One of the most incredible Bible texts is found in Ezekiel. Talking about Lucifer, in heaven, the Bible says: “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you” (Ezekiel 28:15, NKJV).
The word for “created” here comes from the same word used in Genesis 1:1, when God “created” the heavens and the earth, a word that is used only in reference to what God Himself creates. Thus, we have a perfect being, created by a perfect God, in a perfect heaven—and yet iniquity was found in him?
How could that be? The answer is revealed in one word: love.
Love?
Yes, because love, to be love, by definition has to be freely given. Even God cannot create a love that is forced. To force love is to negate it. Just as God can’t create a married bachelor, because by definition a “bachelor” is unmarried, He cannot create a forced love, because by definition love has to be freely given. A forced love is as impossible as a square circle. God could cause every creature in the universe to worship Him, to fear Him, and to obey Him. But He can’t force one creature to love Him.
This love, and the freedom inherent in it, was so sacred, so foundational to God’s government, that rather than deny us the ability to love, Jesus—knowing beforehand that we would fall—willingly went to the cross for us. That is, the cross remains the most powerful representation of the reality of love, not only of God’s love for us but of the love we, too, have the privilege of expressing as well.
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