We can learn something from Jesus at Gethsemane. Here was the Son of God praying to the Father three times to ascertain whether there was any other way for the salvation of man except through the cross. At the end He chose to set aside His own will and to submit to the Father's will (Mt.26:39). Was this a drama being played out for the benefit of the spectators or was there a real struggle in the mind of Jesus as a Man?
That the Son of God would lay down His life to pay for the sins of man was a plan that God had determined even before the world was created (1Pe.1:18-20). Jesus Himself knew this and mentioned it several times to the disciples before the time came. Yet, when the time actually came when He was going to be arrested and put to death, the Son of Man struggled with the decision. In fact, He asked the Father three times about the same thing. And when the people came to arrest Him, He knew that even then there was an opportunity for Him to call for the help of angels to deliver Him (Mt.26:53). Just look at the struggle going on in His mind between His will and the Father's! Truly He was tempted just as we are (He.4:15).
Look at what happened to Peter. He was sure that he would never deny Jesus even if it meant that he would lose his life (Mt.26:33,35). His intention was clear, and this was what he was determined to do. But he never expected the kind of situation that he faced when Jesus was being tried and a servant girl questioned his association with Jesus. His earlier determination was not strong enough to pull him through that test and he failed miserably.
These two examples of Jesus and Peter illustrate the fact we have been created in the image of God, with the ability to make choices about what we want to do and what we will actually do. If we did not have this free will, we would not have been like God in the way we have been created. Being made in the image is not being made with a little bit of God in us or, as some wrongly teach, as being essentially gods ourselves! That concept comes from eastern religions. But God made us like Him with the ability to think, feel and to make choices of our own.
Eve and Adam misused this freedom of choice to discard what God had told them and to do what would make them independent. The ultimate aim of the salvation which God has prepared for us is to get us back to the place where we will voluntarily choose to submit to His will. The first step in this process is to forgive all our past sins and to give us an opportunity to come under His will. But what happens if we receive forgiveness and imagine that we can continue to receive forgiveness, and then live the same way that we used to live? We will not be able at all that way to be transformed into the image of His Son, who denied His own will and submitted to the Father even when it came to giving up His life.
Read the Bible with this understanding and see what we find. It will almost be like getting a new Bible!