. .
.And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Revelation 22:17

It is inherent in the nature of man that
his will must be
free. Made in the image of God who is
completely free,
man must enjoy a measure of freedom. This enables him
to select his companions for
this world and the next; it
enables him to yield his soul
to whom he will, to give
allegiance to God or the devil, to remain a sinner or
become a saint.

And God respects
this freedom. God once saw
everything that He had made, and behold, it
was very
good. To find fault with the
smallest thing God has
made is to find fault with its Maker. It is a false humility
that would lament that God
wrought but imperfectly
when He made man in His own
image. Sin excepted,
there is nothing in human nature to apologize
for. This
was confirmed forever when the Eternal Son became
permanently incarnated in human flesh!

So highly does God regard His handiwork
that He will
not for any reason violate
it. He will take nine steps
toward us but He will not take the
tenth. He will incline
us to repent, but He cannot do our repenting for
us. It is
of the essence of repentance that it
can only be done by
the one who committed the act to
be repented of. God
can wait on the sinning man.

He can withhold judgment, He
can exercise long-suffering
to the point where He appears lax in His judicial
administration,
but He cannot force a man to repent.
To do this would be to
violate the man's freedom and
void the gift of God originally
bestowed upon him. The believer
knows he is free to
choose---and with that knowledge he chooses forever the
blessed will of God!