The Fall

[Guest]

My question is, "Was the fall necessary for mankind to have free will?"

One of the arguments that I hear, and like, is that someone can only truly love if they are allowed to not love as well. In other words you can't force true love.

If then we are only able to truly love God through a choice to love him, would that have been available if humankind hadn't sinned, and consequently then was the fall a good thing.(that sounds strange)

[Guest]

Was the fall necessary for mankind to have free will?"

Hi JW129,

Let me turn the question around. Is free will necessary to have the fall?

The answer I believe is a resounding yes, unless of course God is the author of sin and determined that Adam and Eve would sin.

I believe Adam and Eve were created with free will. If not, they certainly wouldn't have sinned, because God didn't make them do it!

Les

[Guest]

I wonder if they did anything prior to taking the fruit that would now be considered a sin. The way I see it they had one command and that was their only opportunity of sin, namely if they fell short of obeying God's one command. The one thing they were not to do they just HAD to do because they were human and internally rebellious.
In my thinking they were much like us but didn't understand good or evil, but they did disobey God and their eyes were opened to their sinfulness from that point on.

[Guest]

I wonder if they did anything prior to taking the fruit that would now be considered a sin.

Did'nt Eve lie when she told Satan that God told her "not to touch the tree" when God only forbade her from eating the fruit?

[Guest]

There is more to the "fall" of man in Genesis then just the act of Adam and Eve disobeying God. A bigger issue is that they took something into themselves. When they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whatever was in the fruit from that tree caused their nature to be corrupted. They became sinful beings in their nature....not just in their behavior. Now all of their offspring are born with the nature of indwelling sin....before any act of sin is ever committed.

In other words........We don't become sinners because we sin......We sin because we are sinners by nature. The nature of mankind was changed when they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.


Roger

[Guest]

I wonder if they did anything prior to taking the fruit that would now be considered a sin.

Did'nt Eve lie when she told Satan that God told her "not to touch the tree" when God only forbade her from eating the fruit?

I don't know if this is a lie as much as it is legalism, which can be very bad too. It's like the placing a "hedge around the law" that the Jews tended to do that led to strict legalism.

[Guest]

My question is, "Was the fall necessary for mankind to have free will?"

One of the arguments that I hear, and like, is that someone can only truly love if they are allowed to not love as well. In other words you can't force true love.

If then we are only able to truly love God through a choice to love him, would that have been available if humankind hadn't sinned, and consequently then was the fall a good thing.(that sounds strange)

OK I am going to make this simple.
Why Why Why is it so hard to conceive that a sovereign GOD of all things seen and unseen, discovered or undiscovered by mankind, why is it that the Calvinistic belief is so sure that the fall was conspired by GOD? Why is this the only elucidation they come up with?
Why can’t it be so simple? Are all things attainably by mankind that are of GOD’S?
Are we so envious we believe that all things were created for us and us only? How selfish a thought, it is truly simple GOD placed a tree, His tree for his purpose amongst mankind for his own purpose, why can’t GOD have something of his own or something for someone else and not for us? Would you ask a child to run a nuclear plant, drive a car, fly a plane or navigate a ship across the sea? There are some things unattainable. We had no business with the tree, of knowledge of good and evil. It wasn’t ours and why would we be so arrogant to take from it. As Steve Gregg would put it why do women covet to teach men when they have such a heavenly calling in other areas that are ordained by GOD? Not all things are attainable. The fall was not necessary.

Tree: GOD’S
Everything else amongst the garden: OUR’S, Enjoy Mankind!