Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Life and good - Present and future blessings.
Death and evil - Present and future miseries: termed, Deuteronomy 30:19, Life and death, blessing and cursing. And why were these set before them?
1. That they might comprehend their import.
2. That they might feel their importance.
3. That they might choose life, and the path of believing, loving obedience, that led to it.
4. That they and their posterity, thus choosing life and refusing evil, might be the favourites of God in time and eternity.
Were there no such thing as free will in man, who could reconcile these sayings either with sincerity or common sense? God has made the human will free, and there is no power or influence either in heaven, earth, or hell, except the power of God, that can deprive it of its free volitions; of its power to will and nill, to choose and refuse, to act or not act or force it to sin against God. Hence man is accountable for his actions, because they are his; were he necessitated by fate, or sovereign constraint, they could not be his. Hence he is rewardable, hence he is punishable. God, in his creation, willed that the human creature should be free, and he formed his soul accordingly; and the Law and Gospel, the promise and precept, the denunciation of woe and the doctrine of eternal life, are all constructed on this ground; that is, they all necessarily suppose the freedom of the human will: nor could it be will if it were not free, because the principle of freedom or liberty is necessarily implied in the idea of volition. See on the Deuteronomy 5:29 (note).
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