I want you to think with me on decisions that God has made for His creation.  You’ve heard me say before that “because God knew the end from the beginning that:…”Well in this case ; therefore He also knew when He created us, that we would each one in our own way choose sin over righteousness.  He knew that given the fact that Satan occupied this realm wherein He was choosing to place His creation; that Satan because he is  who he is: the deceiver, that he  would certainly be doing his best to destroy anything that God held dear.  

God apparently had either already created Hell or He had planned it as part of creation.  Either way He created It, and when it was created, it was created specifically for Satan and his angels.  He tells us about that Himself in His word.  So our first question would be; why would God not have placed these deceiving creatures in that place and then sealed it up permanently before He brought man into existance?  God knew that after He created the universe that then He would create mankind. He created us not as Angels, but in His image.  

Thinking  about this, I have come to believe that if Adam were in His image then Adam likely possessed His character, even if not His abilities and knowledge.  Adam was a righteous man until he exercised his free will to oppose God’s instruction and thus he became a sinner.  

Free will had to be very important therefore to God.  Otherwise, why did He create the forbidden tree with its fruit?  

If man desires to be loved, it is because God desires to be loved. God was saying: if you love mMe Adam, you well not eat of this tree. Anything else that Adam would have done was perfectly ok with our Heavenly Father.  So, God not only left Satan to run loose throughout His creation, even though he had prepared Hell for him, but He placed within the garden on purpose this forbidden tree.  So if man’s ability to freely and willingly  love God’s plan for him were not very important to God; then would He not have chained up His enemy and ours, rather than allowing him to lie to Adam, and would He not have left out of His creation that one tree?  

There can be no doubt that God had at some point determined that man would need to prove at a minimum his desire to be a loyal son.  

There is no question that a right standing before God has always required respect and obedience. It also is true that without God’s characteristic provision of righteousness that the heart of man cannot chose to be righteous as he was created to be.  Therefore without Jesus there is no new covenant promise.  No new heart. But is it not probable that man seeing both good and evil around about him, that he then did have the ability to choose between the two. 

Genesis 3:22  Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take [fruit] also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”– (NASB2020)

No that did not mean that he would always choose good, but it meant that he did have the choice and the will to decide.  We all know unbelievers that we like and who without a doubt know right from wrong.  So they make choices.  And they also have had the choice to believe the gospel or not.  Giving one’s life to God is a choice.  Can it be made without God’s intervention?  Theologians would tell us: of course not.  But man coming to know good from evil was not a surprise to God. 

It took the life of Jesus and the pain given by Him for your and my sin. To cover that sin  seeing His act for us as a good thing for us is a choice for the good that He wishes to bestow upon us, with an offering by Him of a new heart, and a new life as a result of what He did that was good. It took His Holy Spirit wooing you to belief, that this act was real.  But it was still your decision either for or against His act being a good and desired impact upon your future life.  

One thing more that convinces me that God planned on acting upon man based on his desire for God is seen in our day in the testimonies of those living in places such as Iran.  For there are  hundreds of testimonies of Jesus appearing in dreams to persons, who had never heard the gospel.  They only knew of Jesus in light of  their Muslim teachings concerning Him.  Why then, is this happening to them?  Paul tells that without a preacher they cannot hear, and without hearing they cannot be saved. So what is God doing?  Is it possible that when He sees the man or woman of a contrite heart (a heart seeking for Him) for whom He, God, has been searching, that when He finds no one to send to them that He, then just goes Himself?  The fact that God looks for the contrite of heart, and desires man to seek after Him, as a free will decision seems evident in Scripture and in creation.