DID GOD GIVE US A CHOICE

People usually say that God gave us the choice to follow Him or not, based on the choice He gave Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life or the tree of knowledge!?
But, when we look carefully at Gen 2:16-17, this is not so! These verses say;
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.”

So, from that we can deduce that God gave a ‘command’ not to eat of one particular tree, not a choice! I think the confusion comes from the earlier verse 9, where a tree of life is mentioned, and, as a side, where did the idea of the fruit being an apple spring from???
Chapter 3 then goes on to explain how temptation came into existence; the serpent first tricking or tempting Eve, who in turn obviously tempted Adam, and dare I say it, women have been tempting men ever since!!!!??

The choice therefore, was instigated by the serpent (or Satan) and taken up, or accepted by us, from the beginning! So ‘we’ make the choice of life or death, generation after generation, ending in either the lake of fire or heaven!?

The emphasis in all this, is that we will be judged as individuals; not being able to hide behind anything or anyone, because God dished out individual consequences to the serpent, and Adam and Eve. (Chapter 3:14-19)
Some have said that the Adam and Eve story is only symbolic, not to be taken literally, and I tend to agree with that! However, it doesn’t matter which way we take it, the meaning or message remains the same; do what Jesus did, and resist temptation!!
How many bites of the fruit have you had???
It comes back to the old ‘cause and effect’ thing I talked about in my Tenth Commandment article.

Peace to all, Colin Bowater.