Tag: free will

Can You Fall Away in Eternity?

The content reflects on the significance of our eternal relationship with God, emphasizing the effort needed for salvation through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It discusses the potential for free will in Heaven and examines the analogy of Adam and Eve’s fall, concluding that while sin might theoretically exist, the divine environment will prevent any deviation from God’s presence.

Our place with God in eternity is our most valuable asset by far. God had to do a lot to get us to that point. Jesus had to keep the Law perfectly. He had to absorb the worst part of the Law’s prescribed punishment for our sin: being forsaken by the Father. The Holy Spirit had to break through our sin hardened mind to give us a connection to Jesus. The Spirit also has to shepherd us through the rest of our lives without us falling away. So much work for God.

But once we are securely in Heaven, we can never fall away again, right? Let’s examine that. There is precious little written about this question, but the question is not uncommon. Let’s start with Adam and Eve. What caused them to fall?

Adam and Eve did not initially have bodies infected by sinful nature. Neither will we in eternity. They did not know what evil was. I think we still will know what it is. They had only one rule, the rest came naturally to them. I think good will come naturally to us in Heaven. I know of no equivalent to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Heaven or the New Earth. The Tree of Life will be around (see Revelation 22). They had to contend with Satan’s temptations, we will not.

Adam and Eve present the nearest analogy for what we will be in eternity. But it isn’t a one-to-one correspondence. God made humans to have a perfectly free will. Our will hasn’t been free since they sinned. Will we be fully free in eternity? If so, then we must be free to sin against God and fall away. We will know what evil is. At least we will at first. This thought is frightening. Currently, we dare not trust ourselves, because we have had a sinful nature our whole existence so far and it is not trustworthy. Heaven will be different. I don’t feel like I can get my head inside of what it will be like, however.

Angels know what evil is. They are free willed. A third of them fell from God and were cast out. Still two-thirds did not. The fallen third had Satan’s influence. I don’t know if this is comforting or disconcerting. It does show that you can be free-willed, know evil, and not choose it.

Perhaps this whole discussion adds some light to the strange text of Isaiah 65. The passage is about the New Earth. It says so at the beginning. Still it speaks of death and being accursed even though the rest of scripture speaks of eternal life.

No more shall there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

It is clear from the rest of Scripture that Heaven isn’t just a long life. Perhaps God wasn’t ready to roll out the idea of eternal life at the time of Isaiah. The passage above could be read as hypothetical. I think that is what the answer to our initial question actually is.

Hypothetically, a person in Heaven and the New Earth could choose evil and be cast out of God’s presence. We will have nothing internal to drive us to such a decision and nothing externally to tempt us to such a decision. And we will not be so stupid as to think that we can be God and do things any better than Him. Fully satisfied and loved, we will eventually forget that sin is even possible.

“For behold, I create new heavens
    and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
    or come into mind.

Isaiah 65:17 (ESV)

We have plenty to worry about while still in this world. We don’t have to worry about the next. The ongoing indwelling of the Holy Spirit will keep us in place without robbing us of our will. Falling away will not be rare. It will be non-existent.

Heavenly Free Will

It is exciting to think about what our bodies may be like in Heaven and the New Earth. Can we move between Heaven and the New Earth? I think we will. Will we be stronger, faster, bigger, more coordinated? Will we look significantly different? Will we still be recognizable? All these things are mysterious and exciting, but I find one question disconcerting. Will we have freewill and if so, could not the whole cycle of sin start again?

There are a few things that we either know or can infer about the initial creation. Adam and Eve had completely free wills and had no knowledge of sin. They had one command and therefore only one way to mess up. The temptation to sin came externally from Satan. Satan was also created with a completely free will. Only vague information is given about His fall into sin:

You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
    you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
    and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
    from the midst of the stones of fire.

Ezekiel 28:15-16 (ESV)

Angels were also impacted. Nothing is known about the mechanism of their fall, but an approximate proportion is given:

3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. 

Revelation 12:3-4 (ESV)

If this is about the angels, then, somehow, two-thirds remained without sin despite the availability of a way to fall.

In Heaven and the New Earth, Satan is out of the equation. Also gone is the genetic distortion that we refer to as our sinful nature. Is that enough to preclude sin? Will we not also still have “knowledge of good and evil”?

In Heaven and the New Earth, there will also not be a way to be linked to somebody else’s sin. Adam and Eve made the choice. We inherited their genetic distortion.

God has always sought love from His creation. Love requires freewill. To love you I must have the opportunity to hate you. So I expect that there will be an opportunity to fall away. A forbidden tree in the garden. I also expect that knowledge of evil will be an advantage this time. No one will be seriously tempted to rebel against God because we will have genuine love, a great existence and a knowledge of what rebellion means. An individual’s rebellion would not bring down the house. Perhaps that is why this passage is there:

No more shall there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

https://afterdeathsite.com/?s=Isaiah+65

If you feel a dread that you would choose to sin and be cast out of God’s Kingdom, just like a child who insists on putting their hand on a hot stove, don’t worry. Your attraction to do wrong is a part of your sinful nature. There won’t be a temptation to the forbidden. Your knowledge will keep you away, as well as, the presence of Jesus himself.

Our experience of Heaven and the New Earth is something to look forward to rather than something to dread. Stick with Jesus and I’ll see you there.

Will We Be Eternally Secure?

As we look at the Biblical narrative about the course of creation from its inception until now, we see a creation with several kinds of high reasoning beings who can either obey God or rebel. The rebellion of such beings has precipitated the less-than-ideal world we live in. The Bible points our hopes to the future when God will make all things new. But if it happened before, could rebellion happen again?

Ezekiel 28:12 and following is a section that may or may not describe Satan. It states that it is about the king of Tyre, but the description seems to not be about a mortal man but rather a “guardian cherub”. Cherubim, literally “living ones”, is the name given to a strange sort of being that lives in the closest proximity to God. There are descriptions in Isaiah 6 (called seraphim or “burning ones” there), Ezekiel 1, and Revelation 4. The Ezekiel 28 passage describes one that is cast out.

You were an anointed guardian cherub.
    I placed you;  you were on the holy mountain of God;
    in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
15 You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
    you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
    and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
    from the midst of the stones of fire.

Ezekiel 28:14-16 ESV

From where did the “unrighteousness” come? Further reading indicates that this being (presumably Satan) became proud and corrupted in his wisdom. It seems to be an act of free will.

Satan tactics with Adam and Eve give insight as well. Adam and Eve don’t know what evil is. They only know that they are not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and they are capable of following that command or not. Satan feeds them a lie that may be similar to the lie he told himself,

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:5 NIV (1984)

Though naive, humans made an act of the will to rebel against God. Consequently, their will was never truly free again. It is always influenced by a sinful nature and possibly also by evil outside forces.

We have no information about what happened with the angels, only that some of them (possibly as much as a third) also rebelled. Was it also an act of willful disobedience?

With the arrival of a New Heaven and New Earth, we are promised a resurrected body without a sinful nature and the removal of Satan and his angels. Will we have a truly free will? If so, can such a mess restart or can someone be expelled. There is no long biblical discourse to answer this. There is the promise of “eternal” life, and on this we must put our hope given the lack of information.

I would not postulate that we will have a constrained will of some sort. God created His greatest beings to be free for a reason. Love is free. Love is not the output of a pre-programmed mind that cannot deviate. What will prevent deviation? We barely understand what the soul or our will is. It is hard to speculate. Perhaps it will be because of new, more bonded relationship to Jesus. Even now we are somehow part of the body of Christ. This isn’t just a metaphor. It is a mystical relationship.

In the scant information that we are given, there seems to be no anticipation of further falling away or divisions in either cherubim, angels or humans. The question of whether we could fall away is a natural one. But we are thinking of our future situation through the lens of our current situation. Sin exists here. Evil is personified now. And we are corrupted in our wisdom.