When churches claim that the duty of a Christian is to obey God's Law, and a Christian must strive to do this through the “free will” of one’s mind of flesh and through the strength of the physical body, they lie. For they can plainly see that God’s Word does not ever tell us that Christ demanded our obedience to God’s Law and, since they never even attempt to fulfill this “duty” themselves, they clearly do not believe that it is the duty of Christians to do this. Some try to justify this lie by saying: “God would never command us to do anything that we were not able to do.” Well, first of all, there are many instances of God commanding us to do the impossible, including His command to create a new heart in ourselves. Also, if it were true that we are able to obey all God’s commands and make ourselves sinless, even so productive in our righteousness that we are able to undue and pay for all the losses and damages caused by our sins of the past, then we would have no need for Jesus at all, absolutely no need for the salvation God promised through His New Covenant. But, the fact is that, the Old Covenant Law proves that we are all sinners, all condemned before the eyes of our perfectly just and holy God, all totally incapable of ever beginning to obey His intended meaning of His Law. And this is why Jesus, our God, came to save us, by first providing our forgiveness and atonement, so He could justly work inside us without aiding and abetting our sins, then by personally writing His Law on our hearts and in our minds. Jesus needs to save us through His own will and strength. Thus, the only reason God gave us His Law was to illustrate how utterly incapable we were in terms of sanctifying and saving ourselves, so we would then turn to Him, so He could sanctify and save us.
In reality, none of these humanistic churches truly believe that Jesus, our God, actually possesses the love, will and the strength to save anyone. They do not have any saving faith in Jesus, since they do not believe He is well-able to work His Law in us and through us. The truth, which literally all history has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that no human possesses any ability to truly obey God’s Law through one’s own “free will,” through one’s own strength. If we were able to obey His Law through our own minds and bodies of weak flesh, or through the minds of our ignorant and infantile spirits, we would not need either Jesus nor His New Covenant salvation. For we could all simply raise our children to be perfectly good and holy, teaching and training them to follow the wise, beneficial ways of God’s Law. And not one of our children would ever reject that Law through any temptations of the flesh, nor through any wilful ignorance that suppresses truth through strong biases of the selfish flesh, since all would freely admit that God’s Law has indeed proven to be wise and beneficial for all, and all would want to obey it for their own good and the good everyone else.
If we were able to obey God’s Law, and able to see its wisdom through unbiased, unclouded eyes, there would be no more injustice nor sin in the world. If man's will was truly “free” and autonomous, if man’s will was not born in utter subjection to the stronger wills of more mature and powerful spirits, neither the spirits of demons nor the Spirit of God, if man’s will of the flesh was not a slave to sin from birth, if man was a truly rational being who could see real truth and obey God’s Law whenever we willed to do so, then there would be no problems in the world. If man were actually rational, able to be informed by the truth, and had a free will, there would be no wars, no poverty, no crimes and none of the troubles seen on earth from the beginning. We would all be righteous and reap all the benefits of God's Law. And, if any were sinners, those sinners would be able to recreate themselves as good and beneficial souls. Not one would be willing to be deluded by Satanic lies, since all would know that sin only leads to harm and death. However, the complete opposite has proved true, through indisputable evidence. Literally all human beings not only are hurtful, hateful sinners who murder others, directly or indirectly, but not one has ever been able to recreate oneself into a truly and fully honest, rational, just, loving human being. The reality God created and God’s Word both deny this arrogant Platonic theory of a “free will,” which has always proved to be very wrong. God never said that such a thing is possible. In fact, God’s Word, from the very beginning to the end, warns that literally all human beings will fail to obey His Law, fall into terrible errors and sins, and die. His Word declares, in no uncertain terms, that we need to be saved by God Himself.
Certainly anyone who says that every human being is potentially able to obey God’s Law through his or her own “free will” should be able to show us countless examples of truly sinless, always justly loving human beings who are just as good as Christ Jesus, whose Spirit of life is God Himself. But they cannot even find one single example in all history. Yes, there are a few relatively “good” souls, who only look good when compared with worse sinners, but are, nonetheless, full of evil thoughts and sins that make them more than worthy of eternal hell. And the only reason those “good” souls are even partially just and loving is because the Holy Spirit of Jesus has been teaching His Law to their human spirits. Let these teachers of the “free will” myth look everywhere in the land, in history books, in both the Old and New Testaments, for one example of anyone who has rightly interpreted and correctly applied God’s Law to the satisfaction of God. The one and only example is Jesus, who did not have an infantile, created human spirit like ours, because the Spirit that cause life to exist in His body of flesh was the almighty, uncreated Spirit of God in Himself. Let them search as long as they want for anyone who is even close to being called acceptable and sinless before God. In reality, if they are honest, they will find that literally all human beings have fallen short of the good opinion of God, even short of the good opinion of other sinners. All literally all deserve hell. If it were not for the redeeming power of our Lord Jesus, who alone is able to complete and perfect the elect spirits by the end of the last day, not one soul who ever lived could enter heaven. Where have we ever found even one example of any soul who has, according to his or her own human interpretation of God's Law, and by the strength of his or her own human will, been able to spontaneously, rightly, wisely and completely perform all the spiritual requirements of God’s just and loving Law, through the love of his or her own personal spirit? Yet this is exactly what the Law requires before God will allow one to enter heaven. Even if there is one flaw in one’s spirit, that one cannot enter heaven.
The fact is that God, in His Word, emphatically proclaims: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10b-12, ESV). God also states: “We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3, ESV). The point is that it clearly opposes God and His Word when one claims that God only gives us commandments that we are able to obey through the interpretations and wills of our unstable, weak, selfish minds of flesh, or even through the ignorant, infantile minds of our spirits. However, we trust, with saving faith, that our almighty and wise God, Jesus, is able to teach, train and enable literally all elect spirits to spontaneously do all that His Law requires, and much more than that, by the end of the judgment day. And, even now, while we live in this unruly flesh upon this earth, our spirits are experiencing the beginnings of His works that teach, train and enable us to fully comprehend and rightly apply His Law, through spontaneous, just love.
Furthermore, most English translations of the Bible are in error when they interpret God’s Word in ways that seem to tell us that God wants us to “obey” His commands. For, both the Hebrew and Greek original texts most often tell us how God wants us to “guard” His words of His Law. God wants the spirits in our hearts to keep safe all His intended meanings of His words, never letting any of His laws or teachings become corrupted or nullified by the words of men. Then, at times, biblical texts, in their original languages, tell us to “heed” the words of His Law, that is, to very carefully listen to them, to discern what God is actually saying through His words, to understand His intended meaning and apply that truth to our lives. And there are no other ecclesiastical meanings of these verbs. So we cannot interpret them according to their secular meanings, as the word “obey.” By the end of the judgment day, through Christ’s workmanship in our hearts—which will be accomplished after He establishes a very close relationship with us, after He becomes the one and only Head Teacher of our souls, the final Authority in all matters of life and faith—we will indeed obey God, but not through a sense of duty or obligation, nor through the fear of God. Rather, as illustrated throughout the entire Bible, we will spontaneously and perfectly do His will, through love for Him.
In the Bible and in the entire history of the world, I cannot find anyone who has been able to “obey” God’s Law in a way that truly pleases God. Not one has done this, except Jesus Christ, who is our uncreated God. Abraham, David, Isaiah, Mary (the mother of Christ’s flesh), Peter, Paul, and all the other human beings we read about, were all sinners deserving hell. The Bible often recorded their ignorance, weaknesses, errors and outright sins, so we would know they were exactly like all the rest of us, and that it was only God who worked all good in and through their humble spirits. Certainly no created human spirit has ever even remotely come close to achieving any effective, harmonious, correct and wise understanding of God's Law through the power of its own will, or through one’s own intellect of flesh, nor even through the wills of the spirit and flesh working together in the soul.
Yes, elect human beings have often received revelations of real truth, teachings about God’s Law and ways. And all these elect spirits are all granted this truth by Jesus, though many do not realize that these truths come from Him. In all history, not one person has ever been able to comprehend God’s Law and ways rightly through one’s own intellect. And no human has ever possessed the ability to wisely apply His Law through “free will.” For “free will” does not exist. It is a myth. Rather, all the spirits of all the elect have wills created to be what they are, wills that are then are carefully shaped by the Holy Spirit of their Father throughout life. Everything in God's Word, or seen with our eyes, surely proves that all the thoughts and deeds that directly originate from the human will, without the interventions of God’s Spirit, all that can be called the laws and “the righteousnesses of men,” are actually “as filthy rags to God.” Literally all of a human being’s wilful, self-serving and loveless interpretations and applications of God’s Law are utterly repulsive and offensive to God. None are ever pleasing to Him. In fact, throughout history, all who have taught that obedience to God’s Law is a “duty” of men, have always been unjust and corrupt, often even more cruel and murderous than the pagans. All truly loving, wise righteousness seen in mortal human beings—all the loving, genuine holiness expressed through flesh—is actually a miraculous work of God, not a work of man. Only an arrogant spirit believes it is a god who has the ability to interpret and apply God’s Law rightly. But all who do actually interpret and apply God’s Law rightly have humble spirits that urgently seek their Father’s and oldest Brother’s interpretation, then apply God’s Law according to His commands.
Since the sinfulness of literally all human beings is a fact clearly declared by God in His Word, we are forced to conclude that the humanistic churches are wrong and that they are false churches who deny Christ’s salvation. For they worship man and delude themselves into thinking man is able to make himself righteous, although God clearly states that it is impossible for a man to make himself righteous. They are dead wrong, even demonically wrong, since they cause people to place saving faith in themselves rather than in God. They are wrong in a way which causes souls to practice sin, to be enslaved by delusions and sins, to believe lies that bring death. No! God's Law is not a “duty” and work of man, according to his own corrupted understanding or will. Everything that originates solely through a man’s mind of flesh is ignorant, incomplete, full of corruptions, irrational in whole or in part, self-contradicting, unwise and unloving. All that man’s mind invents for himself proves to be totally ineffective in its ability to provide lasting, just and wise benefits for all. Consequently, we conclude that the work of causing our own true obedience to God’s spiritual Law must remain solely the duty and work of God Himself, as God promised in His New Covenant for our salvation through the works of the promised Messiah, Jesus. Jesus Himself must work inside our spirits, to make us truly righteous and loving, in a way that genuinely pleases Him. God’s true, loving and wise kind of righteousness is, and always has been, a gift from God. The righteousness required for salvation into heaven is that which He Himself must work in us and through us. For the main promise of God in His New Covenant for our salvation, the promise which Jesus Christ fulfills for the Father’s chosen people through His cross, was to do this very thing: “ I will put My Law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:33, NKJV). The only way we can truly worship God as our God, and truly become His people, is by His own works in us.
God's salvation promise in the New Covenant was not a promise of men, but a promise of God. The New Covenant is not about human beings promising to learn God's Law through their own “free will,” through their own weak minds of flesh. God did not require us to put His Law in our own minds. God did not require us to etch new desires to fulfill God’s Law and God’s will upon our own hearts, to alter the wills of our own spirits in our own hearts. No! God Himself promised, in the New Covenant, to do all this in us. God promises to do these things through His own will and power, for the human spirits whom He chooses. So salvation is through the work of God, who is a Spirit. It is through a new relationship with God, a relationship that God Himself purchased on His cross, then initiates and maintains. And that relationship is not between God and our flesh, but between the Spirit of God and our human spirits. The New Covenant salvation, which Jesus won for us at great cost to His Own flesh, is fully, entirely and wholly His workmanship, through His power and love.
No honest elect soul would dare to say that any of the apostles ever believed the Platonic doctrines of “free will,” though they were popular enough in the Roman Empire at that time. And the Old Covenant prophets also opposed the doctrines of “free will.” God’s Word opposes all the humanistic doctrines, since humanism exalts humans as gods ruling their own destinies. Whom did the prophets call their ultimate Teacher? Whom did they trust more, men or God? Whose power did they claim to work? Whose words did they claim to speak? And did they not claim that it was only God’s power that enabled them to guard and heed God's Law? Did any of the true prophets or apostles ever say they gained their knowledge of God's righteousness through their own “free wills,” or through some other teachings invented by the intellects of men? In every case, these men called God their only Lord, their ultimate Rabbi or Teacher. They all proclaimed that God was the One who created a new heart in them, a renewed spirit that desired to do God's revealed will. As David declared: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity ... And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:5,6,10, NKJV).
The prophets of the Old Covenant times had humble hearts, and knew they were ignorant sinners. So they lovingly prayed to their Father of their spirits like this: “Teach me, O Yahweh, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your Law; Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way. Establish Your Word to Your servant, who is devoted to fearing You. Turn away my reproach which I dread, for Your judgments are good. Behold, I long for Your precepts; Revive me in Your righteousness” (Psalm 119:33-40, NKJV).
Clearly, those who truly knew God also knew this secret, that everything comes from God. Any true and comprehensive understanding of God’s Word and Law, or life itself, must come from the Creator God. All true wisdom—the ability to apply God’s truths effectively for the good of all—must come directly from God, since there is no other source of this wisdom. The Old Testament prophets and psalmists all acknowledged that the whole of their righteousness came from God, as God taught their spirits in their hearts. They all believed that righteousness is from God, not from ourselves. These true servants of God knew that any ability to understand God's Law, in the way God intended it to be understood, could come only through the teaching of God Himself, and could not come through man. The ability to love and desire the ways of God's Law must be the work of God upon a one’s spirit. The circumstance and power to do the works of God's Law rightly, and to keep oneself from sin, or to cleanse a worldly heart of covetousness, had to come directly from God, as God worked inside one’s heart, as He ruled over all that is inside and out. Our resulting reputation in the sight of God, which is our glory, our salvation from His dreaded reproach, is granted only by God Himself.
So what is left for anyone to do for one’s own salvation? The only thing we can do is enhance the progress of our salvation by trusting our God, Jesus, by believing in His love, will and power to do all that He promised to do in us and through us. “For in [the Gospel] the righteousness [from] God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Rom. 1:17, ESV). Our personal and subjective righteousness is from God, revealed by faith. All His revelations to us come through the trust of our spirits in His words from His Holy Spirit. Then, as those words to our spirits, from His Spirit, prove to be true and effective, our spirits build up even more faith, a greater trust in His words. And our sanctification grows by this faith. But, if we let our faith falter, very little can be done inside us. If we let our minds of flesh suppress the words of His Holy Spirit within the chambers of our souls, if we let our flesh shout down Christ’s words, so our spirits cannot hear and trust in those words, our salvation will be hindered. And our minds of flesh always attempt to shout down Christ’s words, since the truth from His Spirit always opposes the lies and delusions of Satan’s world order, which our flesh loves. The world order promises to gratify the lusts of the flesh, the strong desires of the eyes, and the pride of material success in life. And, of course, every elect spirit, through its inherent attributes, knows that all such things are empty and worthless. However, the flesh craves all this. So it strives to nullify the elect spirit’s faith in the words of Christ’s Spirit, since Christ’s Spirit exposes all those lies. And, unfortunately, many elect allow their flesh to shout so loudly in the ears of their spirits that their spirits become almost completely unable to hear His voice.
Now we know that, after the tent of flesh is removed and replaced by a far more compliant body made of a spiritual substance, literally every elect spirit will be corrected and saved by Christ’s teaching and training on the final day. However, in the meantime, consider all the needless losses, damages and deaths that result from the carnal lives of the elect on earth, while their spirits remain ignorant, deceived, deluded, sinful, destructive, foolish and totally ineffective. Think about how those carnal elect cannot build up any heavenly treasures of God-like love and truth while they live on earth, because they are so busy building up Satan’s kingdom instead of God’s kingdom. If an elect soul does not place the trust of one’s spirit in the words, power and love of Jesus, then that elect one will not learn much about how to love in the just, pure and God-like ways of Jesus. And that lack of knowledge and wisdom will lead to an empty and futile life, an existence within the darkness of the world order’s lies and delusions. Of course, this too has been predestined by God, in order to prepare those elect for their kinds of works in heaven, to create in them a greater heavenly zeal as builders, as construction workers, in heaven. Nevertheless, from our earthly perspective, as our spirits are bound to the flow of material time, we must let our spirits manage our flesh. Our spirits must quiet our flesh. Our spirits must turn their ears towards Jesus and away from their flesh. All the elect who have been granted ears to hear Him must strive to hear Him while they are bound to time on this earth. They must make this decision in Christ, because Jesus create their spirits, then shaped their spirits, in ways that cause their spirits to urgently and zealously desire to do this. Then this turning of their ears to Jesus, in turn, shapes their spirits further, so these holy desires grow stronger.
What is there, related to God’s Law, which can be learned, taught, wisely applied and made effective by a human being’s own mind, will and power? Nothing! The reason our heavenly Father created our lives on this earth was to shape the thoughts and wills of our elect spirits, just like human parents and caregivers lovingly shape the wills of their children at home and in schools. Humans never expect their children to create and shape their own “free wills,” since that is impossible, and any attempt to allow children to do that would inevitably, and very soon, result in their deaths. If the parents threw their baby out of the house as soon as it was born, so that baby could create and shape its own attributes according to its own “free will,” those parents would be arrested and their baby would be handed over to truly loving parents who would consciously and unconsciously shape the inherent attributes of that child each day, which is predestining that child’s life. Likewise, God did not create us as “blank slates,” then expect us to create and shape the attributes of our own spirits through our own “free wills,” since God knew it is utterly impossible for our spirits to even begin to such a thing.
How could a spirit create and shape its own good or evil attributes unless it had literally no attributes to begin with? And, by definition, only that which does not exist has no attributes. So a spirit would need to be nonexistent, and without any mind at all, to be a “blank slate,” to be able to create and shape itself. To have a truly “free will”—that is, an autonomous will that made us culpable for all our evil attributes, or worthy of glory and rewards for all our good attributes—our spirits would also require the ability to create the whole of themselves, including their own minds and wills, through a neutral omniscience and omnipotence. Our spirits would need be non-existing gods that could create themselves from scratch, deciding whether or not to make themselves into either good or evil spirits.
But it is clearly impossible for any entity to decide to create itself, and even more impossible for it to be a “blank slate” nonentity who creates itself as either a good or evil entity. For that spirit would need to freely choose what is good or what is evil from its own infinite source of knowledge about good and evil, then use its own almost infinite power to create its currently non-existing self into the kind of spirit it chose to be. Otherwise, that spirit certainly could not take any credit nor deserve any condemnation for its decisions in creating itself to be what it is. Only an omniscient, omnipotent spirit can be rewarded or condemned for deciding to create itself as a good or evil spirit, a spirit that is also totally and entirely free from any influencing or interfering power originating from any other entity. For, if another entity deceived or coerced a spirit in a way that caused it to decide to create itself as an evil entity, then that spirit simply could not be held responsible for its decision. For how can a spirit be held accountable if it created itself to be evil through ignorance, a lack of wisdom or discernment, or a lack of power to resist deception or coercion, since its decision to create itself as an evil entity would be unintentional? In reality, if a spirit began as a “blank slate,” as a non-existing omniscient, omnipotent entity with neither a good nor evil will, it would actually have no will at all. Thus, it would have no motives nor intentions at all. Consequently, all decisions of that non-existing entity without a will would be unintentional. Likewise, all its decisions would be caused by external influences that had a will to shape its will. Therefore, a spirit that created itself could never be accused of intentional sins, and all its unintentional sins would be automatically forgiven by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The point is that the confusing contradictions of “free will” doctrines are so many and so ridiculous that it is virtually impossible to rationally discuss them in any orderly and logical way at all. For nonsense cannot be logically presented and discussed. In the end, all we can do is conclude that all the doctrines of “free will” are worthless and none are even remotely biblical.
Yet every human being definitely has a will, even two wills. Every mind of flesh has a will, one that is easily turned in any direction by its lusts and pride. And every spirit has a mind with a will, one is created and shaped by an external spirit. External spirits are continuously working upon its inherent attributes. External spirits are teaching, training and building up the inherent attributes which were placed in each spirit at the moment of its creation. For the elect, the direct work of God is needed to shape the already created attributes of their spirits. And, until God first works in and through that elect spirit, that spirit cannot fully and rightly develop any of its own good inherent attributes. So our first duty is to respect and trust the Father of our elect spirits, let our spirits listen to Him. Our spirits need to humbly acknowledge their need for Him to do His sanctifying, building works upon them, which He wills to do through Jesus. And our greatest fear should be that we may become so arrogant and stupid, through our flesh, that we forget to seek Him for everything. Our spirits must zealously guard our trust in His words, power and love, our full and fearless confidence that He will indeed work in us and through us, always for our own good and for the good of all. For we have learned, often the hard way, that we cannot put any confidence in our own abilities, nor in the abilities of anyone else. Now our hope rests on God alone. We seek Him for everything. We also know that our attempts to improve any physical situation for the sakes of our loved ones, in a way that effectively produces their freedom and inner joy over the long term, always fail, unless it is accomplished through His own works in and through us. Thus, even our love and good works for our loved ones must be done by loving and seeking our God, as our first and foremost priority. Only our God Jesus has the power, wisdom, ability and love to make us fit for eternal heaven, to transform us into His perfectly holy, loving children, and the ability to make our works for Him on earth truly effective.
During this sanctifying process, which God works in us for our own salvation, many good works of righteous love are done, because training us involves doing the actual works of God as His disciples or apprentices. The righteousness of God will work through all who are truly being saved by Jesus, words and deeds just like those of our sinless Lord Jesus. We actually become the vicarious mouths and hands of Jesus. We are now able to see our Father’s just and loving will done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus causes us to build places on earth that resemble places in heaven. All this comes from Jesus, through Him alone. None of this can ever come through amoral intellects and emotions of flesh having been brainwashed by teachings of men in high-pressure Bible Colleges, nor through the introspection of mystics who get in touch with their own infantile and ignorant spirits, nor through any humanistic spirits taken captive by the deceiving spirits of demons. The power of Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit, working upon our spirits and flesh, even miraculously, is our only hope, if we want to see any real love and true good effectively worked on earth. Then the treasures related to this Godlike love, which Jesus builds within our spirits and through our lives on this earth, can also be taken with us into the spiritual realm of heaven too, since it is all spiritual and eternal. None comes from a human will, only from God shaping the wills of both our spirits and our flesh. Unless Jesus shapes our wills—unless He creates new, effective wills in us by His own workmanship—we have nothing.