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Chapter Seven

God Gives Each Christian the Responsibility to Choose

The Word of God clearly teaches that salvation is a gift to individual Christians because Christ is personally in each one through the begettal of God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Each Christian is individually responsible to God the Father to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We must believe the Truth and live by it. God will not give us salvation simply because of our physical presence within a corporate church organization.

Each Christian is responsible to work out his or her own salvation through the indwelling power of God’s Holy Spirit. Paul commanded the Philippian brethren, “Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

This Scripture clearly shows that each Christian must maintain his or her personal relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ. Every individual will have to give an account of himself or herself to God (Rom. 14:10). We should not compromise our personal relationship with God for the sake of pleasing men. We should not compromise that spiritual relationship for the sake of social fellowship. Remember this Christian testimony, “It is better to live the Truth alone, than to live a lie in a group.” Those who continue to fellowship in a congregation where false doctrines are being taught—including the diabolical lies of the Trinity—are showing by their presence that they support these deceitful teachings, as much as if they agreed by saying “Amen.”

If you continue to fellowship in their assembly, you are giving tacit agreement to their teachings. You are spiritually partaking of their sins, and you cannot have fellowship with Jesus Christ! Paul warned, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: you cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons” (I Cor. 10:21).

God Will Not Prevent Us From Choosing Evil

The history of the early churches of God as recorded in the New Testament contains a valuable lesson  for us today: God did not personally intervene to stop the apostasy in the first century!  Neither will God personally intervene to stop the apostasy in His churches today!

From the beginning of this world, God has allowed mankind the freedom to sin. God did not stop Adam and Eve from sinning. God did not keep Cain from killing his brother, nor did God prevent the wickedness of all mankind before the Flood. But when God did choose to intervene and execute His judgment, He sent the Flood to destroy the wicked, and spared only eight persons.

God did not stop human corruption after the Flood. However, He did confound the language of the people to postpone the fullness of evil until the set time in His plan.

God did not intervene to prevent the idolatry of Israel and Judah, but He sent many prophets to warn them, calling them to repent and to return to the true God. Some of the kings and the people repented and chose to follow God. They did so by free choice, not because God forced them to serve Him. God forgave and blessed those who repented, and God will bless us whenever we personally choose to repent and to love Him and His Son Jesus Christ. But if we choose not to repent, God allows us to continue in our sins.

When there is no repentance by corrupted leaders within a church of God, God does not intervene to keep them from apostatizing by teaching false doctrines. When they deliberately choose to embrace the doctrines of Satan and his demons, and teach them as official doctrines, God allows them to practice their error. Because they have chosen myths rather than Truth, God will let them fall.

God Commands Us To Choose Life

God is not now intervening to stop wars, famines, oppression, crime, sexual perversion, and all the evils of mankind. God has not chosen to stop these evils at this time. He has given mankind the responsibility to choose between good and evil.

God has given us free moral agency. We must choose! We are blessed or cursed, and we live or die by our choices! It is God’s desire that we choose to love Him and keep His commandments and live. But because God has given each individual free moral agency, each person must make his or her own choice.

Instead of choosing God’s righteous ways, most people have chosen the evil ways of Satan and the world. Those who choose to do evil will receive the wages of sin, which is death. But everyone who chooses to love God and live by His Truth will receive eternal life. Here are the choices God has laid before every human being: “See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command you this day to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply: and the Lord your God shall bless you in the land where you go to possess it [our goal is the promised Kingdom of God].

“But if your heart turn away, so that you will not hear, but shall be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them [this is the meaning of apostasy]; I denounce to you this day, that you shall surely perish, and that you shall not prolong your days upon the land [nor shall we enter into the Kingdom of God]....I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live: that you may love the Lord your God, and that you may obey His voice, and that you may cleave unto Him: for He is your life [the Author of eternal life], and the length of your days...” (Deut. 30:15-20).

These words, spoken by Moses to the children of Israel in Old Testament times, are especially meaningful for “spiritual Israel” today—those who are the children of Abraham through God’s grace and who make up the spiritual Church of God. For those who are in the spiritual Church of God, it is time to make a choice between good and evil—between Truth and error. Within the congregations of God today, evil and false doctrines are again threatening the faith of true believers, and God will not personally intervene. When ministers, leaders and brethren choose to reject the Truth of God and to corrupt themselves with the doctrines of demons, then God allows them to follow their error. That is the lesson God teaches us throughout the Bible! God has made each of us responsible for his or her own choices and actions. God will bless or curse accordingly, but He does not prevent us from choosing error!

If God Himself would personally intervene to stop deception and apostasy, then free moral agency would no longer exist. That is a fact! Free moral agency would no longer be in effect, if God removed the choices He Himself has set before us!

If God would personally keep people from choosing lies, that would defeat the prophecies that God Himself inspired, revealing that sin will come to the full in Satan’s “Great Apostasy.” This climax of evil and sin can only take place in a world where people are free to choose what they will believe and practice.

In this time of increasing error and growing deception, we who are the spiritual church of God have choices to make. Will we choose the Truth of God or the myths of Satan? God wants to know what is really in our hearts. Do we truly love God the Father and Jesus Christ with our whole being? Do we truly love his Word of Truth, which He has so wonderfully preserved for us? Do we really want to be in the Kingdom of God and live in love with God the Father and Jesus Christ for all eternity?

To those who would be His followers, Jesus Christ made it absolutely clear that the stakes were high and the way was difficult. He said, “Enter in through the narrow gate; because wide is the gate and broad is the way which leads to destruction, and many are they who are entering through it; because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and few are they who are finding it” (Mat. 7:13-14, AT).

Jesus shows the single-minded devotion that is required of a Christian: “If any one comes to Me and hates not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters—yes, and his own life also—he cannot be My disciple [literal Greek meaning: there is no other possible power to make you His disciple]. And whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple [there is no other possible power to make you His disciple]” (Luke 14:26-27).

Jesus emphasized this truth when He said, “The one who is loving father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and the one who is loving son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And the one who does not take up his cross, and follow after Me, is not worthy of Me” (Mat. 10:37-38, AT).

These Scriptures clearly show that the one who is loving social fellowship more than Jesus Christ is not worthy of Him. The one who is accepting the lies of Satan the devil in exchange for the Truth of God is not worthy of Him. The one who does not stand resolutely for Jesus Christ until death is not worthy of Him.

Until Jesus Christ returns, each of us is personally responsible to God the Father and Jesus Christ for his or her own actions and beliefs. We are being judged individually by God according to our faith and our conduct.

God commands us to love Him wholeheartedly and live by His every Word. If we stray from God and begin to believe and practice error, God will make us aware of our sins in the hope that we may repent and have our sins blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ. But God will not stop us from sinning—not even if we are a top leader or minister in a corporate church organization. Those ministers who choose to preach error and to promulgate lies will be warned by God to repent, but God will not stop them if they choose to follow deception and apostasy!

We Must Accept Our Personal Responsibility

In today’s world, people readily blame others for their irresponsibility and their lack of character and self-control. They often blame society, or their mother or father, or the boss, or the police, or others in positions of authority. Because people do not want to accept personal responsibility for their wrong actions, they try to place the blame on others. That is exactly what Adam and Eve did after they sinned. Such excuses have no standing before God and cannot release anyone from his or her personal accountability to God.

Unfortunately, when the leaders of a nation sin, the people also suffer. It is the same in the churches of God. When ministers and church leaders sin by accepting and teaching false doctrines, the brethren suffer by becoming confused and deceived into following error.

When a church reaches this condition, it is important to remember that every Christian is personally accountable to God the Father and Jesus Christ to continually be studying the Word and to “prove all things” (II Thes. 5:21).  We cannot blame others for deceiving us if we fail to build ourselves up in the Word of God. God has given each Christian the personal responsibility to hold fast the Truth, to grow in grace and knowledge, to follow that which is good, and to love Him with all the heart, with all the mind, with all the soul and with all the strength.

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