The human will—the ability to choose—is exceedingly strong. Through it and by it, Adam and Eve sinned and plunged the entire human race into a world of good versus evil. People often debate the questions that if God is good and wise, etc., didn’t He know they would sin? And why didn’t He prevent them from sinning?
The answer is the free choice of human will. God gave us the ability to make choices, as well as the right to make them. He could have made us without the ability to choose, and we would have been mere remote-controlled, robotic-like inventions used for His pleasure.
Or, He could have made us with the ability to choose, but not given us the right to choose. Yet He didn’t. True to His generous nature, God told Adam: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat …” (Genesis 2:16). In other words: “You may freely choose.” Otherwise, humans would not have known the freedom to choose, even though we had the desire to choose, and this would have kept us in a state of constant frustration, resentment, and unhappiness.
God gave Adam one and only one prohibition: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die” (vs.17). So great is the human will to choose that Adam and Eve chose to choose against God’s will for them. Perhaps, the fact that they could choose influenced their decision to choose—just to experience the power of making a choice; even though the act of choosing against God’s commandment was an act of rebellion.
The consequences of this they could not have comprehended beforehand. After they made this game-changing choice, they were struck with fear, and for the first time in their innocent spirits, they were aware of the knowledge of evil. When God came calling in the cool of the day, as was His custom, “… they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 3:8). These are some of the saddest words in the Bible.
God called out to Adam, “Where are you? And he [Adam] said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (vv.9-10). God responded: “Who told you that you were naked?” (v.11). No one told them—not even the serpent. Their own consciences told them. Before, they did not have a conscience because they were pure. They only knew good. You don’t need a conscience to know good. But when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they knew evil, and their disobedience opened the door for sin to enter. For the first time in their pure hearts, they knew evil, and the realization of their sin brought shame and condemnation. Why did they need to cover their nakedness? From whom? From one another? From the animals? From God? He had already seen them.
Their altered innocence morphed into conscience (Latin: with knowledge), and in their fallen state, they passed on an unregenerate conscience to all their progeny. Humans now possessed a free will, a conscience, and a sin nature. The lusts of their sin nature would bear upon their flesh, compelling it to sin, and when their conscience raised an objection, the will would wrestle with it in a losing match.
Cancelling the Conscience
Paul described it in Romans 7:19-20: “For the good that I would do, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.” He said that he had the desire—the will to do good, but he lacked the power to overcome the law of sin that ruled in his body. This shows that many sinners can have a healthy conscience, that inner witness that alerts them that something is wrong. They know that it is wrong whether or not there is a law on the books that says so: “Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Romans 2:15). This is how a healthy conscience works. It is an inner alarm system that will accuse us whenever we are breaking God’s laws.
Just like a smoke alarm in the home: If you’re cooking, and the alarm keeps going off, you may decide to remove the battery because it’s bugging you. You have rendered it inoperative, and if a real fire broke out in your home while you’re sleeping, the alarm would not sound. This is how many people respond to the inner alarm of their conscience. From time to time, they ignore it, then suppress it and no longer pay attention to its warnings. Till we have come to the day when the conscience of many no longer works, and in fact, they fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 5:20: “Call[ing] evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…”
Paul described them: “… these also who resist the truth, men of corrupt minds” (2Timothy 3:8). Humans have now regressed to the point till they not only have no power to do good, they have lost the desire—the will to do good. Paul said, “… they hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). The Greek text means they hold down the truth—they suppress it. He described them as “having their conscience seared as with a hot iron” (1Timothy 4:2). This degeneration stems from Adam’s choice in the Garden.
The Second Adam
Jesus Christ came as the second Adam (1Cor. 15:45-47). Like Adam was before his wrong choice resulted in the fall, Jesus was sinless (2Cor. 5:21). And like Adam, He had to be tested. “Though, he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The initial testing in the wilderness after His baptism was more catered to the fleshly appetites and lusts: “…the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life” (1John 2:15). Although He had not eaten for 40 days and was hungry, He dismissed these without struggle. He rebuked Satan with the written Word with each temptation, finally commanding him to get out of here (Matthew 4:1-11).
But in Gethsemane, He suffered. He cried. He agonized. He implored His Father: “Let this cup pass from me.” Not once. Not twice. But three times He pled, and He had already told His disciples: “No one takes my life, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment I have received of my Father” (John 10:18).
He knew that it was the Father’s will that He lay it down, that He drink the cup, but it was His choice to obey that will. So great is the human will that Jesus struggled to deny His in order to obey what He knew was His Father’s will, which had to be accomplished through His death on the cross.
Hebrews 5:8 tells us why He suffered: to become obedient to the Father’s will. Hebrews 5:7 tells us when and how: “Who in the days of his flesh [in His humanity], when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.”
Prayers, supplications, strong crying, tears, and asking to be saved from death—He feared the agony of the crucifixion He was facing. A few days prior, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appeared to Him and spoke of His impending decease at Jerusalem (Luke 9:30-31). Now in Gethsemane, this weighed heavily on His mind and spirit. This is clearly described in Luke 22:42-44: “Father, if you be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done … And being in agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
It was His choice. He chose the cross because He chose to undo the devastation the first Adam’s choice brought on all mankind. “… As many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). He restored to us not only the desire to choose, but the ability to choose Him: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin” (Romans 8:2). Unlike the unsaved person of Romans chapter 7, who desired to do right, but was overpowered by the sin nature, we who are in Christ, have the right and the might to be children of God. It’s our free choice. And once we make the right choice, we receive the power of the divine nature (1Peter 1:4) that enables us to do God’s will:
“For it is God who works in us both to will and to do according to his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
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