The Problem of the Will, Part 2
In Part One I explained why the concept of “free will” is not Scripture’s answer to the question “why did God make man capable of sin?” Here I hope to offer a more biblical explanation.
To begin with, it is helpful to acknowledge why we find the “free will” answer so appealing: inevitably it comes down to our discomfort with God’s justice. We feel the need to justify God for judging sinners (particularly the ones we like). We are likewise uncomfortable with the fact that God saves some sinners and not others, and troubled most of all by the idea that God chooses who will be saved. How can it be fair if some people don’t even have a chance? Many, if not most, people have never heard the Gospel. And in the Old Testament, the vast majority of the world’s humans were not among God’s chosen people.
“And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger. As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom 9:10-13).
We—or so we think—should be the deciding factor in our own salvation. Only if God leaves it all up to us can it be fair. Then it is our will that differentiates us from those who aren’t saved. Something in us, some innate wisdom or goodness of our own leads us to accept God’s offered salvation. We flipped the switch. We saw the light. We made the right choice, hence we deserve salvation in a way others don’t. To our sin-blinded sense of justice, anything else seems unfair.
“What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (Rom 9:14-18).
Paul, in defending God’s justice, seems only to dig his heels deeper into the very thing the sinful human heart rejects: God’s choice. How can God hold us responsible if we don’t have a choice. It’s not fair! It must be up to us. (So we insert the “free will” answer here.) Yet Paul himself anticipates those exact objections in the very next verse: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” (Rom 9:19).
Paul does not coddle our wills in his reply:
“But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?” (Rom 9:20-21).
It might seem that Paul is skirting the objection, but in fact he is cutting right to the heart of the matter. It is the nature of the sinful heart to think of itself as the lord of its own destiny—to deny God its Creator the right to decide who or what we, his creatures, should be, and who he should or should not save.
But, as we discussed in Part One, the problem has never been that we don’t have a choice. We do have a choice and we always have. The problem is what we do with that choice. The hard truth is that if God left it up to us we would always choose our ways rather than his. That is the nature of the fallen will. Sin is what the fallen heart loves. If God left the choice up to us, none of us would be saved. Furthermore, he would be perfectly just to condemn us all, because our sin was the product of our own desires. He did not force us to sin.
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (Jn 3:19-20).
The hard truth that everyone who has ever been saved understands to the core of his being is that there is no greater miracle than a changed heart, and that it is a work only God can do: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ez 36:26). The believer marvels that he has come to faith. With Jonah he proclaims: “Salvation belongs to the LORD” (2:9).
So what about our “free” will? Don’t we have to choose Christ? Isn’t his gospel a direct appeal to our will? Doesn’t he call us to take up our cross and follow him? Yes, we do have to choose him! And yes, he does beckon us do to so! But when we heed his call, we do so as the deaf who have suddenly heard, and the blind who have suddenly seen, and the stony heart that is suddenly warm, soft, and pumping new life through our veins. We know this didn’t happen because we were inherently wiser than those who remain blind. We take no credit at all. We know that every ounce of glory for our choice belongs to God.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:8-10).
The Bible has much more to say to the question of why God made mankind able to sin. I’ve only scratched the surface. In my next article, I want to spend less time on the human will itself, and more time on God’s grand purpose. In anticipation of that, I hope you will spend some time meditating on Romans 9:22-24:
“What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”
According to Paul, what does God want to reveal about his character in his dealings with a sinful humanity?
