07 May '13 10:44>
this just confirms that god gave us freewill. it doesnt address why some people choose good and some bad.
Notice that the choice before the first man was between God as life and independence from God.
There were two trees in the garden. It was not as we might assume a tree of good on one side and a tree of evil on the other side. Rather the knowledge of good and evil were on the same tree. The Bible's revelation then of the basic choice is between God's way of life and any other way. That any other way may seem good or may seem bad. But it is simply not God's way.
So you have the basic dichotomy between "the tree of life" and "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" .
Good and evil are both on that one tree which God warned would bring death. This profound fact alone is enough to persuade me that this writing is not merely human mythology but the divine word of God.
"And out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of GOOD AND EVIL." (my emphasis Genesis 2:9)
We might see from this that a sin against good is not as serious as a sin against God's authority.
Put another way, a transgression against good, choosing evil instead, can be forgiven more easily. But a transgression of rebellion against the authority of God Himself as the uncreated eternal Life is more serious.
The dichotomy is really between life and death, between dependence of the Author of life and "the Other Way whether it seem good or it seem evil."
The Other Way is the way not ordained by God. It turns out that the master of the Other Way is Satan. It may seem at first good. It may be exposed latter as in fact evil.
God did not instruct man to be good. God commanded man to be careful what he ate. That is to be careful what he took into himself. What he ate is what would constitute his being.
"And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may ewat freely. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (vs. 16,17)
It is crucial to see that in the beginning the great choice was for man to be careful for what he ate. There is God's food, or rather God Himself as food and there is "the Other food". Regardless of how well it sounds, how useful it sounds, and how pleasant and desireable it is advertized, it is the Other Way and not the way of God. And its result will be death.
God has provision today for one's bad acts. God has redeemption to save from one's evil acts. But to fail to take God in as one's "food" today is far more serious. It is emphatic that a man open his heart to "eat" Christ who says not "I am ... the life".
Today this "tree of life" is definitely the Lord Jesus Christ the resurrected Lord who said "As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me." (John 6:57)
We must "eat" this Living One, take Him into our hearts, into our innermost spiritual being in order to live by Him.