The philosophers say that man is “master of his fate and captain of his soul”. In the sense of “worldly success”, as most mean it, this is not true. Too many factors beyond human control make worldly success more a matter of “fate” than “faith”. However, in the matter of your eternal destiny the saying is very true. When it comes to “right or wrong; God or the devil; sin or holiness; and heaven or hell”, you are autonomous. You are what you choose to be; you spend eternity as you choose to spend it. And for those who love truth this is a powerful reality. Man was originally created with autonomy and dominion over the works of God. Along with this God gave humans incredible power and blessing to freely access. But he gave man one prohibition; and that one restriction established man’s autonomy - by making possible man’s rebellion against God. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: {17} But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen 2:16-17)

Of course God could have made robots that had no choice but to serve Him; but what glory would there be in our serving Him? For God to make humans with no choice but to serve Him would be like us making an audio recording of ourselves praising ourselves; then listening to it in order to imagine fellowship and edification. “Fellowship” is between equals in the moment of fellowship. A "greater" can have fellowship with a "lesser" - but only if, in the moment of fellowship, he relates to him as an "equal". When God made man he wanted fellowship with someone he could momentarily elevate to equality with Himself. God is “autonomous” - and so must those be with whom God has fellowship. So God determined in the beginning that this “autonomous being” would be “man”. He therefore desires to lift man to autonomous equality with himself for that purpose.