis 3, 15, and 16 when he promises a snake crusher, the Messiah, who would come to the line of Eve and redeem what was done. I have this picture on my wall. My sister got me a couple Christmases ago. It's made by nuns in a convent in Iowa, I think. Some of you have seen this picture. It goes around Facebook every Christmas. The picture of Eve
00:30:31
Speaker
Standing with her head bowed, she has a snake wrapped around her ankle and her leg. And Mary, a pregnant Mary, is comforting Eve, holding her face in her hand and holding Eve's hand to her belly. And under Mary's foot is the snake's head. And I love this image because it shows that through these two women,
00:31:00
Speaker
the sin of Eve, but then the faithfulness of Eve to bring forth children for the kingdom of God, the line of Seth, and then Mary's faithfulness to say to God, yes, Lord, let it be to me as you have willed.
00:31:18
Speaker
allowed God's redemption to be carried through for Jesus to come into the world as the perfect God-man to conquer the accuser, to conquer the divine being who tried to deceive or did deceive Eve in the garden. So when we're asking, did God set Adam and Eve up to fail? What we're really asking for when we ask that question is a universe in which love does not exist.
00:31:47
Speaker
We're asking God to create a universe where we have no autonomy, where we can't willingly respond to God, where we can't experience His love freely, where we're actually just puppets and living in a deterministic universe. If you watch the Marvel show, Loki, where I talk about this in the book.
00:32:08
Speaker
In the Sholoki, there's a plan for every person's life. And if you go off plan, you get pruned, you get removed from the universe because everybody has to be on the path that's determined for them. That is not what we see in scripture. We see a God who loves, a God who grieves the choices that people make and who enters into that world to redeem the sin of humanity. That's pretty powerful stuff.
00:32:38
Speaker
I want to give you one more argument for why Adam and Eve had to have the freedom to choose sin.
Ultimate Freedom and the Gospel's Power
00:32:45
Speaker
And this is from Norman Geyser's book, If God, Why Evil? I love this book. It's so helpful. And he has a chapter on the avoidability of evil. I'm going to read you a little section. And he goes through different arguments.
00:33:00
Speaker
about evil's avoidability. And the one that I'm reading from is the argument, a free world where no one can sin is not a morally better world. So this is when someone argues, well, a world, if God had created a world where nobody could sin, like they didn't even have that option, that would be better. And he's saying, no, it wouldn't be better. And here is why. So he says, freedom, as we have it here on earth, is incompatible
00:33:28
Speaker
with the impossibility to sin. So you have to be able to sin in order to be free. Freedom in this context involves the ability to do otherwise. But if sin is impossible, then one does not have the ability to do otherwise. So this is the power of contrary choice. You need to have the power of contrary choice.
00:33:53
Speaker
So, he says, the highest kind of freedom, a God-like freedom, is the freedom from sin, not the freedom to sin. True, we can become more God-like here on earth, and in heaven we will be as perfectly God-like as creatures can get, including our freedom from sin, Revelation 21. But some things cannot be created directly. Some things can be produced only through a process.
00:34:19
Speaker
Again, patience is produced through the process of tribulation, Romans 5.3, trial forms character, James 1.2, and there can be no sense of forgiveness without sin. In short, God has to create free creatures who could sin before he could produce free creatures who can't sin. It's like the difference between a shotgun wedding and a marriage freely chosen. In both cases, the person is married, but in only one case was it a free choice.
00:34:48
Speaker
Better yet, it is the difference between consensual sex and sexual assault. Clearly one is free and the other is not. Since God by His very nature, love, cannot force anyone to love Him, it would be highly improper to think of a heaven where people are forced to be there. First, there must be courtship, and then two can be bound together for life.
00:35:10
Speaker
God had to give us lower freedom, freedom to do evil, in order to achieve a higher freedom for us, freedom from evil.
00:35:20
Speaker
He concludes by saying, allowing the choice of good or evil is necessary in achieving the highest good. The highest freedom is from sin, heaven, not of sin, on earth. One is not fit for the freedom from sin unless he has exercised the freedom to sin. For unless he has had the choice of good over evil, he is not ready for a place where good dominates and evil is defeated. Our initial freedom is designed to lead.
00:35:50
Speaker
to the ultimate freedom. So what Norman Geisler is saying here is we have to pass through a process of choosing God and being free to choose other than God in order to experience the joy of being free with God.
00:36:10
Speaker
He's not going to force people into heaven against their will. It's like he said the description of the marriage. He's not going to force us into a shotgun wedding. You aren't being forced to be at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're choosing freely to be there in response to his initiating love through Christ. And so in the garden, he began this process. He said, look, I love you. You have everything you need. You are free. Now here's a tree. Don't eat of it. And they chose to.
00:36:40
Speaker
So did God set Adam and Eve up to fail? No. He set them up to love. And ever since then, when Adam and Eve did fail, through God's permission, he has been redeeming and picking up the pieces and making things new.
00:37:01
Speaker
And this should be incredibly hopeful for those of you who are listening because it means that those of us, including myself, who have been given the power of contrary choice and every day have the decision before me, am I going to choose what is holy? Am I going to listen to the Spirit of God? Am I going to obey Him? Or if you're not a Christian and you're listening to this and you've been waffling in between,
00:37:23
Speaker
following him and surrendering your life to him and following your own self or following the universe or listening to the latest Buddhist guru, anyone who's telling you what you need to do spiritually. If you are in that position where you have to make a decision between good and evil, the God who loves you and what the world offers,
00:37:54
Speaker
You have the ability to choose the God who loves you. That is the power to me of the gospel. That is the absolute shocking scandal of God's grace that a God who could force people to follow him, who could in his power make little robots who do exactly what he wants,
00:38:19
Speaker
doesn't and instead submits himself to being wounded and grieved, submits himself to picking up the pieces of an evil world and using people to do that in order to show them real love.
00:38:40
Speaker
This is a Christian cosmology. This is the power of a universe built for love if we will just choose it.
00:38:55
Speaker
I hope this made you think. I hope it equips you for deeper conversations on this topic. I will put the names of these books in the show notes here, The Unseen Realm, Mere Christianity, and If God, Why Evil? And then of course, all of this is summarized in chapter 3 of my new book, Every Woman a Theologian, which is coming out February 28th.
00:39:15
Speaker
pre-ordering it helps get the news out. It helps other people find the book. And so many of you have done that, that it hit number one in systematic theology on Amazon, number one in apologetics, and number one in theology overall. So a huge thank you to those of you who made that happen because you're helping other people find this book, helping women be equipped to disciple other women and get the gospel out into the world.
00:39:45
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Verity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take the time to leave us a review? It helps so many other women around the world find out about Verity and about every woman a theologian as a ministry and a shop. We appreciate you and I hope you'll be back next week as we continue to go deeper into God's word and the heart of Jesus Christ.