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Commentary on "A Love Response"
Day 6: Thursday, June 7, 2012 - Free to Be a Slave
This lesson is greatly confused on the free will that a slave has.
The idea that we have been made free only to become slaves of God is not a popular one, and I commend the lesson for including it. Our modern translations have often used servants as a more acceptable word, although the "servants" of the time weren't free men. But being a slave just sounds so degrading. Who would choose to be a slave?
This is one place that the lesson falls short. Every person is a slave. The question is what or who are we serving. We can be a slave to sin or a slave to God. But we aren't given the choice of not being a slave. Because SDAism has falsely elevated human free will as being one of the most important principles in the universe. The lesson states that "God loves us too much to force our will." This mantra is repeated so often within SDAism that people start to believe that it comes from Scripture. But it doesn't. Scripture has very little to say about the importance, or lack of importance, of our will. On the other hand, this is a topic that Ellen White wrote volumes about.
Earlier in the week, I quoted one verse about our will. Phil 2:13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. So it would appear that God doesn't just leave us to our own free will, but instead actively works to align our will with His. I think this is part of the great news of the Gospel, that God loves us too much to leave us to our own ways and means.
Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised June 1, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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