5. The freedom of GOd's intelligent creatures is His highest priority.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. {2 Corinthians 3:17}
God created us in freedom, for freedom. He created us that way so we could choose to freely give ourselves to Him in a relationship, if that’s what we desired. Maintaining that freedom is God’s highest priority, and God’s commitment to it means He will protect it at all costs.
How do I know that? Because He has paid such a high price both to give it to us and to help us recover it. In John chapter 8, Jesus said that knowing the truth He came to bring to us would set us free. You see, we were created with freedom in the beginning, but that freedom was damaged when we, through our first parents, distrusted God and turned away from Him. This is the first high price God paid—in giving us the very freedom that allowed us to turn our back on Him, hurting both Him and ourselves.
But even after we had damaged the relationship, God didn’t disown us. When we abandoned Him, He didn’t abandon us. Instead, He became one of us in order to show us the truth about Himself. He became one of us so we could see that we had been wrong about Him and be given the opportunity to trust Him again. And if we choose to put our trust in Him and reenter the relationship, it can be healed. Jesus paid a high price in order to give us this opportunity. In fact, every hard and painful thing God has ever done has been done in the name of our freedom—either giving it to us in the first place or making the way for us to reclaim it, if we so choose. Our freedom is His highest priority.
If you want to dig deeper—
Psalm 119:45
Isaiah 61:1
John 8:36
James 1:25