God gives mankind the way to go and also the freedom to choose, and the whole Bible and human history turn on this: God gives His eternal law of love and expects us to carefully consider what to do with it. His commandments are life, not suggestions, and they are the guidelines for making carefully considered decisions from the inside out, rather than living merely by command. In Deuteronomy 30, God sets before us life and good, death and evil, and says to choose life by loving Him, obeying His voice, and clinging to Him. Adam and Eve show the wrong choice. They had direct contact with God, yet they did not consider His command to tend, keep, and eat. They let Satan persuade them that it was their right to take what they could not handle, and in taking it against God's command and without His Spirit, they gained the knowledge of good and evil but not the means to use it. Knowledge alone puffs up and separates from God, while love edifies. Through Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now keep our focus on how He lives and walk in obedience to God's perfect law. The world clamors for selfishly determined rights to choose, but the only right we truly have is to choose life.

God sets before every person life and good, or death and evil, and commands, "Choose life" (Deuteronomy 30). What He requires is simple to understand: life and good are obedience to His commands, death and evil are disobedience, and biblical love is keeping His commandments, shown in action rather than mere feeling. "Choose" means an act of the will, so choosing life means picking the better alternative and then setting the will to follow through. God Himself is our life. He gave it, can end or extend it, and offers a quality of life, eternal life, that consists in an intimate relationship with the Father and the Son. Because human nature is at war with God and the world's attractive way leads only to death, life is a stream of moral choices that build character for good or bad, and no one avoids them. Each person is responsible for his own choices, and even Satan cannot pull his strings unless he allows it. Several choices are central: adopt God's standards rather than the crowd's, as Joseph did when he accepted prison rather than sin; develop a relationship with God; humbly build a relationship with parents; choose friends wisely and be a thermostat rather than a thermometer; choose a lawful, enjoyable occupation; and choose the right relationship with the opposite sex. Choosing life is a deliberate, costly decision, backed by God's Word.

God alone is the Source of life, both physical and eternal, and eternal life is knowing the Father and the Christ He sent (John 17:3). Our Creator wants us to have life abundantly (John 10:10), but He requires a conscious choice to follow His plan rather than yield to carnal desires that lead to death. This is the challenge of Deuteronomy 30:19: God has set before us life and death, blessing and cursing, and calls us to choose life so that we and our descendants may live. Choosing life means seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33), giving the relationship with God priority above every other relationship. Divided loyalty is dangerous, since no one can serve two masters, and God is a jealous God whose protective love demands undivided devotion. Double-mindedness brings instability, and the remedy is to draw near to God and purify the heart. The choice is sustained by loving God with all one's being and by prayer, Bible study, and obedience, which keep the relationship from atrophying. It also includes loving one's spiritual siblings, even to the point of laying down one's life, and staying in fellowship rather than isolating oneself. God gives His Holy Spirit and writes His law on the heart of those He calls, but He will not compromise on sin.

God is creating a family of well-informed decision makers, not order takers. From the beginning man was made in God's image to rule over creation, and the forbidden tree in Eden gave him the freedom to choose and set him apart from a programmed robot. Yet decisions must rest on what God has revealed within the bounds of His law of love, not on what the senses report or on independent reasoning. Lucifer corrupted his wisdom by trusting his own beauty, and Adam and Eve followed him by deciding according to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, which brought pain, death, and destruction. Deuteronomy 30 sets before Israel life and death, blessing and cursing, and commands, "Therefore choose life," by loving God, obeying His voice, and clinging to Him, for He is their life. Without the Holy Spirit, Israel saw only commands to be obeyed. Those whom God calls now have the Spirit, so they can choose life by living according to the spirit of the law rather than its letter, making daily decisions in faith from God's Word, with outgoing concern for God and neighbor. This includes examining themselves and serving the Body of Christ faithfully from the place where God has set each member. Choosing life prepares the called to think as God thinks and to rule with Christ in the Family of God.

God has made man a free moral agent who must choose between a dead-end, physio-chemical existence and a rich eternity in His Family (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). Choosing life is not passive. It requires personal choice and effort, because God will not save anyone He cannot rule, and He will not give His Spirit to anyone who does not desire it. He calls, and we must respond by beginning to obey (Acts 5:32). God gives reasons and promises to persuade us toward obedience and does all He can short of removing our freedom, yet He wants the choice to be ours, uncoerced. Though the choice seems easy, many shrink from the rigors of the road to the Kingdom. Because human nature pulls downward and Satan amplifies fleshly appetites, choosing life means a continual struggle in which resisting temptation builds godly character like resistance builds muscle. Fasting is a vigorous way to make that choice active. By refusing to yield to fleshly appetites, we affirm to God that we choose a spiritual future over death, admitting our helplessness while committing to follow Him. We cry out to God, and He replaces the torn-down carnal pulls with His Spirit, which combined with our will builds holy character. Jesus' own 40-day fast is the example to follow.

From the very beginning, mankind was given the privilege of choosing life by following God's Word, and this choice stands as the only path toward the eternal relationship of absolute trust that finds its perfect expression in the Proverbs 31 wife of Christ. God created man in His own image with the capacity to choose, placing before Adam and Eve the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the first test of that choice. Though the forbidden fruit appeared good to sight, smell, and taste, God had declared it off-limits, and their choice to disobey established the pattern that has plagued humanity ever since: the "yeah but" conclusion, where human nature rationalizes departure from what God has clearly said is good. This internal battle between what seems good and what God declares good continues to rage within all who have received His Holy Spirit, making faithful, godly choices essential preparation for those called to be Christ's trustworthy companion. This struggle to choose rightly must be understood within the framework of God's absolute sovereignty. Scripture affirms that God does whatever He pleases, that the king's heart is in His hand, and that no wisdom or counsel can stand against Him. Even when men make choices in direct contravention of His Word, God works those circumstances into His perfect plan without ever being inconsistent with His own law. This truth becomes a warning against rebellion, illustrated through Saul's disobedience, which Samuel equated with the sin of witchcraft, and reinforced through instructions not to associate with those given to change or to take counsel apart from God's Spirit. Romans 13 further establishes that governing authorities are appointed by God, making resistance to them resistance to His ordinance. This principle is applied to the founding of the United States through a rebellion against King George III, a monarch shown to have been devout, faithful to his wife, opposed to slavery's continuation, and far from the tyrant often portrayed. Had the colonists chosen submission rather than rebellion in line with God's command against insurrection, the immense suffering of both the Revolutionary War and the later Civil War might have been avoided. Abraham Lincoln's stirring words at Gettysburg, though admirable in their call to self-sacrifice, were ultimately mistaken in supposing that any government built on choices apart from God's Word could endure, since all such systems remain subject to the same pattern of failure begun at the Two Trees. The account of Ruth crystallizes this lesson: Elimelech, whose name means "God is king," chose what was right in his own eyes rather than trusting God's Word, leading to death, while Ruth, an outsider, chose absolute submission to God and was called eshet chayil, the woman of virtue. This models the church's calling to daily choose that God is King, resisting the divisive, self-centered choices of the surrounding world while remaining focused on preparing as the Bride of Christ, faithful to every word of God rather than ever again reaching for the forbidden tree.