The Bible teaches that God is not responsible for destruction. God created man as a free moral agent. In the garden man was established in righteousness which is the ultimate ability to choose what is good for the sake of unifying all things for the glory of God. The question is if man had no propensity to choose evil then how did he give into the temptation in the garden? No one ever makes a choice without first having the inward desire in which they are attracted to the object/ This is why we believe that man chose to do evil by a decree of God. This really cannot be explained because God never tempts anyone to do evil nor is He a party in creating the destruction that prevents man from doing good. This is why the theologians call the decree a passive decree. But that in my opinion creates a lot of questions. Because God isnt a passive observer. At anytime we make God inactive we could accuse Him of being lax in His substitution of us. We could argue that God has two wills...one to prevent us from sinning and one to allow us to sin. The first sin is a mystery but it provides the foundation for eliminating a reason for God to act toward us for any other purpose that to deliver us.
Anytime we teach two truths side by side we teach there are two wills in every ones view. And this really comes down to my personal perspective as opposed to your perspective. The Apostle teaches that we naturally excuse ourselves and at the same time accuse others. So entertaining two opposite truths really is having my own moral standard and being able to judge the other person against a harsher standard. This is why the first sin enforces this one principle of unity. That salvation is limited to being in God because we are safe by God substituting Himself on our behalf so that His work is complete in our being delivered or being placed in Him. The only other reality is being in complete darkness. A person who is not in God doesnt know he is in darkness. This is the non pragmatic view of this mysterious fall.
This is why our salvation starts and ends with grace. Grace doesnt really provide us with the ability not to sin but it puts us in a relationship with a Person who provides us success by measuring up to the standards of God through doing the work Himself. He unifies our lives by making us successful in making us free. Grace isnt a powerful liquid that we take like medicine when we sin but it argues against the opposition to our free access to God. Now listen to me...God establishes His salvation for us as He is successful to prove Himself good in order to free us so that we have a motive to act from acceptance. We really are not holy because we are less of a sinner but we are holy because we are prevented from going back to the slavery of the law that empowered our flesh. Christ as our complete substitute has brought us into a kingdom of the future where sin has been eradicated to make it impossible for us to sin and that future kingdom is already part of our experience even tho we are corrupted.This complete focus on Him as the reason we are accepted is what the bible means when it says we are dead to sin.
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