“Behold, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His ordinances, so that you may live and multiply, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in the land you are about to enter and possess. 

But if your heart turns away, if you do not listen and allow yourselves to be led astray into worshiping other gods and serving them, I tell you today that you will perish and will not live long in the land you are about to possess, once you have crossed the Jordan. Today I call heaven and earth to witness against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and holding fast to Him; for on this depend your life and the length of your days, and only in this way will you be able to dwell in the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”^[1]

God created us with free will. He had the power to compel us to love Him, but He created us with the ability to choose. Throughout his life, a person is faced with many important choices that he must make on his own. Based on these choices, we chart our course in this earthly life, and we alone are responsible for what we have chosen. If we do not choose wisely, we will have to bear the consequences. God grants us this freedom to choose between good and evil, depending on the decisions we make.

God calls us today to make choices in the spiritual realm as well. The place where we will spend eternity—whether in heaven or in hell—depends on this choice. In this chapter of the Bible, after forty years in the wilderness—where they saw God’s glory daily, in the morning through a cloud, and in the evening through a pillar of fire, where they witnessed countless miracles of God, the Lord once again presents them with a choice. He sets before His people two paths to choose from: the path of life and death, of blessing and curse. If we make the wrong choice spiritually, we will face eternal torment, but if we choose the Lord’s path, we will share in His blessings. The Lord Jesus echoes these words of His Father and presents us with the choice between the narrow path that leads to life and the broad path that leads to destruction.

We are living in a time of choice, in which—as long as we have reason—we must decide. God does not accept compromise with sin. If we do not enter through the gate of repentance, we will not be able to share in His blessings. We should be deeply grieved because the Son of God died in our place on the cross, bearing the sins of all humanity so that every person might receive eternal life. For every sin we have committed, the lashes cut into His back, and His blood flowed from His body. A crown of thorns rested upon the Lord’s head, and all the shame that was due to us fell upon Him. That is why we must make the right choices while we are still alive.

Every day we must make this choice, keeping both the blessing and the curse before our eyes. There are people who, as a result of the sins they committed, have taken their own lives because they did not come before the Lord to ask for deliverance. Jesus Christ is the only One who can free us from sin, who can lift the burden of our sins—but only if we acknowledge all the wrong we have done before the holy eyes of God.

As long as a person lives, they have the freedom to choose, and based on that choice, they determine their eternal destiny. There are people who have chosen to love the Lord Jesus, and others who have turned their backs on Him. It is very sad that the Son of God—who is glorified in heaven, who humbled Himself, and who took on an earthly body—has had His offer of salvation rejected by most people. One day, God will cease calling people to repentance, and then His wrath will be poured out upon all those who refused to accept the love of the Truth—that is, His beloved Son.

People die every day, and no one knows the day of their death. We must all be prepared for that day, for we will stand before the One who will judge us righteously according to our deeds: “Those who have done good will rise to life; and those who have done evil will be raised to judgment.”^[2] “Many of His disciples, after hearing these words, said, ‘This teaching is too hard; who can accept it?’”^[3] In this verse we see that many of those who had followed the Lord for a time, when faced with the choice to deny themselves and surrender completely to the Lord, abandoned the Son of God. This path will seem too narrow to those who have sin in their hearts. “Jesus, knowing within Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this saying, said to them, ‘Does this saying cause you to stumble? But what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?… It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail; the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”^[4] If we devote ourselves entirely to God, we will have life. Jesus, who spoke with great authority, was not believed by the people, so most of them left Him and turned against Him. This was their choice, and the Lord Jesus does not stop them; He respects the choice they have made. “But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who the unbelievers were and who it was that would betray Him. And He added, “That is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted by My Father.” From that moment on, many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. Then Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” “Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Holy One of God.”^[5] 

The choice we make for eternity depends on the answer each of us gives in our own right. He is the One who calls us to follow Him, but the decision is ours to make personally. “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”^[6] The purpose of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus is to be His disciple, to persevere in your salvation to the end. At the end of our lives, it is no longer we who choose, but the Lord who will judge. If we choose to surrender ourselves entirely to Him and follow Him day by day, we will be at His right hand and share in the heavenly blessings.

The Lord’s disciples who remained by His side were willing to follow Him to the very end. If we follow the Lord, we must surrender our entire existence to Him.

Those who left the Lord’s side—even though they had followed Him for a time—ended up among those who condemned Him to death: “At every Passover, the governor had a custom of releasing to the people one prisoner whom they chose. At that time, there was a notorious prisoner named Barabbas. When they were gathered together, Pilate said to them, ‘Which one do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus, who is called Christ?’ For he knew that they had handed Jesus over to him out of envy. While Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, saying, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for today I have suffered greatly in a dream because of Him.” The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus put to death. The governor addressed them and said, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” “Barabbas,” they replied. Pilate said to them, “But what shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?” “Crucify him!” they all replied. The governor said, “But what has he done wrong?” They began to shout even louder, “Crucify him!” When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that the uproar was growing, he took water, washed his hands before the crowd, and said: “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man. It is your responsibility!” And all the people replied: “Let His blood be on us and on our children.” Then Pilate released Barabbas; but Jesus, after having Him flogged, handed Him over to them to be crucified.”^[7]

The Lord Jesus had done no harm to anyone, but only good. If we are not willing to follow Him to the end, we will end up rejecting Him, turning against Him just as these people did who condemned Him to death. These people of Israel were faced with a choice, and, having lost their minds, they chose a murderer, bringing a curse upon their own heads. A million people later died crucified by the Romans, so that around Jerusalem there were no more trees left on which to crucify them, thus fulfilling the curse they had brought upon themselves on the day of the Lord Jesus’ crucifixion. We bear the consequences of our choices, just as those Israelites who cried out to crucify the Lord Jesus did. If we do not choose what is good, our hearts will harden so much that we will no longer judge rightly.

God wanted all people to be saved, and those who end up in hell are there because they chose that path for themselves. God offered them life even while on earth through salvation in His Son, but most refuse that life and place themselves under a curse.

Now is the time for choices, the time to decide to save our lives, so that God’s wrath may not fall upon us. We must stop walking two paths and make the right choices in our lives. Each person will receive their reward according to their decision.

Jesus, too, had a choice to make. Before Him was set the cup of all our sins and impurities, which He had to drink. The Lord chose to drink our filth, to take upon Himself everything that was ugly and unclean so that we might receive salvation. If He had refused that cup of sins, we would have been doomed to destruction, but He would have remained the Son of God nonetheless. He gave His life of His own free will: “The Father loves Me, because I lay down My life, only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me by force, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again; this is the command I have received from My Father.”^[8]

When the Lord Jesus saw what it meant to drink that bitter cup of sin, His first reaction was to ask the Father for help to take that cup away from Him: “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from Me! Yet not as I will, but as You will.”^[9] Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus did the Father’s will, going all the way to the end. He chose death for us; He chose to bear all the sins of humanity on the cross, and we are responsible for His death and suffering.

God is a God full of love, but He is also a holy and righteous God who does not leave the sinner unpunished. These are the words that the Lord God sets before us today: “See, I set before you today life and good, death and evil.” Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and holding fast to Him; for on this depend your life and the length of your days, and only in this way will you be able to dwell in the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”^[10]

^[1] Deuteronomy 30:15–20.

^[2] John 5:29.

^[3] John 6:60.

^[4] John 6:61–63.

^[5] John 6:64–69.

^[6] Matthew 16:24.

^[7] Matthew 27:15–26.

^[8] John 10:17–18.

^[9] Matthew 26:39.

^[10] Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, 20.