For many years I have been saying that one of the greatest gifts God has given us is Free Will, the right to choose how we live our lives.
Recently, though, I have begun to think that when the prophecies of the End Days are fulfilled, the way God will do away with sin is to take away Free Will.
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In the books of the Prophets (Nevi’im) we read how we will all be brought back to the Land and once there we will live in peace. The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) says that God will write his Torah (meaning teachings, i.e., how to worship him and how to treat each other) on our hearts, and in Ezekiel 36:26 God says:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Jewish tradition has always considered the heart the center of intellect, will, and conscience. It is more than just the emotional center; it is also the thinking part of our consciousness. It is the inner, essential self that directs moral choices, where good and evil impulses battle, and where Torah is internalized.
The prophecies of the afterlife, once the bowls of wrath are emptied, the shofars sounded, etc., and Yeshua has defeated the Enemy once and for all, those of us who have accepted Yeshua, lived our lives in accordance with the way Yeshua lived his life, and tried our best (because no one can be perfect) to obey God, we will be the remnant of humanity that gets to live in God’s presence forever.
Shaul (Paul) tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that when we are resurrected we will be resurrected with a spiritual body, and Yeshua tells us that there is a difference between the earthly and the spiritual, so there is definitely something that will be significantly different when we are resurrected to eternal life.
And, since all the prophecies talk of joy, no more tears, no more suffering- all which are the result of sin- then it seems to me, now, that the only way we sinful creatures can be sinless will be to have the opportunity to be sinful taken away from us.
And the only way that can be done is to resurrect us without free will, so that we cannot choose to sin.
For many years I have said free will is a gift that God gave us so we could choose to love him and not be automatons, doing what we do because we didn’t have any choice, and I believe that is still true. However, now I believe it is true only while we are in this plane of existence.
When we are resurrected, it will be without free will because God will give us new heart, one with his Torah written on it so there won’t be an option to reject his Torah, any more than we have an option to reject using our heart.
And you know what? That is okay by me because what is important is that in this life we have proven our desire to live according to God’s instructions even though we are not able to do so.
What I am saying is that even though in this existence the idea that we do not have free will seems to de-humanize us, if we show God that while we have free will to disobey we don’t want to, in the afterlife he will reward us with eternal joy by taking away that potential to screw things up by sinning, because humans cannot live without sinning.
Sin is born into us in this existence not as a punishment, but as a means to show God that we are trying our best to live in accordance with his instructions (in the Torah), even though it goes against our basic nature. It is the struggle to be sinless that counts, not how sinless we are.
I now believe that the effort to be sinless is what counts with God, and having Yeshua to provide us the means to be forgiven of our sins is what keeps us in line for salvation.
In this life we must accept that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, that his sacrifice provides the means for us to be forgiven of sin, and that so long as we try to live our lives the same way that Yeshua lived his, which was to be Torah observant (obeying God and not men; men created religion to have power over other men), then our reward will be salvation, eternal life in God’s presence, with a new heart that is pure and sinless.
The greatest gift God has given us in this earthly life is free will, allowing us to choose what we will do, and the greatest gift God will give us in the afterlife is the lack of free will, preventing us from hurting ourselves by not having the ability to sin.
Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!