Is it a curse on humanity or a blessing to be created with free will?
First of all, we know that everything God does is good and this would certainly include everything He created. This is confirmed in Genesis 1:31 where we read, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed IT WAS VERY GOOD” (NKJV). When He created Man on the sixth day He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” This means that Man shares certain characteristics with God, such as intellect, the ability to design things, the ability to communicate with others (including God), and FREE WILL.
That Adam had a free will is seen in the TEST that God gave to him in Genesis 2:16-17, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” God gave Adam a CHOICE, and this is the very essence of FREE WILL, the power to choose. Was this “power to choose” a curse or a blessing? We know that Adam “made the wrong choice” and plunged the whole human race into sin and all of its terrible effects; in other words, his choice brought about the CURSE upon Mankind. Because of this, many are convinced that free will is indeed a CURSE and not a blessing. But let’s remember that “everything that God does is good” and that He said that “everything…He made…was very good,” so we could hardly say His decision to create Man with a free will was a curse. The alternative would have been for God to create man like a robot or a computer and program it to love Him and to always obey Him, but I’ve never met anyone who favors that option.
I have heard people say, “God was willing to take a chance, so He created Man with a free will.” But this thinking is flawed, for it doesn’t take into account that God is OMNISCIENT; He “knows all things.” Acts 15:18 declares, “Known to God from eternity are all His works.” He knew, before He created Man with a free will, that he would “choose to disobey Him by eating the forbidden fruit.” Why then, you ask, would God even create Man? There are surely many possible answers to this, but one of the best reasons is that God used the occasion of Man’s sin to “reveal to Adam and Eve, and to all mankind, His love and grace.” Right after Adam made that fatal choice and sin entered into the world, God announced that a Savior would be born to defeat the devil and to deliver Mankind. We have this “promise of the Savior” in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He (the Savior) shall bruise your (the devil’s) head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Adam heard this promise and believed it, so we read later that he “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (verse 20). He knew, by faith, that through the woman a Savior would be born. We read next that his faith was rewarded; “For Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them” (verse 21). Thus He covered their nakedness with the skins of slain animals, a beautiful picture of God clothing the sinner with a “robe of righteousness” through the death of His only begotten Son (see Isaiah 61:10; Romans 3:21-26; and 2nd Corinthians 5:21). So, by God allowing sin to enter into the world Adam was BLESSED with a deeper knowledge of God he never could have had while in a state of innocence. He came to know Him as a loving and forgiving Savior, One who was willing to give His own Son in order to bless him (and all of Mankind) with salvation!
This BLESSING is available to all men, for we read in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God’s WILL for you is salvation, as we see in 1st Timothy 2:3-6, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, WHO DESIRES ALL MEN TO BE SAVED and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.” If you will “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” you will experience God’s BLESSING of salvation and you too will come to know Him in a way that wasn’t possible before the fall of Man. (282.9) (DO)