The command issued by the Creator reveals fruit of the creature; in other words, God's commands exposes man's obedience or man's disobedience.
The command of God states God's rule for man, to reward or punish, to bless or to curse.
The command of God does not confer an ability to obey for man, and the command of God does not confer an ability to disobey for man; unless, God's command explicitly confers ability in the command or elsewhere in scripture, then such ability does not exist; otherwise, for a person to claim the ability exists is the person's heart wickedly adding to scripture.
An example from the Torah:
The Word of God records the command of God to Adam "Of every tree in the garden to eat you will be eating, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not eating from, when in the day you are to eat of it to die you will be dying"' (Genesis 2:16-17).Scripture reveals that Adam disobeyed God's command (Genesis 3:6); therefore, scripture reveals Adam's ability to disobey God.
That was the single command issued by God to Adam, and Adam disobeyed; moreover, no account of Adam obeying a command of God exists in scripture.
No scripture reveals Adam's ability to obey God.
The English word "choose" has a Hebrew word equivalent of "בָּחר" (bachar -Strong's Number 977).
The Hebrew word "בָּחר" does not occur in the creation account (Genesis 1:1-31 Genesis 2:1-25 Genesis 3:1-24).
God did not say in God's command to Adam "you have the ability to obey" nor did God say "you have the ability to choose to obey".
Adam did not have the ability to freewill choose toward God.
Scripture contains many conditional logic statements. A conditional logic statement is normally an IF/THEN construct.
In linguistics, logic, semantics, and reality the established fact is that an IF/THEN construct follows this pattern:
The condition results in a true state or false state. If, and only if, the condition results in a true state does the predicate get executed.IF condition THEN predicate
An IF-THEN construct merely exposes whether a condition is true or false; consequently, an if/then statement does not inherently convey ability to produce a true state for the condition.
An IF/THEN construct exposes a potential, current, or previously taken PATH along with the PATH's resultant IMPACT.
So, an IF-THEN construct imposes a conditionl expression and a predicate, for example,
Moreover, no conveyance of ability exists intrinsically within the if-then construct.IF ACTION THEN RESULT
In scripture, an ACTION represents fruit for the the Word of God says "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn [bushes] nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:15-20) and "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).
In language, an IF/THEN statement requires a qualifier to indicate choice, for example, "if you choose chocolate then you eat chocolate" thus the qualifier in the conditional is "choose", but the conditional still does not convey ability to "choose" which such conveyance of ability to "choose" necessitates additional language connected with the IF-THEN statement, such as "you have the ability to choose" since the predicate cannot be executed in the absence of a supply of chocolate.
In Scripture, "you have the ability to choose God" is never expressed nor implied, yet, on the contrary to such a statement of "choose", the Word of God says "you did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16) with no exceptions to the stated choosing while applying to all believers in all time (John 17:20).
These facts of IF/THEN statements do not disappear in scripture.
An IF/THEN can be expressed likewise as:
Thus, the conditional expresses an action/fruit in the condition (you_do_this), and the effectual result in the predicate (that_will_happen).IF you_do_this that_will_happen
A conditional does not convey ability to the recipient of the conditional.
The same goes for a command, that is, a command does not convey ability to carry out the command.
For example, the command "do not do this" does not inherently grant the capability to comply with the command.
Neither a conditional nor a command convey choice unless specifically stated.
This all relates as to why Paul didn't write that he'd just choose to stop coveting, instead Paul indicates that he became aware of his sinfulness through the commandment. Here is that which Paul wrote:
"I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET." (Romans 7:7).
"sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind" (Romans 7:8).
"where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Romans 5:20).
"the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation" (Romans 1:16).
"How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14).
Behold, the Word of God is conveyed via communication AND the gospel, the good news, the Word of God is the power of God for salvation!
A practical example from Scripture is the account of Cain and Abel.
"Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not [your countenance] be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7)
God did not say that Cain "could" do anything.
The conditional logic statement does not indicate ability for Cain, rather the conditional logic statement indicates an action.
We know that Cain's action was to "not do well" because it is written "Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him" (Genesis 4:8).
Action. Not choice. Not decision. But action is written.
With respect to the Law, the commandments, the Apostle Peter said "Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" (Acts 15:10), so people are incapable of keeping the commandments to God's satisfaction (James 2:10); furthermore, the Word states "And I also, I have given to them statutes not good, and judgments by which they do not live" (Ezekiel 20:25) of the Israelites, so clearly the apostle is in accord with God.
The apostles tell us that the Law is for our instruction, and that we know what sin is because of the Law, and we are guilty before God apart from our Savior.
Lord Jesus declares "you did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16).
The first clause decisively declares that men cannot choose Jesus; in other words, men do not have the ability to accept Jesus. The first clause is "you did not choose Me".
The second clause absolutely declares that God chooses men. The second clause is "but I chose you", and this unto salvation as well for Jesus also said "I chose you out of the world" (John 15:19); in other words, God has the exclusive ability to accept men.
A hypothetical example, on Monday evening you take your lovely wife a hot bowl of delicious oatmeal while she's sitting on the couch, and she places the bowl on a pillow on her lap. Then your talking and toddling son sees the bowl of delicous oatmeal, and he wants some, so he shoots across the floor to the couch, and he excitedly grabs the rim of the hot bowl letting out a shrieking scream of pain from the hot bowl.
After applying soothing cream to the wound, both you and your wife explain the difference between hot and cold. You explain that hot can cause burns and pain. "Do not touch hot things" you command your son.
You continue by declaring "Your mommy and I can work around hot things to prepare and serve food, but you cannot, my love". The sobbing stops, and you all eat your dinner.
On Tuesday morning, you have the iron skillet on the stove, the gas fire keeping the iron skillet sizzling hot for a family pancake breakfast. The top of the stove radiates very HOT too, so you are sensitive to your son's current absence from the kitchen.
Your son toddles into the kitchen. You say "honey, the stove is hot, hotter than the bowl of oatmeal last night. If you touch the stove, then you'll get burned again. If you stay over there, then you'll be just fine." Then you smell that the pancake is about to burn unless you flip it, so you scrape the pancake, raise it, flip it, and you watch it drop - but as it drops, you see your precious son's hand grasp the extremely hot stove iron grill flame cover. In a flash, you dunk your excruciatingly pained and screaming child's hand in a glass of cold water, add ice, turn off the stove, examine the wound through the glass, and ...
The morals of the story:
Point 2 is a parallel - a remote shadow at best, to when the Lord Jesus' says "you did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16, also John 15:13-15 about love and friends). It is crucial to discern the exclusive nature of the declarative; one party can do something while the other party cannot do the same thing; in other words, men cannot choose God while God chooses men.
Point 4 is analagous, a shadow at best, to how the Father in heaven causes the "sun to rise on [the] evil and [the] good, and sends rain on [the] righteous and [the] unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).
Points 5 and 6 are analagous to the sin nature as default nature (the main document of this essay contains more detail about the nature of man).
The example is concluded.
Commands do not convey ability; rather, commands expose the desires of the person, more specifically the heart of the person.