Marital Bliss

When God created Eve, God saw that Adam was a lonely person and it was not good. NOTE: It is not being single that is bad but being alone in the world for God made us to be social creatures.  He attempted to find some help fit for him among the animal kingdom but none were sufficiently able to do that so he decided to create Eve also to be in God's image after Adam to meet his needs.   We are "complete in Christ," not complete in our mate!  Then they can realize that Eve is equal and partner in life, not his subordinate or inferior. He was not meant to take orders from Adam but to challenge him to keep him on his toes and make him realize that he is not supreme even though he was first created. You could say that Adam was the crown of God's creation but Eve was God's finishing touch. God's last creation was Eve therefore you could say that his best creation was Eve--he could not improve on her! God's last word!  Actually, beauty was perfected in Eve, not Adam, because I think he saw that she was beautiful. He was created for Adam, not Adam for Eve--to get that straight. 

Now people think that it is not good for a man to be alone meaning that he ought to be married to be happy or to have a woman as his companion. There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.  You can be a happy and fulfilled solitary man! If you know God that is!  You can have much company and still be alone in life you can be around people and be lonely and you can not have many friends and be lonely. Paul was single and he saw a marriage as a concession made to man because of his lust [not because he would be lonely!] and his weaknesses and you are better off being single if you can handle being signal without burning and lust.  He saw being single as a calling from God in a special gift (celibacy).  God did not intend to make it a special spiritual milestone when they become married as a graduation, prize, trophy, or award from God or as demonstrating extra spirituality.   

Now, I can say in my life I'm glad that I was divorced because that's when God gave me a spiritual wake-up call into service and I renewed myself spiritually and made a recommitment to my life. Paul is right when he said that when you're married your loyalties are divided you cannot devote your whole life and time to God. You have divided loyalty to your family and wife. The cares of this life have a danger to choke out kingdom duties and obligations or service.  This takes away from God's time. But I believe celibacy is a gift and the church should not enforce it like they do on the Catholic priest. 

There will come a time when marriage will be forbidden says in the prophetic word of the Bible among priests and preachers. When people are married, they usually refer to their spouse as their better half or their inspiration or reason for living but they must not see their spouse as an idol or a person that takes the place of God in their lives or even someone they worship, in other words.  It also says in the Bible when you find a wife you find a good thing and obtain favor from the Lord; this is a blessing and we should be glad and praise God when we find a wife for this is God's will for us.  People can get married apart from the Lord's sanction authority, purpose, or permission. They want to do their own thing and refuse to listen to advice like when they are unequally yoked or living in sin. 

Counseling is also called for when such a one may be living in disobedience and is considering marriage. It is important when you're married to find the right one or Mr Right or conversely Mrs Right. That does not mean they are perfect but they are meant for you you're you're man or your woman when God gave you they're more than just a friend they're they are an advisor, an advocate, an intercessor a counselor, a confidant, and intimate companion to share life with.  

In sum, marriage is a partnership of two equals seeking God's will for them as a team and having unity and oneness of spirit and spiritual goals; therefore, God has decided to use both together to accomplish his will, and bliss in marriage is only found this way or they will be fighting God and his will! Soli Deo Gloria! 

In Adam's Fall, We Sinned All

The title is from The New England Primer and shows how Adam represented us all in his willful sin. He was posse non peccare and posse peccare or able not to sin and able to sin according to Augustine. God gave him the free will to choose to love Him; however, it is not that Adam chose evil as some suggest, but that he chose self over God.  He was the head of his wife and is the head of our race and we would've done the same thing.  His sin was a prototype of all sin in rejecting God's divine nature.  Especially His wisdom, love, justice, and omniscience.  

They rejected God's authority, doubted His goodness, disputed His wisdom, repudiated His justice, contradicted His truth, and spurned His grace (someone has said). Eve was deceived and may have been confused, but Adam knew what he was doing and chose to be on Eve's side rather than God, probably because of his love for her and not wanting to lose her to death.

God had every reason to place a test in the garden (note that the first sin was committed in a perfect environment) and there was only one command to obey--anyone could've kept it.  God, for sure, didn't want obedience without love and wanted man to love of a free will or voluntarily  (I use the term free will sparingly because of Martin Luther's book The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbritrio) in which he says it is too grandiose of a term.  (By the way, Calvin was in agreement.) There is a natural will and a spiritual will.  Free will has been debated since St. Augustine of Hippo, who said we are "free but not freed." He meant we do have free will in a sense, but no liberty.  

Our nature is enslaved to sin and even the will is depraved and unable to please God. God gave Adam free will that we don't have anymore and he sinned.  It is reckoned that he represented us and we have been deemed sinners because of him.  Yes, we had free will in Adam and blew it when we chose self and became sinners by nature, by choice, and by birth.  Sin is our birthright and there is no escape!  There is no position of neutrality for our will--it is tainted with sin (cf. Rom. 1:32; 7:15).

God was not inviting trouble or taking a chance on the so-called "risky gift of free will" because He is sovereign and omniscient and had planned for this to happen and took it into consideration--there was no plan B.  If we are reckoned sinners in Adam we have become enslaved to this sin in our whole being (total depravity) and Adam lost his free will and got an enslaved will. Only God has the ultimate free will (a term not mentioned in Scripture except for free will or voluntary offerings) and yet God is unable or not free to sin or be the agent of evil.  We, on the other hand, are incapable of doing good or anything that pleases God (cf. Is. 64:6). The Arminian believes some do desire to repent and be believe the gospel, while the Reformed tradition holds that God quickens that lost desire within us.

We don't need free wills to be saved, we need wills made free.  God's salvation went according to plan and we love Him because He first loved us!  God chose us, we didn't choose Him (cf. John 15:16).  God's dilemma:  No one chose Him, and so He was obliged to elect some according to His purpose and grace and the good pleasure of His will (cf. 2 Tim. 1:9;  Eph. 1:5).  You may say:  "I came to Christ of my own free will and by myself [without any wooing or divine intervention]!" That person probably left Christ all by himself too.  What God is able to do is make the unwilling willing ("[For] it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure," says Phil. 2:13, ESV) and God can turn that heart of stone into a heart of flesh. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them" ("Ezek. 36:27, NKJV). Remember:  We are called and chosen unto salvation as Mathew 22:14 says, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Our destiny is ultimately in God's hands; God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will--He isn't obligated to save anyone or it would be justice and not mercy (cf. Rom. 9:15).  Romans 9:16 says:  "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy."

Now, after the fall, man is non posse non peccare (unable not to sin or only able to sin!) according to Augustine.  [Note that we are not talking in reference to the natural faculty of choice but spiritual will.]  God doesn't coerce us or force us to do anything we don't want to do by any outside force (called determinism), but His grace is irresistible or efficacious and does God's will.  Adam had the inclination to do good but lost that at the fall--man is still human, not an automaton, but has lost this inclination to do good. We are free to act according to our nature, but God made us the way we are like clay in the hands of a potter, and determined our nature.  

Adam chose against God, but He saved him anyway.  We are free in our state of sin in that we are voluntary sinners and our real freedom is to choose our own poison.  Romans 9:19 says that no one can resist God's will--His omnipotence overpowers us.  There is "not one maverick molecule in the universe" that is left to chance--God doesn't play dice with the universe, according to Einstein, and leaves nothing to chance.

You cannot say, "From now on, I will be good."  All things being equal, that doesn't last any longer than a diet with good intentions.  Apart from the Holy Spirit ("No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him," says John 6:44, ESV) without His wooing, no one can choose Christ, and God must intervene and work grace in our hearts.  We are slaves to act the way we want to and are in rebellion against God in our old sin nature.  We are indeed free to choose whatever we desire, but we do not desire Christ without grace.  "If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know..." (John 7:17). That work is called redemption and causes us to repent and believe the gospel in the process known as conversion.  A spiritually dead man cannot believe or choose anything spiritual.  God must open our spiritual eyes to the truth ("I was blind, but now I see").

The essence of freedom is self-determination and we do make a decision ourselves and in this sense, we are still free. We never act by compulsion or as a programmed robot, but willingly.  We sin according to our own volition.  But whenever you look at a sinner you should say, "There but for the grace of God, go I" as George Whitefield said.   We can thank God for changing us and softening our hearts by grace ("... [Gr]ace might reign through righteousness," says Rom. 5:20).

Let me cite an everyday example of wooing:  In the process of courtship you fall in love and entice your lover to marry you (by an act of free will, of course), and you never interfered with her free will but got her to marry you and get your will done--she couldn't resist your proposition and was converted!

We all can act naturally according to enlightened self-interest in our old sin nature.  A sure sign of genuine saving faith is a heartfelt love for God and this is impossible without a relationship with Him--no one loved God before salvation.  We are not elected because we want to believe or we do believe (that would be merit-based and is called the prescient view, which Rom. 8:29-30 militates against), but we believe because we are the elect (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13, 1 John 5:1, Rom. 8:29-30). 

In the Reformed tradition of the order of salvation or ordo salutis, regeneration precedes faith!  Scripture clearly says, "We love Him because He first loved us." The unsaved, lost, and unregenerate man has no desire to repent, believe in the gospel, and choose Christ or he would have something to boast in his salvation before God.  No one will say, "I wanted to believe, but couldn't!"  This is because Reformed theology teaches that if left to ourselves, none would choose Christ.

Salvation is totally of God and He gets all the glory.  Soli Deo Gloria! According to C. H. Spurgeon the essence of Reformed theology is:  "Salvation is of the Lord, [it is not a cooperative venture, as theologians say, "monergistic, not synergistic"]" says Jonah 2:9.  God must change us and do a work of grace and regeneration, quickening our spirits to believe and repent because we have no inclination to obey God before salvation--we must be born again.  When we are saved we are set free: "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed (cf. John 8:36)." We are not born free, we are set free--we are born slaves!   Soli Deo Gloria!