Is God Sovereign over My Free Will? (original source when our free will is in place? In other words, will God use His sovereignty to overwrite our free will at times to exemplify His perfect will. And if so, do we truly have free will?” Pastor John how would you explain it?

I am not sure what Tyson means by free will. And so I may not be able to answer the question if he means something by free will that I don’t believe in. So let’s try out a definition and let the Scriptures shed light on this problem. I think Tyson will get the answer he is after, at least the best I can give it.

The technical definition of free will that creates the controversies with those like me who believe in the sovereignty of God over the human will, not just a general statement about the sovereignty of God, but God’s sovereignty over the human will, that definition is this: Man’s will is free if he has the power of ultimate self-determination.

What I mean by ultimate self-determination is that no power outside of man himself has ultimate or decisive control over what a man chooses, at least not when he is acting as a moral agent who must give an account to God. Neither other people, nor influences, nor God himself has decisive control over a person’s choices. God and man and nature may have some influence, but this influence cannot be decisive. They may have a kind of causality, but not ultimate causality or decisive causality. Otherwise, the man would not be free on this definition that I am unfolding.

So Wesleyans and Arminians insist that for a person to believe on Christ and be saved divine influence is, indeed, necessary. They call it prevenient grace: grace that has come before our faith and, thus, influences us toward Christ. But this influence on the Wesleyan and Arminian understanding cannot be decisive. The final and decisive and ultimate cause of our believing Christ is not the Holy Spirit. It is not divine grace. It is our own input. God may get the process of conversion started, but the decisive influence is provided by ourselves. This is what is meant by free will on this definition. It is ultimate or decisive self-determination.

Now if that is what Tyson means in his question, I can’t answer his question because I don’t think such a thing exists anywhere in the universe except in the will of God. Only God has free will in the sense of ultimate self-determination. And here are a few of the reasons why I think that, because I don’t know whether Tyson agrees with that or not.

Jesus talked about why Judas did not believe on him. John 6:64–65 says, “(Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’” In other words, no one can come to Jesus, that is, no one can believe unless God grants him the faith. Judas did not come to Jesus decisively, fully, savingly because it was not granted to him, Jesus says, by the Father. And Jesus takes the truth and generalizes it to all of us and says in this very verse: “No one” — not just Judas — “can come to me unless it is granted” — unless the decisive coming is granted — “by the Father.” No one has the power of ultimate self-determination to get themselves to God. God gives or withholds the power to come. Nudges to come will not save anybody. What is given by God is the coming.

Another reason I don’t think ultimate self-determination exists in human beings is 2 Timothy 2:24–25, where Paul says that the Lord’s servant should correct “his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.” So repentance — it is the flip side of the coin of faith, with faith on the other side of the coin and faith embraces Christ — repentance turns from embracing other false reliances. The gift of repentance is the gift of the coin. It is the gift of rejecting self-reliance and embracing Christ. It is a gift of salvation. And without the gift of God to cause us to repent and believe, none of us would be saved.

Another reason is that John says in 1 John 5:1, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” Self-willed faith does not bring about the new birth. Just the opposite. The new birth brings about faith. Faith is, therefore, not the result of human self-determination but of the new birth.

One more reason among many, many more: Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” No king anywhere on earth has the power of ultimate self-determination. So I don’t think such a thing exists except in God. God is ultimately self-determining, but man is not ultimately and decisively self-determining.

Nevertheless — and I think this gets at what Tyson is asking about — nevertheless, we are responsible, accountable for our preferences and our choices. If God is sovereign over the human will, are we responsible? Yes, we are. And the Bible says so over and over again. Our choices are our choices. They are true choices. We have a will. Our will is active. We are genuine moral agents.

We will, as Jesus says, “give account for every careless word” (Matthew 12:36). Indeed, all of our preferences and choices and behavior, according to Romans 14:12, we will give an account of. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. Human beings do not have ultimate self-determination and we will all give an account to God for our preferences and our choices.

So instead of speaking of the will as free or not, I prefer to speak of people as free or not, because that is the way the Bible does. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul says in Galatians 5:1. Christians are free from the bondage to sin and from the oppressive demand of having to perform our own salvation.

Maybe the best way to end would be to quote this great liberation from Romans 6:17–18: “Thanks be to God.” That is so important. And that is the way we should live as believers, with a heart brimming like this. “Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

My interview with Chris Arnzen concerning free will is now posted and available to be heard here.

In an article entitled, “The Illusion of a Gentleman God,” Robert Bernecker shows why those who say “God is a Gentleman and would never violate human free will” have not been reading their Bibles very closely at all.

“I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want “free-will” to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground ; but because even were there no dangers. I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.”

– Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1957), 313-314

The “Joy Quartet” at Pensacola Christian College teach us about the Arminian doctrine of free will. Actually, it may even be the Pelagian doctrine.

I must say, my “free will” did not get me past the first 90 seconds!

Here is a short article I wrote on the subject of the will which is followed by a lively discussion in the comment section.

HT: Justin Edwards

My friend John Hendryx (the man behind the amazing monergism.com theological website) has deep insight into the Scriptures and is particularly skilled when it comes to answering questions. John is gifted with a tender heart towards the Lord and His people, as well as a very sharp mind. I have had the privilege of serving with him for almost six years as a writer on the reformationtheology.com blog and am often amazed with the precision and care he shows in handling objections. Here’s two such recent cases:

(1) Someone recently declared to me (John Hendryx) that “God’s fulfills his plan without ever coercing our volition” – But is it an axiom that in order for there to be true love, God must never violate our so-called “free will?”

My response: First and foremost, it must be said that such an idea is nowhere to be found in the Bible. But in order to demonstrate that this idea does not even fly in everyday life, I have a simple story for you: Two parents see their disobedient toddlers run out into oncoming traffic. The first parent runs up to the curb to tell their toddler to use their will to get out of the way of traffic, but does NOTHING more because he does not want to interfere with the toddler’s will. The SECOND parent sees the cars coming and runs out into the street at the risk of their life to SCOOP up the child to MAKE CERTAIN their child is safe. WHICH parent loved their child ? We would all view this second parent as having GREAT love for their child and GET THIS, he was not concerned AT ALL about the child’s will because the parent knew better than the child what was good for him . AND How much more does God love his own? God’s love for us is not conditional as you believe. He does not first see how we use OUR WILL to determine whether he loves us, as you seem to believe. He loves us too much to leave us in our own hands. No, God saves us in spite of our rebellious will. The synergist’s idea of love then is flawed since they believe God’s love for us is CONDITIONAL. Rather, “we love God BECAUSE he first loved us.” Jesus does for us what we are unable and unwilling to do for ourselves.

Again, when you used the phrase “fulfilling God’s plan without coercing their volition” — this seems to be a “basic assumption” which is the driving force behind your theology. You guys have talked about this idea for so long that it has become axiomatic for you, even though it is nowhere found in the Bible. Your most precious doctrine, it seems, that drives everything else is, therefore, this false idea which is READ INTO the Scriptures. It is a logical deduction but, I would argue, is wrong. Continue reading →