Why Theology? :: Do We Have Free Will?

Free Will as Libertarian or Compatibilistic

What is up guys, my name is KJ and this is Why Theology. Now we got a big announcement that I gotta make. So if you guys don't know, I know I've been gone for two weeks. I took a step back to kind of focus on schoolwork and like the Lord and family.

But now I'm back and so I actually got to introduce a special guest. His name is Pastor Jeremiah and he's actually now my co-host. And so Jeremiah go. Introduce yourself man.

Well, hello again everybody. My name is Jeremiah Nortier. I serve at 12 -5 Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas and I've really enjoyed getting to know you KJ and just being able to contend.

For the faith together. It's been fun man. I know when our pastors first met each other, they said that we were both very similar. So it's kind of cool how me and got connected and now we're co-hosting Theology together.

So be looking for some more material out there guys. We're going to be talking about many topics and that kind of leads us to our topic of the day. I forgot how we even got this topic. I think I forgot what I asked you.

I text you something.

Like that. We think about free will. So we were planning about a number of upcoming topics and you mentioned, yeah, it'd be good to talk about free will. I was like, oh, well you absolutely have to have me on that because I've spent years trying to have a better grasp of what the Bible.

Teaches when it comes to man's choices. I know a lot of times too, when we think about like, you know, the reformed community or like people who say they're Calvinist or just simply believe in God's sovereignty, like this is one of those issues kind of like people kind of divide over and hopefully maybe we can kind of bridge that gap back together if we kind of just teach what the Bible says.

I know like when people think about, you know, Calvinism again, like a reformed theologian think that, you know, if someone believes that God is sovereign, that means that man is not free. Well, the Bible doesn't teach that.

The Bible teaches that God is sovereign and that man is free. And so today, me and Jeremiah can kind of be dealing with that. So let's go ahead and get started, man. I guess, you know, we got two words put together.

We got free and we got will. So the word is free will. So I guess, how would you define free man?

So studying this topic, there's really two definitions that we have to be familiar with. When we're talking about free will, you could be talking about, we're going to use some confusing terms, but it's so important to qualify what we mean by free will, because whatever your theological framework is, you should be able to affirm, yes, we do have free will.

But what do you mean when you say that? So one definition is referred to as libertarian free will. We'll unpack that in a moment. And I've also heard people call that contra-causal free will. We'll talk about what the ability to choose to do otherwise means.

But that's essentially number one, libertarian free will. And then you have this other really good way of understanding free will, and it's a compatibilistic free will. And it's really contending for the truth that there is not a contradiction between God being absolutely sovereign over his creation, having perfect knowledge of the future and everything that that would entail, and saying that man legitimately is free to choose according to his heart's desire.

So libertarian free will,.

Compatibilistic or compatibilism free will. Now, I guess before we can get there, I guess you probably help us with this. How can we define the will, like I guess in that in itself? So like I said, we've got them two words put together, free, and then you got will.

I looked it up, you know, I'm pretty sure that you get to know me. I've said it many times in my podcast episodes, you know, my favorite theologians, Jonathan Edwards, like Charles Spurgeon, Calvin, all you guys, but like Edwards is always one of my favorites.

And so you guys know Edwards has an entire book about this, dealing with this called freedom of the will. You guys know that Martin Luther has a book called, you know, the bondage of the will, but Edwards, his is the freedom of the will.

And so he kind of, I guess, defines the free will as this. He says the mind choosing. And so what he's talking about is that the mind and the will, they kind of go together. You can't, I guess, like inseparable, or they're kind of related in a sense.

And so we don't make moral choices today without the mind approving the kind of directions of those choices. And so it's kind of, I guess, close to what the Bible says too, about the conscience that we have in the mind to make moral decisions or choices.

And so like, I guess we could think about like this. So like when we become aware of certain options, like if, I guess, the options presented before us, and like the mind is inclined to, I guess, make another, I guess, the option in front of us, I guess, more than another one, we choose kind of the strongest desire in that moment in a sense.

That's kind of what Edwards.

Kind of defined it. What would you say? Yeah, so let's talk about those two words, free and will. And I think I agreed wholeheartedly with everything of what you meant by will. Simply choosing the power of choice.

And from a natural human perspective, you can have option A and option B, and you have the natural human capacities to choose A or B in that moment, right? Now we'll get into, do we have the moral option to choose A or B?

Are we able to choose A or B and give glory to God? Well, Jesus mentioned, I believe it's in John 8, that we are slaves to sin. So there's a bondage to our will that we must affirm to some degree. And there's debate on to what that looks like exactly.

But the Bible does teach that our will is enslaved to sin. And you and I have talked about how Romans 6 talks about we're either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. So we do really need to understand that our will, whatever that may look like, our ability to choose is constrained by our human nature.

We can't choose to fly. That's just not in the cards, right? So we have to understand we're a human being. And then we're also moral agents. What does that look like spiritually? And that's where the Bible is going to inform our presuppositions because before coming to Christ, it sure seemed like I could choose whatever I wanted to do.

And this is where when the scripture speaks, we lean not on our own understanding. We start with God's revelation, His truth, and then we begin to build our worldview, our understanding of truth from that.

So I want to start with will there. I think the ability to think and make choices, everything you said, that's perfect. Now, when we get to the word free, in what sense does free mean? Now, to me, how you answer this will pretty much choose whether you'll be in that libertarian camp or that compatibilistic camp.

So I was looking at Proverbs 16, 9. To me, this is almost explicitly what the compatibilistic free will stances is trying to get at. The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord, Yahweh, establishes His steps.

So I would say compatibilistic free will says we are free to choose whatever our heart desires, but we're not free apart from God's sovereignty and His forward nation. Now, compatible, then you have, like we were saying, libertarian free will.

This is a different idea and understanding. I think it breaks down. I don't think it can be fully consistent in light of all of what the scripture reveals and the whole counsel of God. But basically, this gets at God does not have an eternal decree, that God has not foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

And I think they appeal to mystery that God is all-knowing, even before the foundation of the world. And I'm already thinking, well, from God's sovereign viewpoint, it's going to happen how the Trinity, God, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit counseled.

Hopefully, we get into a few verses of what that looks like. And I don't understand, and I think I understand where they're coming from, but I think there's a breakdown. Does man have the ability to choose in whatever given moment that he wants to do apart from God's omniscience, apart from God's all-encompassing sovereignty?

And like we're going to get into, I think the Bible tells us that, no, it is compatible. Both can be true and they're not.

Contradictory to one another. That's a way of saying it, man. I think about this too. I think R .C. Sproul was, I think he said something along the lines of like, only God is the one ultimately free. And like kind of what you just said, and that Proverbs, like, you know, man plays a step, but God directs it.

I think if you go a little bit farther down in Proverbs 16, it talks about how like the man kind of like throws a dice and the Lord is where it turns. I'm putting it back in modern terms, but he determines what number kind of rolls out in a sense.

And like, you see that, like everything is fixed in a sense, but like, does that truly eliminate the free will that we have in a sense? But the question is, you know, what is this free will? And so I guess what helped us as well is that, I guess we can narrow it down like this.

I'm going to see if you agree with this, but you say that free will is like the ability to make decisions, right? Or choices. So far, yes. Okay. So not kind of what you just said, like people assume because, you know, free will is the ability to make choices.

Then that means that we can determine in a sense, our own lives in a sense. Somewhat, you guys noticed that the logical term called determinism. It basically means that we can determine our own lives because we have free will, right?

God made us in his image with the ability to make decisions, right? I'm sure, like, I don't, I don't know what Jeremiah likes. My favorite ice cream is strawberry. And so I had a choice. I really like strawberry ice cream, right?

My favorite basketball team is the Lakers. I had a choice to like the Lakers, right? I think Jeremiah's is as well. So like, I had a choice to like those things, right? But, you know, kind of, how would you kind of define that, man?

Like a determinism and kind of like how we have choices to kind of like, you know.

The Will in Bondage to Sin

Yeah. So in the world of philosophy, if you're going to adopt a deterministic worldview, you really have two options. One is referred to as a soft determinism and one is more of a hard determinism. And I know critics of Calvinism will basically say there's no distinction without a difference there, but I really think there is.

A soft determinism is more of this compatibilistic notion that we're contending for that both God can be sovereign and man be responsible for his decisions. Hard determinism really removes man's desire and inward volition to really want that ice cream because it tastes good.

A robot that's programmed to do something, that would be a hard determinism because that robot is doing what it's programmed to do, but it doesn't really have desire and doesn't have that compassion or choice to really want something.

And we're saying God is powerful enough, right? He's omnipotent to create a world, to have eternal decree with volitional creatures. So KJ really likes that ice cream when he chooses it, but that doesn't negate that it was ordained to come to pass exactly how God planned it.

Kind of add to that. So essentially kind of what you're saying is that even though God is sovereign, he's not, of course we know he fixes all these things, but he's not fixing in a way that it makes us robots.

And they're like, we're totally having like not a mind and a will in a sense, but now this gets into the question. Well, we're going to say that, you know, God, you know, he allowed us to have free will and why can't we choose him?

You deal with that.

Yeah. Cause it's funny. There's so many thoughts that come first to mind because here in a second, I'll let you kind of guide this, but we will talk about Adam and Eve in the garden pre-fall. I think that matters, but we have a sin nature.

We all died in Adam. We have a constituent sinful nature that has marred our thinking. That's why no one seeks after God. God has to first begin that work in us, regenerate our heart, give us that conviction of our sin and a desire for our need of Jesus.

So God in essence grants us repentance and faith. It's not that he brings us kicking and screaming against our will, but he changes our will. So that's why we need the spirit to move on man first in order for us to receive the gospel.

That's probably first,.

What I would say. What do you think about that? I'm thinking too, to kind of like Martin Luther's book, like I said, the bondage of the will, we're talking about something called the will and like the will, like I said, is related to the mind.

So whatever we're thinking in the sense in that moment, the strongest desire, we're going to pick that. And so kind of what you just say, because of what happened in the garden, the will by nature is in bondage to the sin.

And so now before we became Christians, the will was like slave to sin, like Jesus taught us in John 8, Ephesians 2 says, and you were dead in your sins. Either Paul was lying or he was telling the truth.

And so I'm assuming Paul was telling the truth because he was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, right? And so we know that like you just said, Jesus tells us we're slaves to sin. And so the will is in bondage.

So all the decisions we're making, even though they're free, we're freely choosing these things, the will is in bondage. And so we're choosing freely to sin. And so like, when you get to heaven, God's not going to say, you know, I forced you to sin.

So I'm still going to throw you to hell. He's going to say, no, you freely chose to do those things. And so that's kind of what a lot of people kind of get confused, I guess, like in this Calvinistic, like I said, because people like, you know, Calvinism, Reform Theology holds, you know, the sovereignty of God, they say, well, it doesn't make sense how you can have both, you know, free will, and also Calvinism and put them together, either as one or the other.

But that's not what the Bible teaches us. But before we even get there, that's kind of deal we kind of just talked about, you know, was it was Adam and Eve free in the.

Garden, you know, pre fall. So I was gonna say, I would affirm Adam and Eve pre fall, and even all of mankind after the fall, we have free will, but those free wills do look a little different. They had the freedom to choose without the marred perception of sin.

And really, that's all I say. Because this is this is what we mean, you talked about the other day. So when Adam and Eve look at looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had the free will choice to engage with it and be disobedient and make a simple choice.

Or they had the ability to choose not to be obedient to God. Now that doesn't negate God having a purpose of having the tree there, permitting the devil to tempt them. And we realize that God is accomplishing plan A, Jesus is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

So even their free will that wasn't marred by sin does it doesn't negate the sovereignty of God. And the only difference I would make with Adam and Eve pre fall, and then mankind after the fall is then you take the unregenerate man after the fall.

And he has the ability, let's think of a moral choice, you can walk someone across the street, that from a human perspective looks good. Or you can choose to hatefully turn your back and you know, you know, not help that person.

That's a that'd be bad. Well, for the unregenerate man, either option A or B is still sinful before God. That's probably the major distinction with Adam and Eve pre fall, but both pre fall post fall doesn't negate God's.

All encompassing sovereignty. I add to that to kind of what you just said, because it reminds me of a theological term that we know is civic virtue. R .C. Sproul talks about this in the systematic theology class.

So kind of what you said, civic virtue is a census, like, let's say, for example, the speed in the Bible tells us about the laws of the land. And so at times, you'll see people really obeying that on the screen as you're driving the interstate.

So the speed limit may say 75 and people go in 75, right. But as an unbeliever, you know, if the Bible tells us that his children can obey him, why does it seem as though people who are lost can obey God's word?

Well, in that moment, they're selfishly obeying that for a profit reasons, not for because God says to his word. But in that moment, it may be rooted for something selfish. I may be obeying this law because I don't want a ticket and I might spend money, but it's not because I don't want to, you know, I don't want to obey God because what says in his word.

So it's called civic virtue, kind of what you just said. Now we think about this kind of what I say, the will is in bondage to sin. It's because like you just said, Adam and Eve, their minds wasn't, you know, in bondage to sin pre-fall, but us, the man today, we are in bondage to sin.

They had like the choices we make are rooted in sin.

And so it's kind of unique right there, man. And I wanted to give the audience a verse when I said that it doesn't matter what the unregenerate man chooses to do A or B, it's still sinful before God. One verse that I feel like is explicitly clear is Romans 14, verse 23, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So you can do all these humanly good acts, all sinful before God, because it must be rooted in faith to glorify God in truth, right? The triune God and the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ who took on flesh.

So if you're not doing something to glorify the true God, well, then it's, there's sinful motives there. You have motives to really push yourself up, boast in what you can do and show off before other people.

But the fact that we even make moral decisions because we bear the image of God, we are the Imago Dei, right? But we are a marred image of God. Right. Definitely unique,.

Man. And so like, even with that, man, like if an unbeliever were to go to, you know, a biblically sound church and they're, you know, worshiping quote unquote, and, you know, in the Lord's day or, you know, at church, however you want to say it, that even that worship is sinful because like you said, it's not rooted in faith.

That worship is really probably an idolatry, not even worship, probably the triune God is probably a God that they have created. Now, here's a question for you, Jermiah. And I guess for myself, can someone who holds to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, as we've been discussing and still holds a free will, we've kind of already been hitting at it, but how would you deal with this?

God's Sovereignty and Compatibilist Freedom

Well, it depends how you define God's sovereignty. And it depends what you mean by free will. I feel like, so I had these passages flipped to, if we define God's sovereignty, I would contend for being the biblical understanding that God rules and reigns over every aspect of his creation, that he is in the heavens, he's free to do whatever he wills on heavens above or on the earth below.

That's all encompassing. And if we double down and say that God is omniscient, he is all knowing before the foundation of the world, that's the sovereignty I want to contend for. Hopefully your audience, when they hear me just kind of write off those truths, hopefully you hear the Bible passages that rightly reflect those things.

And so Ephesians chapter one, this is to me, one of those inescapable places that I would go to, to contend for the sovereignty of God. And before I get into it, it's verse 11, but if you have that view of God's sovereignty, this all encompassing that God has meaning and purpose in every aspect of life, then the only free will that is quote unquote compatible with that is this compatible understanding that, okay, I'm free to choose what I want to do, but I'm not free apart from that understanding of God's sovereignty.

So if you have that Calvinistic sovereignty, Augustan understanding, right, we've talked about church history in past episodes. If we had this Augustinian understanding of God's sovereignty, then the only possible free will would be compatibilism.

So I just want to submit that to you, but if you, and what I see in a lot of Baptist culture is the opposite. They want to start with this contra-causal free will, this libertarian freedom that says that I'm free to do otherwise.

And God is basically is not sovereign in that moment. And I've heard of a man named Layton Flowers, which I want to say, I think he is a brother in Christ. And I actually enjoy listening to his material because it sharpens me.

And he, this is a man trying to rightly handle the scripture. So I actually appreciate his ministry. And so I just want people to hear that. But what I, what I fail to understand is how, if God knows everything, and then chose a particular world, and that's the one that's going to come to pass, then I can't understand how God is not sovereign.

Let me back up. What I see that as in that moment of somebody choosing to receive Jesus, well, that would entail that God is not sovereign in that moment. Layton Flowers says, well, a king can be sovereign over his land, but he doesn't have exhaustive knowledge and doesn't, you know, decree them to do X, Y, and Z.

I'm saying yes, because that is not a one-to-one comparison of what a sovereign earthly king looks like to the sovereign king of kings over the universe. I'm going to swing this back over to you, but then we get into this understanding.

We got to understand the distinction between the creator and the creation.

Now, you asked me a good question when we talked about this earlier. It kind of, I think it kind of puts it in perspective. So you're going to have to refresh my memory, but it's something along the lines of like, I think you said where Adam and Eve, how did you kind of, how did you word it?

Do you remember? I think you said like that, where Adam and Eve, freedom or something.

Like that. Adam and Eve possessed free will that was compatible with God's sovereignty, but their free will was not marred by a sin nature. They could have, from a human perspective, chose A, not to eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that would have been glorifying the God.

Or they could have chose B, and which they did, right? Sinful. I'm saying fallen man, the unregenerate man does not have that option. They can choose A or B, and either one of them is sinful.

Before God. Yeah. So I think you, I think that's what it was, the question you asked. I think you asked, you know, where Adam and Eve freed in the garden. I think my response was like, well, it depends on what we're talking about.

So like, for example, from a human's perspective, I would say, yes, they had free will, like kind of what you just defined. But then I would say from God's perspective, he was sovereign even over the decision.

So it was fixed to happen in a certain way. The world, I guess the reality that it did in fact happen, it was fixed because God ordained this stuff to happen. Like even with the cross, for example, that wasn't plan B, that was plan A.

God always had this plan happen. Like you said, allowing the devil to come in the garden to tempt Eve and allow all these things to happen. God had a plan. But now as we're dealing with this, it wasn't as though, I think 1 John chapter 2 says that God is light and in him there is no darkness.

Isaiah 45 verse 6, I believe it says that, you know, I'm the Lord who created, you know, I'm the Lord who does all these things. Ephesians 1 verse 4, like you said, you know, they'll talk about the predestined things.

Proverbs 16, all these things we see God as sovereign, but it's still in the realm of like free will. I think the best example we have is Pharaoh, for example. The Bible talks about how God hardened his heart.

But does that mean that God forced him to do those things? Does that mean that God forced Adam and Eve to sin in the garden? No, because we know that again, we have the, of course, you already made the distinction between unbelievers and Adam and Eve, but we see this distinction that God is sovereign in the choices that we make, but it doesn't eliminate the choices that we do make.

If I'm making sense out there for everybody, listen.

And I agree with that. Like God is not the author of sin. He does not force good people to do bad things. And that's really the fundamental thing we have to understand. The depravity of man is that we do not seek God.

We run the opposite direction. But let me begin to articulate this, KJ, because this actually helped me leaps and bounds and is understanding the creator-creation distinction. So what I'm getting at is God's ability to make choices is not one-to-one the same how created man makes decisions.

God is eternal, absolute, transcendent. So that's why he is all-knowing. That's why he's omniscient. He knows things absolutely in that light, like you said. So man, we may have some knowledge of things, we make choices, but that is a reflection of God.

So think about this. And Charles Spurgeon had an analogy that I didn't like that much. I love Spurgeon, right? But I thought the analogy is one of a synergistic understanding of man and God and not a monergistic one.

And so he had this idea that if you look at train tracks, you have one side of the train track going straight and the other one's parallel beside it, and then they somehow converge and touch in eternity.

Two things. And I feel like I'm in good company with R .C. Sproul, also did not like this analogy. He said, well, if they're parallel, then they never touch. Not even in eternity. And I thought that's a good point because we don't want to parallel the eternal, absolute will and choice of God with created man.

That's not being intellectually honest or representative of the scripture. However, if God's choice is both sides of the train track, and then man's choice is somewhere in the middle, right? Contingent on God.

Remember in Acts 17, in God, we live and move and have our being. We are contingent, created, finite. God is the opposite of that in a sense, right? He's absolute, eternal. And so if we just let God be God and his decisions belong to him alone, well, then it's all going to compatibilistically come together.

So God is the one with libertarian free will to create a world, to have a plan of redemption to the father, to choose a bride for the son. This is electing a people that do not deserve salvation. That means that the son can be the perfect savior to all that the father has given him.

And then the Holy Spirit, God, the Holy Spirit is able to regenerate that bride and to seal them to the day of redemption. This is a Trinitarian gospel of grace. So if we say God is free to do that, well, then that's basically made the argument for us because that would entail all of man's free desires to choose, right, within that unfolding plan.

So there's a compatibilism there. And you just, you got to let man's will be limited and finite and creaturely, and you got to let God's will be infinite, absolute, and sovereign.

I think we talked about this on Monday as well, that for example, like, you know, our wills now as believers, you know, we're bound, you know, to obey the Lord, but like God is bound by his own nature.

But that's a good thing because there is nothing above God. He is the standard. And as Kanye said, he has, he's the one ultimately who has the free will that people kind of talk about as far as like determinism in a sense.

God can determine whatever he pleases, but it's within his own nature, which is a good thing, like I said, if we know that God is holy. Now, I guess, what's the purpose of all this? Like, if all this is, you know, true and biblically, you know, accurate, you know, why study this?

You know, is it really important to be talking about free will?

Why the Doctrine Matters for Sanctification and Evangelism

Well, this is personally, when I started to grapple with the doctrines of grace, and then basically seeing how these five points of Calvinism is grounded in the biblical truth that God is sovereign, the way that we've been talking about, it literally changed everything for me.

Because I started seeing life as, my life in particular, as one by the grace of God, everything that now I'm doing, God is working in me, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And so it's for my sanctification, all things are working together for the good of those that love him, and who are called according to his purpose.

It changed the way that I read the Bible, because I saw God's sovereignty, his plan of redemption unfolding on every page and every verse. And then I was, I understood that even when I sin, I'm not thwarting God's sovereign plan, but he had those purposes for my sanctification.

And I find a lot of joy in evangelizing, knowing that I have a hundred percent success rate that I'm sowing seeds and God is giving the increase. And so it just, it changed everything. It started changing how I interacted with people, because I can't change a person's mind if they really want to hold to this libertarian freedom that to me, it seems like a traditional understanding.

Well, 2 Timothy chapter two, I believe, tells us that as the Lord's servant, we're called to be loving, patient, willing to teach from God's truth, but it's God that grants repentance. And I believe that's for a person to be saved.

And even talking about, you know, God's truth and sanctification, God has to be one to grant them repentance. So I'm not going to get bent out of shape. I'm just going to lovingly show people the word of God and then just trust in his sovereignty.

Right on the money, man. I got a verse I'm going to kind of mention after I say this, but like, it's encouraging kind of what you just said is because I know that I can trust that my God is a God of providence.

He's a God who is sovereign. And that's the kind of God that I want to serve because it encourages me, like you said, in the midst of my sin, in the midst of my suffering, in the midst of my depression, in the midst of, well, people might have mental problems, whatever it may be, God is with his people.

And he said, like he says, he'll never leave us or forsake us. Well, either he was lying or he was telling the truth, but because I know that the Bible teaches that God is sovereign and all these things I can trust in the Lord.

He says, come to us all who worry and give us rest. And so I can really truly rest in what his words, because I know that he's sovereign. Philippians 1, no, Philippians 2, verse 14. I got to find, I just had it.

Oh, here we go. No, Philippians 2, chapter 12, verse 12. Paul says this, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for this God who works in you both the will and to do for his good pleasure.

And so essentially, you kind of been talking about, Paul hits right on the nail. Paul tells us to work. Now, hold on. Let me put some clarifies on this. He's not talking about a works-based salvation that we can do all this good to get to heaven.

But what he's saying is that now that we are saved, and essentially what we're doing with this salvation, now the God has granted us this faith. He produced in us this faith that we now have. And we should revere God as well, that, you know, we know that God is holy.

And so we should kind of respond to this holiness as believers. I guess it's impossible to be a somebody who professes, you know, the gospel, and your life is not, you know, changed. You already said that earlier.

But not only this, God works in us the will for his good pleasure as well. So you kind of see both these things intersecting and connecting. Like you said, not parallel, but they're intersecting the whole time.

And so it's kind of very encouraging for.

Myself. What do you think though, man? That's great. If I can do a shameless plug, a few months ago, I preached on those verses. And you talk about, because you got to think into verse 14 and 15, we are not to grumble or complain about anything.

And I think that only makes sense if God is sovereign and everything has a purpose in our life. So I love, because that brings up the dynamic. We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

From our viewpoint, we make choices right according to our desire. And we should be warring against the lust of the flesh, warring against Satan and choosing holiness. So that's our viewpoint, right? And then it's God who's both willing and working in us for his good pleasure.

So that's where it's like, our responsibility doesn't negate that God has this massive sovereign plan. And this is a verse that really helped me because I started to understand these concepts. And I was like, I want to make sure I'm being as biblical as possible.

And I think it was R .C. Sproul that really said, if you want to see the eternal decree, go to Ephesians 1 .11 and read this verse in its entirety, in its context, where Paul says, in him, in Christ, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.