What About Us?
What about the devil? How did he become the way that he is? Did God make him that way?
Absolutely not! As Ezekiel 28 says, God made the devil perfect (just like the rest of His creation). The Bible then indicates that Satan rebelled against God by his own free will. We see this in Isaiah 14: 13-14 where the devil expresses his will to sin against God again and again. This means that God gave Satan free will as the devil had the ability to obey God or to sin.
This is why God threw the devil out of heaven. Not because Satan's disobedience was a part of God's plan but because God is holy and just. This was the consequence of the devil's free will choices.
What about us? What are we like? What is our human nature? And is our will limited by it?
In the beginning, we were made ‘good’ – see Genesis 1:31
We were made in God's image (male and female) – see Genesis 1:26-28, 2:7, 21-22
We were created to rule over the rest of God’s creation – see Genesis 1:26, 28
We were given God’s own breath – Genesis 2:7
Our physical body is a temple for the Holy Spirit to live within us – see 1 Corinthians 6:19
We were created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness – see Ephesians 4:24
We were created with knowledge – see Colossians 3:10
Being made ‘good’ and in God’s image means that Adam and Eve also would have had the ability to make good decisions and obey Him – otherwise God wouldn’t have called them ‘very good’.
Had God created Adam and Eve without the natural ability to make good decisions and obey Him, God would have gone against his own nature (being just, loving, gracious, compassionate and all the other characteristics previously mentioned), by punishing them for what they did not have the ability to do.
If the Creator does not give the created one the natural ability to obey Him then the created one cannot be held responsible for his disobedience.
Just as we saw from the devil, part of being made 'good' is having free will - the ability to choose. Without this we would be no different from animals who function based on instinct alone. And, without the freedom to choose, we would be nothing more than an puppet or a robot - only doing what God pre-programs us to do.
Adam and Eve were both made 'good' and both had the ability and freedom to obey God and continue to live in the garden of Eden or to disobey and face the consequences.
God gave them a command - do not eat from a certain tree - see Genesis 2:16-17
God warned them about what would happen if they disobeyed His command - see Genesis 2:17
And God followed through on His warning when they disobeyed so Adam and Eve faced the consequences of their choice – see Genesis 3:16-19, 23
This further demonstrates free will as it would not make sense for a loving God to command something that they did not have the ability to obey. As Morrell states, “The only way to explain their sin, without making God the author of sin, is to say that they sinned by free will and not by necessity of nature.” Further, the “objective of warning is that the one who is being warned would make the right choice. Warning a person about the consequences of their choices takes for granted that they have the ability of choice and assumes that they can choose between two alternatives.”[1]
Adam and Eve were created with ‘good’ natures and had the ability to obey God and, by their own free will, they chose to disobey.
Therefore, one’s “nature does not cause your will.”
[1] The Natural Ability of Man, Morrell
