Why 'If'..
Thank God He never forces His way upon us, except perhaps in the sense of He moves people to do certain things in order to achieve His purposes.
It would be no great problem for Him to make us all into humanoid robots, obeying His every will and desire. It would be no great problem for Him to impose strict Laws that we all had to obey, but this was what went wrong with the Israelites in the Old Testament times. Apart from one or two exceptional individuals they never developed a personal relationship with the God who revealed His loving kindness and person to them in so many different ways. Despite the necessity for their rituals of sacrifice there was still room for personal relationship, but alas, few discovered it.
His overwhelming desire though, is that men and women should respond positively to Him, in obedience, but from a heart of love, and in an atmosphere of relationship, towards Him, and thus achieve His purposes.
Freewill is something that he never needed give us when he created mankind. He could easily have built in anti-independence limitations, or taken away that part of our character and personality that desires to freely express who and what we are. No, it was a great act of His love for us, to give us freewill.
He was giving us our freedom. He was allowing us to choose our lifestyle, and our destiny. His desire though, was that we love him. His eternal hope is that our obedience would be from a heart of love, and would be in response to His Fatherhood and Divinity.
