Free Will
Everything we do starts with our free will. This life is not worth anything to our Abba Father without it. I doubt this life would be worth much to us, either. In heaven, there is no pain, sorrow, enemy, or ELB. Does that mean the enemy is involved in all pain and sorrow; without him, does that all go away?
The knowledge of all things good to evil is in our hearts today, thanks to Adam and Eve. With our free will, we can dishonor our Abba Father on our own in this life. Heaven is different; Isaiah 65:17, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Until then, our Abba Father calls us to glorify him in this life.
Free will is the most annoying gift of our Abba Father possible. He allows us to destroy our lives with our own decisions and actions in an ELB world. That was Israel’s choice and the Old Testament is full of lessons believers ignore today. Please learn those lessons. He also gave us our GCS to make decisions and one effortless, fantastic choice: to live in a relationship with him in his Family. Please pray on that.
When we look at our Abba Father’s plan in the Scripture, we first see the law established to help us make godly decisions. Then the priests were added to expand on the application of the law. The law is not there to punish us for bad choices; the law is there to help us know and make godly choices. The law was all our Abba Father had to work with at the time. He paid a colossal price to give us free will (evil), and he had no other choice but the law to start.
I want to limit our work here to the human thoughts and human nature that form our decisions because that is how ELB influences our lives so completely if we let it. Free will is the choice between “feel good at the moment” or ‘feel the joy, peace, and glory for eternity” our Abba Father provides. In ELB, the choice is to feel good at the moment.
Just because our Abba Father knows everything does not mean he does everything. Free will is the very definition of intelligent life, both material, and divine spirit life. It has no meaning if we do not actually have it. Our GCS is there to make choices, and free will puts 100% of the final responsibility for our choices on ourselves. Our Abba Father did not accept the blame game with Adam and Eve in Eden.
My focus on our relationship with our Abba Father is that we get a real taste of the joy, peace, and glory in this life that our GCS longs for. That longing is built into our hearts to seek our Abba Father, and if not filled, it will quickly turn to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll because it really wants to be filled. My number one tool in defeating addiction is teaching people to see that the desire they are feeding is our Abba Father calling them, and the enemy is saying, “no, the drug is better.” We know the enemy lies. Please pray on that; I see it work wonders.
Look at Joshua 24:14-15, “Now therefore fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt; and serve ye Yahweh. And if it seem evil unto you to serve Yahweh, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.“
And the people answered, Joshua 24:16-17, “And the people answered and said, Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh, to serve other gods; for Yahweh our God, he it is that brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and that did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the peoples through the midst of whom we passed.“
Joshua 24:14-15 has an interesting verse, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord . . .” Joshua is leading the Entrance Generation into the Promised Land with the giants. Israel must kill all the giants and their families, the embodiment of evil, as the flood killed all the giants’ predecessors. (That is evidence they were not fully human, more were born, but Noah had no giant blood.)
Israel chose not to destroy all the giants in the beginning, and it shaped the world to come. Our Abba father burdened Israel with killing the giants to serve our Abba Father. Was that evil? Please step out of the intellectual here and shape your answer in your heart with prayer and the Holy Spirit. No human can answer it for you.
In this life, people question taking life as ever being just except in self-defense. I shape my answer by what glorifies our Abba Father. He is the judge and punisher, and I am quite content to leave taking life in his hands.
Back to Joshua, Israel chose in free will the God who did something for them to feel good. He freed them from the awful bondage and kept them safe, which feels good in comparison. Israel and our Abba Father use that as the reason for their responses going forward. Our Abba Father repeatedly says, “I am the God who brought you out of slavery.” When life challenged Israel, they cried, “you are the God that got us into this.” That was an amazing relationship that revealed human nature.
None of our Abba Father’s miracles, promises, or forgiveness ever phased Israel. All our Abba Father’s glory never phased Israel; that has always shocked me. But it showed me human nature. It also shaped my preaching to find verses that feel good. Not the ones that tell us how to feel good in our mind, but feel good in our GCS, the verses about our relationship with our Abba Father.
The emphasis placed on our Abba Father’s promises to make this life feel better in our mind fall short in me. The Scripture is not about Jesus visiting 2,000 years ago but about his future return to stay. That is what we need to focus this life on. Please pray on that.
Look at Deuteronomy 28:1-4, “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of Yahweh thy God, to observe to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that Yahweh thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth: and all these blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of Yahweh thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy beasts, the increase of thy cattle, and the young of thy flock.”
Deuteronomy 28 is a covenant. We do our part, then our Abba Father does his part, and we choose in free will what we do. And it did not work. Look at Deuteronomy 30:15-16, “our Abba Father raised the stakes, “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love Yahweh thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that thou mayest live and multiply, and that Yahweh thy God may bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.” It still did not work.
Look at the New Testament. Romans 8:28-31, “And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”
That verse implies we are pre-chosen to believe or not believe, which contradicts free will but look again. The key phrase is “For whom He foreknew,” which means he knew who would receive him. That is his “all-knowing” attribute on display. Then, for those he knew would, in free will, receive him, he states his promises.
We cannot discern that, so we must keep doing our job. But something is wrong in this life because so much of the Scripture does not inspire us as it should. And the answer is the cunning, talking nahas and his army in ELB keeping us focused on our mind and this life. That is why we must escape ELB, not just be redeemed. Most of my readers have chosen to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior in this ELB world. This book helps believers escape ELB and experience the full joy, peace, and glory our Abba Father delivers. Please pray on that.
Chapter 6 takes a deep dive into Daniel, and it is a life changer. Daniel 9:24, Gabriel is speaking to Daniel, “. . . “Seventy weeks are decreed upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.”
Daniel wrote that several hundred years before it happened. Focus on these three words, sin, transgression, and iniquity. ELB conflates the three into one word, sin. Sin means “missing the mark,” and ELB hopes that a simplistic reaction is all we have. After all, our Abba Father forgives us for all three. But transgression and iniquity are too deep in meaning to our faith to leave hanging.
Law
Let’s jump to Moses and the law, more lessons on behavior knowledge. Our confusion about choosing the law in the Old Testament or Jesus in the New Testament weakens our faith. The law is knowledge, period. But, its first purpose was to express love to our Abba Father. Obedience to the law is love to our Abba Father. Jesus converted the law into the obedient love that the law substituted for in the Old Testament. Jesus is the law, but the Old Testament could not reveal him.
Mathew 5:17-18, “Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.“
“All is fulfilled” is when Jesus returns, and life becomes love. This life is not about Jesus’ business trip over 2,000 years ago but about his return for eternity.
Stop and think; if we love our neighbors, we do not kill them, steal from them, covet their stuff, sleep with their spouse, or gossip about them. Add love to our father and mother and love our Abba Father, and we covered the ten commandments. All converted to love; it is that simple.
Our Abba Father gave his first law in Eden, Genesis 2:17, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam and the woman revealed their sinful nature when they succumbed to temptation and ate from that one tree.
Remember, the sin came before ingesting the fruit. Man’s sinful nature comes from the inborn free will, which picked the fruit, brought it to the mouth, and told the jaw to bite down and swallow. That was the sin. The sin did not come in with the fruit.
Now, back it up, take away our Abba Father’s command to not eat the one fruit and replay the scene without it. The nahas offers the woman the fruit, and then our Abba Father comes in and punishes them. Is that fair and just of him? To punish them for something they did not know? Of course not. Now we see two purposes of the law; to know what sin is and justify punishment. The law’s primary purpose in Scripture is to teach us what sin is, to make us aware of the very thing keeping us from our Abba Father. And in turn, it makes his punishment righteous and just.
Please make sure you “get” that paragraph. We view the law in the Scripture in ELB as the same as in our justice system, a standalone thing that we live with, and the law stands in its own words. With our Abba Father, he and the law are inseparable. Our Abba Father is the law, and Jesus is the law. Please pray on that. When we break the speed limit while driving, is our state governor insulted? He doesn’t even know. When we sin, we sin against our Abba Father, not his law.
Romans 7:7, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.“
We went from one law in Eden to ten laws with Moses, and then Leviticus and Deuteronomy brought the Torah, Pentateuch, or the first five books, up to 613 expressed laws. The more they wrote, the more Israel sinned. But Israel always knew what the sin was. Also, file for future use that the surrounding nations did not know what sin was. They sacrificed to pay their pagan gods for favor.
It is common to ask, do the Old Testament laws apply to us today? Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount confuses us in Mathew 5:17-18 above.
The bottom line is, “does the law apply” is the wrong question. The law is there to teach us what sin is. The question is not does the law apply to us; it is how do we stop sinning because Jesus expanded the law in Mathew 5:21, “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire.”
Mathew 27-28 adds, “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
Jesus is teaching the Sermon on the Mount, the new covenant with Jesus to be like him. His plan is for us to become more like him, in other words, loving all people. Jesus brought us one commandment, “love others as he loved us” (John 13:34). If you are not loving, you are sinning, period. Everything in the world that is not “love” cannot be codified into law, but love is the universal solvent. Please pray on that.
Transgression
Cain murdered his brother back in Genesis. Genesis 4:5-7 NKJV, “And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Our GCS with the Holy Spirit is how we rule over sin.
Genesis leaves us to understand that Cain’s emotions got the better of him. Look at 1 John 3:8, “he that doeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” Now, look at 1 John 3:11-12, “For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another: not as Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.“
Please notice, “not as Cain who was of the wicked one . . . Because his works were evil,” No explanation is provided for what made Cain killing Abel so normal in Genesis. It seems as easy a decision for Cain as his parents eating the forbidden fruit. But 1 John clarifies that evil is the work of the devil, the wicked.
Have you ever heard the Cain story in Genesis coupled with 1 John and presented as the wicked one’s next move after Eden to defeat Jesus? The enemy captured Cain, and Abel died; no one could crush the serpent’s head. Victory for the nahas! So few couple the two works of the enemy in Genesis, the Woman in Eden and Cain later, because our Abba Father cannot reveal in the Old Testament that Jesus is the one to destroy the enemy. But we can see it now.
The Hebrew word for transgression is “pescha,” an extraordinary word in the Scripture. It means to break a trust, not just do something sinful. Transgression is willful disobedience against our Abba Father’s moral law, such as the Ten Commandments. We need to see it as a trust violation, not just a law violation. But Cain did not have the law, so he was allowed to live. We have it all, there are no excuses.
I cannot emphasize the broken trust element enough. The Jews broke their trust in our Abba Father. That moves my heart every time I think of it. It is much harder to transgress when we have a robust relationship with our Abba Father, trust him, and glorify him with our lives.
Iniquities
Iniquities are deliberate transgressions, but they pervert the law, not just disobey it. Intentional false belief for our benefit is a good description. For example, thinking it is ok to sin because our Abba Father forgives us. Our Abba father sacrificed his Son to pay for our sins. Please pray on that because believers live in weak faith because of weak understanding.
When we embrace our relationship, our faith will grow. It is the perfect example of how our Abba Father re-programs our minds and hearts with the Scripture if we look for it. Intentionally eating the fruit makes “the Fall” in Eden much more severe than missing the mark. I presented previously that sin is not mentioned in Eden. And look at the punishment. Just saying “sin attached” is ELB minimizing the reality of the power and damage promoted by the enemy, starting in Eden and ruling much of the world today.
But even more, the woman re-wrote the law. Genesis 3:4, “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” The woman did not just sin in Eden; she committed an iniquity. She perverted the first law and broke our Abba Father’s trust. And it destroyed our relationship with our Abba Father. Only in our close relationship with our Abba Father can we genuinely glorify him and have the best life in this phase. But we must escape from ELB.
Consider David in Psalm 51, known as the “sinner’s prayer.” Please read it so we can feel the power of Daniel’s prophecy above. In Psalm 51:2-3 David combines all three types of sin as the actual human condition, including David, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions; And my sin is ever before me.“Psalm 34:5, “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, And mine iniquity did I not hide: I said, I will confess my transgressions unto Yahweh; And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.“
A better understanding of the full spectrum of sin grows our faith because transgression and iniquity are attacks against our Abba Father, not just disobedience. Please pray on that.
Basic Sin
When living in the redeemed state, we must understand what we are being redeemed from because ELB is remarkably cavalier about sin. “Trust breaking” sins were presented above, but the everyday sins are a significant weight on our faith. Jesus paid for them; he forgives believers; what is the big deal? It is just missing the mark, i.e., being human.
No one but Jesus can meet our Abba Father’s standard of perfection. We all miss that mark, even Job. But in ELB, sin is part of our Bible life, not our earthly life, and I have long thought that conventional teaching missed the mark regarding everyday sin (some will see the irony in that statement).
Most everyone thinks they know when sin started, but I beg to differ, and it matters. Look at Genesis 3:1, “Now the nahas was more subtle than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye, shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” And, in Genesis 3:4-5, “And the nahas said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.“
The first “Fall” is the nahas, also with free will, calling our Abba Father a liar. The nahas started sin, not Adam and the woman. The nahas did not need the fruit for sin, nor do we; it comes with free will. The woman and Adam are the second Fall. The essential lesson there is the opened eyes, not their Fall. The third significant Fall is in the divine spirit world, the bene elohiym mating with the women of earth leading to the flood.
The fourth significant Fall was the Tower of Babel story about Noah’s children. That led to our Abba Father giving all the nations to the bene elohiym except Israel, which our Abba Father kept for himself. He immediately chose Abram to start the new Family of our Abba Father. From that point forward, the family unit became the center point of earthly life. The first appearance of the word love in the Scripture is Abraham sacrificing Isaac, “the child that he loved.” (The second one.)
Back to Eden. The woman disobeyed our Abba Father by accepting her tempter’s lies. Why? Because the lie sounded like it felt good. Then Adam joined her, and God’s children were punished and human life changed forever. For the moment, stop your mind from seeing the devil in this story. I used the ancient word, nahas, to steer you away from the English. It is okay to wonder about the cunning, talking nahas as you should, but he is not revealed as the devil yet.
Eden is an extraordinary place; it is our Abba Father’s home on earth, created to be with us. And yet, a cunning, talking nahas created by our Abba Father knew what our Abba Father said to Adam. The nahas was in Eden to pervert our Abba Father’s home on earth. And he succeeded.
Now, look at the body of Christ as the bride in our sanctified marriage relationship with Jesus. What is sanctified marriage but a trust covenant with our Abba Father? Sinning is adultery, betraying our betrothal in marriage with Christ. The word “sin” may be simple in meaning, but in the context of being the betrothed bride to Christ, it also breaks the trust. Anything less than glorifying our Abba Father in our lives, and we miss the full joy, peace, and glory our Abba Father created. I pray that you will see that with God only added as an accessory to this life, it weakens our faith in ELB.
Sin can feel really good, or there would not be much of it. Of course, it is the tool of the enemy. In ancient times, pagan gods were worshipped with sex and delivering pain. I am surprised that no group has started a “sex as worship” church in our postmodern era. Worshipping Baal that way is in the Scripture. Perhaps that will be the last move of the Progressive Movement, officially announcing itself as the religion they treat it as in their life. And it will be protected by our COTUS. (And see the mark of the beast coming.) Please pray on that.
So let’s conquer sin in us right here. The first thing to notice in Genesis 3 is that the word “sin” is never used in the entire “cunning, talking nahas story. I find that profound. We often hear the phrase “sin attached” when referring to the Fall, but that makes no sense if it never mentions sin. We also now understand that the woman’s actions were an iniquity, not just missing the mark. The punishment never seemed to fit the crime as just disobedience. But the trust with our Abba Father was broken; they defiled the marriage.
Our emotions will lead us to sin (bad menu choices) if we let them. Anger, greed, jealousy, lust, etc., can all lead to sins. Given that Jesus left us with only one commandment, “love others as he loved us,” if we are not loving, we are sinning. As you can see, the battlefield of sinful behavior is inside ourselves, and the destructive bombs are already there. The enemy can try and influence our menu choices, but he does not have to plant the bombs; he need only suggest that we detonate them, which is a far easier task.
Adam and the woman had the first law (do not eat from one tree) in their mind. All the cunning, talking nahas had to do was say, “God lied to you,” They believed it because it sounded good to them without a better compass. The result is a message to us, but it is far more complex than ELB wants us to know.
Now pay attention because this can change your life. “And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” We rule over it in our GCS but do not react to “the door” reference like we should. We see Jesus at the door of our house. We must see him at the door of our heart, our GCS.
We go to the end of the Scripture for more understanding. Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.” The door referenced is our heart, not our house, and we need to open it to Jesus.
Let’s return again to “sin lies at the door if we do not do well.” The “do well” is another English fail. ELB focuses on Cain’s “doing,” but the ancient word is more about the thought behind the “doing,” the heart in our GCS. That is another ELB victory in English, focusing on the behavior, not the power behind it. When we do not focus on our GCS connected to our Abba Father, there is no natural conscience to provide the sense of bad feelings that come with bad decisions. We cannot truly understand the Old Testament without understanding our GCS and Israel missing its connection without the Holy Spirit. Please pray on that.
It served our Abba Father’s purpose not to take Cain’s life at the moment, there was no law, and it would have been unfair. Genesis 4:18-24 list the many accomplishments of Cain’s family; he was quite productive. Scripture then moves onto the birth of Seth, and people “began to call on the name of the LORD.” (Gen 4:26.) In other words, the plan is back on track to call on the name of the LORD, so we move on in the Scripture.
Eating the Fruit
So what did eating the fruit do to Adam and the woman? The fruit opened their eyes. Genesis 3:5, “for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” But she had to eat it first. Genesis 3:7, “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
Our Abba Father created them naked, and it was good. Genesis 2:25, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” But knowing they were naked was not good. Why? I believe that the spectrum of knowledge gained by eating the fruit that opened their eyes included the feelings and concepts of lust and sexual depravity that were not there before. In other words, the knowledge of everything from good to wrong (a better translation) is like a menu or catalog of things to do placed in our minds.
But free will, the ability to disobey our Abba Father (sin) was there when created. Opening their eyes to the knowledge catalog gave us options to choose from and still does to this day. The earth became so evil without any direction to guide God’s children’s choices that our Abba father had to destroy everyone but Noah’s family.
The same could apply to Cain in that thoughts of killing were present, and the enemy exploited that. Our task is to manage our thoughts, but Cain had no faith guide. We know from 1 John that the talking, cunning nahas did influence Cain, but that was revealed long after Jesus’ work on the cross. ELB prospered and continues to prosper. It is time to realize that this life is about our relationship with our Abba Father, period. Without the Holy Spirit to connect Israel to their GCS and our Abba Father, the enemy had a much easier time competing with our Abba Father. We already know how to sin; we do not need the enemy to inform us. Sin itself is simply exercising our free will to define our behavior. And the Holy Spirit is in us to guide us to the godly decisions our Abba Father expects believers to live in. The reward is amazing! Revelation 22:12, “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is.”
