Human beings are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26)…but for whatever reason…God did not…chose not to…or could not…create human beings having the capacity of divine foresight and foreknowledge.
This leads to one of the most important concepts in all of existence.
This explains why the central component within God-composed journey of faith life-scripts…in the Bible…is faith…and not an entirely opposite program of self-realization based upon self-performed good-works…using foresight we do not possess.
Human beings created in the image of God…lacking divine foresight…nonetheless have the capacity to successfully navigate through a God-composed journey of faith to fulfill our created destinies and to accomplish great things…but we were not created to be able to achieve self-salvation through a self-performed program of good-works…going our own way (Isa. 53:6)…precisely because we do not or cannot operate with divine foresight…combining hope and sight within individualistic autonomy…independent of God.
If humans currently live in a time-limited environment that enables the exercise of free-will choice tempered and informed by time-considered experiences…and a timeless God has pre-written, premeditated life-scripts already composed for every person…ready to step into by faith…this then explains on a very basic and fundamental level the concepts of election and predestination in all of the biblical narrative stories of faith…and also explains John 3:16 that says: “whosoever believeth in him should not perish,” 2 Peter 3:9 that says that God is “not willing that any should perish,” and the Hebrews 11:6 verse that says that it is impossible to please God…outside of faith.
It would be the narrow-gate faith of Matthew 7:13-14…not self-performed good-works…that willingly enters into our God-composed life-scripts…according to free-will choice…that makes the connection between the two dichotomies of a divine God having timeless foresight…and non-divine human beings living within the dimensions of time and space.
This is why earning our own way to heaven through good-works is nonsensical from the biblical perspective.
This explains why the life-scripts for Abraham through Paul are journeys of faith…rather than journeys of self.
Journeys of faith…come out of the timeless, eternally far-sighted wisdom of the creative mind of God.
Journeys of self…come out of the short-sighted vision of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
God created time so that we could have the opportunity to exercise faith in Him…a quality of perfect faith and far-sighted hope that already operates within the divine character of God for an eternity past and for an eternity to come.
This not only reveals the real truth about God…but within the actualizing of a journey of faith played-out over some interval of time…also creates the context to develop a personal relationship between people and God (Jer. 31:31-34)…and most important of all from an eternal viewpoint…this creates the joint-venture context within which to develop shared values.
If God cannot…or for good reasons would not…create human beings in His image that also possessed divine foresight…to be able to go-out on our own to become enumerable competing junior-gods…complicating reality through our own eternal, centrally un-coordinated life-plans…then the next best thing is to set-up an apprenticeship environment on this earth and through this temporary earthly life…that enables people to choose a higher-level journey of faith…rather than remain in the default mode of a substandard and defective journey of self.
If the key purpose and meaning in human life is to experience faith in God within a God-composed journey of faith written individually and specifically for each one of us…just waiting “ready-made” for us to respond to God’s universal call to accept Him into our lives…this then explains the “righteousness” of Abraham by faith accepting his calling of God to go to Canaan…the Promised Land (Heb. 11:8)…rather than earning his way to being called “righteous” …through good-works.
This explains biblical narrative stories of faith life-scripts that hold back…in-the-moment…some of the critical details in these life-scripts…setting-up the “walk by faith, not by sight” contexts for faith to actualize…to create the unique environments, the worldly unconventional milieu of events and circumstances for biblical-quality faith in God to operate.
This concept that God and people are not both equally operating in ever-growing and unfolding faith…is one of the most important explanations of the reality of human life.
If God is trying to give to us…to impart to us some measure of Himself…of His already perfected nature of all-knowing faith and timeless hope…exhibited through divine love…at the peak and pinnacle of the vertical spectrum-line of absolute goodness…it is by entering into our God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts that this can occur…and not through a self-realization program of self-performed good-works…lacking the perspective of divine foresight.
If God’s goal is to set-up the commonality of shared values…for future citizens of heaven (Heb. 11:12-16)…through the experiential vehicle of journeys of faith…this is simply above and outside of any plausible origin coming from human literary imagination…of human literary fiction-writing.
It is totally inconsistent with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…the widely and popularly held notion of creating our own reality through autonomous individualism.
This is the simplicity of the biblical message that breaks down into two clear-cut choices…having enormous eternal consequences.
God living in a timeless reality…has pre-written life-scripts that are perfect in their scope and outreach…to match to each of our individual, created talents, abilities, and time-periods we live in…designed for the purpose of developing faith and trust in Jesus Christ as King and Ruler…in heaven and on earth…and to experience unselfish service to other people on a divine level…all contained within unique, one-of-a-kind, God-composed journeys of faith that we could not invent in our wildest imagination.
These journey of faith life-scripts are “all-ready” and waiting for contemporary Christian believers to step-into…listening to God’s voice and responding in faith.
This is an alternative worldview approach to the broad road of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:13-14.
This alternative lifestyle argues for a divine origin of the Bible…above and outside of the capacity of human literary imagination to invent as a new speculative religion…starting around 1,450 B.C. with the writing of the first five books of the Old Testament…recording the first God-composed journeys of faith in human history.
Within the marketplace of ideas and the broad array of moral concepts…this reality of God-composed journey of faith life-scripts unique to the Bible…reveals an important part of the real Christian life.
The Cross in the Christian Life 