To what extent are we free? When it comes to reconciling God’s sovereignty and free will, it all depends on what you mean by free will. Freedom is necessary for people to be responsible for their actions, you can destroy a machine that constitutes a threat, but you cannot punish a robot for doing what it’s programmed to do. Retributive justice requires that the perpetrators act be of their own volition. Free agents are responsible, but the mechanisms they use cannot be blamed for doing what they could not avoid doing. An agent is responsible to the extent that they were free to act, and free from blame to the extent that they were compelled by another. While some significant theologians (Augustine, Calvin, Carson) have suggested that our freedom does not include the power to contrary (the ability to avoid doing what we’re free to do), this I believe, leads to the inescapable conclusion that God punishes people with an eternity of suffering for things that they’re unable to avoid doing. God’s revelation of his justice and our responsibility drives me to defend human freedom.
Jesus says “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Does this mean that we offer ourselves willing slaves or that we are compelled to sin against our will? Romans 6 describes people as either slaves to sin or slave to righteousness without exception. Can someone who’s a slave to sin blame their sin on their slavery? Paul anticipates this question in Romans 9, if God is sovereign, “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” (Romans 9:19). Paul reminds us that we cannot blame God for our sin against God, “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, Why did you make me like this?” (Romans 9:20), and then suggests why God may have “bore with great patience the objects of his wrath” (Romans 9:22). Whatever we make of Paul’s suggestion as to the reason why, what is clear is that God bears with those who are under his wrath with great patience. It makes little sense for God to bear with them with great patience if he is actively causing them to sin. He is patient with them, not with himself. God passively allows us to sin, he doesn’t force anyone’s hand.
Some object with the observation that “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). If we read the account in Exodus on which this is based, we find that Pharaoh hardens his own heart (Exodus 8:15) and then God hardens his heart (Exodus 9:12), Pharaoh’s officials harden their own hearts (Exodus 9:34) and then God hardens their hearts (Exodus 10:1). Paul describes this process as God giving people over to their sin (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). God doesn’t harden people who would otherwise have soft hearts, his punishes sin by giving people over to their sin, passively and without compulsion, but ultimately and eternally in hell. God chooses to save some by sheer grace, and this certainly implies that he chooses not to save others. But this doctrine, known as double predestination, sometimes carries an assumption that people are somewhat neutral before God, who chooses some to go up to heaven and others to go down to hell. However, we cannot blame God for our sin, we freely choose the path to destruction and make our own way to hell. God graciously rescues some along the way and puts them on the path to life. Jesus’ death and resurrection made the way to heaven.
If it’s impossible for sinners to avoid sinning, then in what sense are such people without excuse (Romans 1:20)? Who is Paul describing as they who “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them”(Romans 2:15)? In Romans 3 Paul brings together a number of Old Testament passages to demonstrate that there is no one righteous, not even one, all have turned away (Romans 3:10-18). If we as a race had no option to do otherwise, then this is less of a condemnation of us, than it is a description of the power of that which has enslaved us. This passage however, has immeasurably more force if it is possible to be righteous and yet there is no one who is, if we are able to seek God and yet no one does. Left to ourselves, no one does choose God, but that doesn’t mean that no one can choose God. Jesus was fully human and he did. To say that only he can is to deny that he was tempted in every way that we are (Hebrews 4:15). I’m extremely confident that I won’t choose to murder someone today, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t. The fact that people don’t choose God on their own, doesn’t mean that they can’t.
Augustine wrote that “what our hearts desire, our will chooses and our mind justifies”. The bible tells us that “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Romans 8:5). There is a real sense is which our will is a constant slave to what our hearts desire, but this is saying nothing more than affirming that we choose to do what we want. The key issue in the discussion of free will is, how free are our hearts? We seek to be free to follow our hearts, not to subjugate our hearts to follow something else. To say that we’re not free to want whatever we want, is a misunderstanding of the word “want”. Our hearts desires are our own, to blame your choices on your heart is to blame yourself.
In Genesis 6 “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). We have no one to blame for this but ourselves, God didn’t incline our hearts that way, we did. The gospel however changes our heart so that we no longer desire sin but desire God instead. We no longer seek to be free to sin but to be free from sin. Both sin and faith are driven by the heart: sin is willful disobedience, faith is willful obedience. The bible says that “There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away” (Romans 3:11-12). It’s not that something else turned us away from God, we are the ones who turned away. It’s not that we’re unable to seek God, the force of the words is in the fact that there is no one who seeks God. God seeks us and turns us back to him, not despite our inability to do so, but despite our unwillingness to do so.
