Some issues are so taken for granted that common acceptance belies their intrinsic value and native importance. Such an issue is the subject of free will. Among brethren, until fairly recent dates, free will has been an accepted doctrine, figuring unobtrusively in conclusions drawn from Biblical principles. Events of recent date in which some have taught that man has a corrupted nature have led to the recognition that we may have taken too much for granted, in fact. Theologians have debated God’s sovereignty and man’s free will for centuries, churning out volumes of commentaries from Augustine onward. Since most of us do not pretend to be theologians, we have allowed simple Bible exegesis to determine our approach to the subject more than philosophical reasoning. Most have done little preaching on free will as a separate topic, choosing rather to include it by reference in related matters. But free will has far-reaching implications relating to human nature, ethics, moral responsibility, social issues and theology, including the question of man’s ability to respond to his Creator’s will so as to exercise choice among moral contingencies. The particular view one espouses will determine attitudes and actions in “every issue of life” (Prov. 4:23).
Does man have genuine moral freedom, true choice among alternatives, the ability to make decisions without coercion of a genetically inherited disposition beyond individual control? Are there contingencies facing man which he will confront with determinism (the antithesis of moral freedom) or antecedent causes? Is man ultimately responsible for his actions? Can he “do” anything by free choice in response to God’s grace? Is punishment and reward fixed by God independent of any action on the part of man and by divine fiat before the worlds were formed? The very scope of these questions suggest their importance. The question that David pondered, “What is man…” (Ps. 8:4), is still very much with us today.
“Why did God make free-will creatures? The Bible does not give an explicit answer to the question. We infer from other scriptural teaching that God’s chief purpose and desire were to have creatures who would love, serve, and glorify him of their free choice and not coercion or manipulation. We infer this, for example, from the fact that the first and greatest commandment is that we love God with all our hearts and minds (Matt. 22:37). The fact that this is the most important things that we can do suggests that it is what God desires from His creation more than anything else. Giving His creatures free will was a necessary means to that end” (What the Bible Says About God The Ruler, by John Cottrell, College Press, p. 398).
We may also infer the truthfulness of this proposition from the projected destiny of those who choose to serve God: heaven. John saw the “holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:2-3). Though sin separated the grand plan of creation, it is yet achieved through Christ. Paul wrote “to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to his saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:25-27). We conclude, therefore, that God made man “a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor” (Heb. 2:7), instilled within him the free will and the ability to choose righteousness, all to His own praise and glory. Man reaches no higher goal than when he serves God. “The whole (duty) of man” is to “fear God, and keep his commandments” (Eccl. 12:13). “Unto thee, O Jehovah, do I lift up my soul” (Ps. 25:1). “I will give thanks unto Jehovah with my whole heart; I will show forth all thy marvelous works”(Ps. 9:1). With these beautiful verses, each of us can add our own choice of praise, freely given, that “in me, Lord, thy purpose of creation is vindicated. I freely choose to serve thee.”
- “A command makes sense only if the recipient is capable of doing either what is required or forbidden, in others words, only if he is a responsible being. So the divine prohibition implies that man is morally free. Adam and Eve were free to render or refuse obedience to God. Since, as we noted earlier, freedom involves the presence of genuine alternatives, God could not give man the freedom to obey and at the same time withhold the power to disobey. ‘Freedom to obey’ is nothing if it is not also the freedom to disobey. Consequently, had man been incapable of disobedience, his fulfillment of God’s requirements would not have been voluntary. And the word moral could not apply. “The affirmation of moral freedom requires an open view of reality. When God gave man moral freedom, He was leaving undecided whether or not man would obey. In other words, He left open man’s response to God’s expectations of him. God might, presumably, have constructed man to respond to Him in only one way. But in that case moral experience would have been impossible, because man would not have been responsible for his behavior. Man is a morally free being, and the content of his decision to obey or disobey must have been indefinite until man himself made the decision” (God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will, Richard Rich, Bethany Press, Chap. 3, p. 38).
“The fact that human beings (and angels before them) were created with free will, though, means that there was the possibility of or potential for evil. For if man is to have the ability freely to choose to love God, he must also be given the capacity to choose to hate and reject God. Thus in a sense the creation of free-will beings entailed a risk. But God was willing to risk the free choice of evil in order to have freely-chosen love and worship” (Op. Cit).
Since God is sovereign, He has the absolute right to do as He pleases. Yet we must conclude that He will not act in discord with His nature, even in creation. As James said, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempeth no man” (James 1:12). John added: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). We can safely conclude, therefore, that God could not, because of His righteous nature, immutably and unchangeably create a man who must sin and cannot help himself except to do as created, then hold that man accountable for that sin. The alternative, presented in the bible, is that God, as a sovereign, created man as a free, moral being so that man might choose to serve God, yet, by the nature of free will, provide the potential (risk) that man would choose evil. In the moral sense, man himself is sovereign (in time, not eternity). Does not Ecclesiastes address the fact that man may acts as he wills “under the sun” but that he should remember that “for all these things, God will bring thee into judgment” (11:10)? Will we do that for which we have been created, or will we go astray? As the Psalmist said, “Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek after God” (14:2) Only man, of all the creatures of God, can say “no” to God. This rebelliousness is the risk of free will.
- God is a sovereign Creator.
- He has made many creatures that are not free or moral. These creatures glorify God by their existence (Ps. 19:1).
- God chose to create yet another creature that would be both free and moral: man. But to be truly free, man must be able to obey or disobey, possessing the capability of,and potential for, sin.
- Man did disobey and, as an accountable being, is responsible for sin. He did not have to sin, but chose to do so (Rom. 5:12), with the attendant consequence of bringing sin into existence.
After affirming that God cannot be tempted with evil and that He tempts no man, James supported the above conclusions when he taught that “each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death” (James 1:13-15). Herein lies the origin of sin: within the human heart is the highest potential of praise to God or the blackest depth of sin’s degradation. Which shall it be? That is the work of choice, will, determination. All too often, we have chosen to do wrong and are in the bondage of sin (Rom. 7:24), but in every case it is due to our own decision without coercion by God. Recognizing the potential damnation of my soul through the choice to do evil, let me rather rejoice that I have the parallel potential to achieve “a greater weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17), working God’s will in my life. Heaven will surely be worth it all.
