Free Will & God's Sovereignty
Free will is not the same as freedom of action. There are many things we will to do and but for some limiting factors we'd carry them out. But there are limiting factors and we don't or can't carry them out. Joseph went to Egypt but he willed otherwise and Jonah willed to go to Tarshish but he ended up in Nineveh after some fishy business.
Free will is not absolute and unlimited; but then I'm not sure anyone ever thought it was. We all know we were capable of saying "no" even when we said "yes" and of saying yes when we said no. We all know we have free will even if we can't argue it to our own satisfaction (or anyone else's). We blame people for behaviour we know they should and could have avoided and we praise people for behaviour they could have ducked out on and wouldn't. So to some degree we determine our responses and it is to that degree we rightly say people have "free will".
There are two common reactions to the truth of our freedom to will. One is: if God has given us the capacity or freedom to will then he shouldn't be upset with us when we choose to do what displeases him. And the other is, since God has given us free will that must limit his sovereignty over us. The first confuses two categories the moral and the anthropological. Humans are capable of making choices and willing all kinds of things but morally speaking they shouldn't want to choose or will some things.
George Bernard Shaw said there were some things we shouldn't want to know. Like, how long would it take to boil our mothers-in-law into a mass of raw meat? How long would a healthy baby survive if placed in a refrigerator? There are some things we shouldn't want to will or choose. Maybe instead of being irritated with God for putting limits on what we can or should choose maybe we should thank him.
The second one is equally thoughtless though perhaps not as widely held. It makes no sense to say our freedom of choice limits God's sovereignty when in fact our freedom of choice is an expression of God's sovereignty. We have free will because God has given it to us! And we continue to have free will because God continues to sustain us as creatures of free will. Our very existence is a gift from God, a gift he maintains moment by moment because we're never alive apart from him. Life, with the freedom to will, is not a gift like an Oscar that exists independently of the giver once it is given. God continuously gives life and all the blessings that go with it to us.
But what if we resist him and choose to do what he is displeased with? Then we take the consequences of our evil choice. The gift God gives us is the capacity and opportunity to choose and we prostitute the gift. The gift God gives us is not the evil choice. Even when we choose to do evil (and it isn't God choosing evil for us) we are using the gift he gave us. We seem to forget that we need freedom to choose to do evil as well as good. And if we pervert his gracious gift and choose evil God will use the evil to serve his divine purposes. You can't make a prisoner out of God!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.