Do Human Beings Have Free Will?

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Salvation in Christ Alone and the Reality of Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

Human Responsibility Before God

On this episode of Bible Bashed, we will be answering the question, Do human beings have free will? As you read the Bible, one of the things that you're going to find is that there are a variety of passages which are going to teach the subject of human responsibility.

Just a simple passage along these lines is Romans 10, 13. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Every single command that you're going to find in the Bible is a command that assumes that human beings are moral agents who are responsible or free to make certain decisions.

So as you read through the Bible, you'll find that the Bible is teaching over and over again that human beings are responsible before God for the decisions that they make and held accountable for their actions.

God's Exhaustive Sovereignty in Salvation

So the Bible teaches clearly that human beings are responsible. But at the same time, the Bible also teaches that God is exhaustively and meticulously sovereign over everything that happens. So Ephesians 1, 11 tells us that in Him we have received an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.

Romans 8, 28 tells us that God works all things together for good to those who love Him. So everything that happens is in some sense caused and planned by God. God has a right as a sovereign creator to make certain vessels prepared beforehand before the foundation of the world for honor.

And also, as Romans 9 tells us, to make vessels of wrath whom He endures with much longsuffering who are prepared for destruction. So God has a sovereign right to do what He will with His creation. And then as it relates to salvation, God tells us that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and He will harden whom He will harden.

And it depends, like this mercy and compassion that He extends, it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who desires to have mercy. And John will tell us that for all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

So God is describing Himself as being exhaustively in control over everything that happens in the world. At the same time, human beings are described as being fundamentally moral beings who are responsible.

Libertarian Freedom Versus Compatibilism

Now a question along these lines that many people ask us is the question if God is so sovereign, then how can we have any sense of responsibility? Doesn't that fundamentally make us puppets? Like if we are just running the script that God has planned for us before the foundation of the world, how is it that we can have any sense of freedom?

And in order to answer that sort of question, you have to deal with different types of freedom. So there is what is known as libertarian human freedom and what might be known as compatibilistic human freedom.

Now the idea of compatibilistic human freedom is the idea that God's sovereignty and human responsibility are compatible. And so compatibilists will try to give a definition of freedom which allows for God's sovereignty.

But then on the other hand, what you have described is probably the most common understanding of human freedom. Even though in a certain sense this view of human freedom is pretty irrational in a certain sense and it is contrary to much of the teaching of the Bible, but you have what is, as I've described, known as libertarian human freedom.

Now if you're going to describe libertarian human freedom, the point is that under a libertarian view of human freedom, individuals can only be free, so an agent can only be free, like an agent X is only free, so long as he is able to basically have the power of contrary choice, meaning he can choose between action A and B with nothing sufficiently constraining his will one way or another.

To put that in a simplistic way, in order for a human being to be free, he must have the ability to choose between two contradictory choices of actions with nothing that fundamentally is going to constrain his will.

Regeneration, New Birth, and a Changed Will

Now the problem with libertarian human freedom in this way is fairly obvious if you think about it. So as you think about salvation, as salvation actually works, one of the things that happens after we become saved, where God justifies us and declares us not guilty, is the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us and the Bible tells us that God, essentially through the Holy Spirit, has begun a good work in us and He'll be faithful to complete that work at the day of Christ.

So when an individual is saved, he's born again, he's made new, he's fundamentally changed, he was a slave of sin and now he's been set free and become a slave of righteousness. So what happens when God saves a person is that God is fundamentally transforming that individual.

This individual is now a new creation in Christ Jesus and he's going to walk in the good works that God has prepared before the foundation of the world that he should walk in. And so the issue is that almost everyone believes that after becoming a Christian that God will radically change that individual's life, meaning that they're not going to continue to walk in sin.

Now there are certain heretical groups out there which basically teach that salvation is nothing more than simply mental ascent and certain basic facts of the gospel and that it's possible to be a Christian your whole life and essentially show no evidence of change whatsoever.

But as you read the Bible, the consistent teaching of the Bible over and over again in every single way and every single place is that we will know Christians by their fruit and that if the creator of the universe has come to live inside of us then fundamentally we're going to be different, we're going to be transformed, we're going to be a new creation, we're going to be different.

And what that means fundamentally is that salvation itself starts a process where God is conforming us progressively over the course of our life into the image of Christ, meaning that God operates on our will and is fundamentally transforming our desires.

So there's never a sense in which we do the things we fundamentally don't want to do, period. There is what you might describe as a conflict of desires in our heart but then typically the strongest desire is going to win and we are the ones who are making certain choices fundamentally for sure.

But the point here being made is just to say that there's very few people who really, really believe that God fundamentally after He saves a person isn't in the process of transforming their life to some degree.

Freedom in Heaven and Prayer for Changed Desires

And then when we go to heaven, the issue is that when we go to heaven, I've literally never met a person who believes that when an individual goes to heaven that they're not going to have human freedom anymore, that they're somehow going to be a robot.

But then the reality is the Bible tells us that once we go to heaven we'll be like Christ and that we won't have to sin anymore. And so there has to be in all of our minds some sort of category of freedom that allows for God to decisively influence our will such that sinning no longer becomes an option.

So I hope and pray and the Bible tells me that when I go to heaven I won't have to struggle with the same sins over and over and over again. I know that when I go to heaven I'm going to be a free moral agent meaning I'm going to be a responsible moral agent but I also know that there's going to be a sense in which God will so remove all the effects of sin in my life in such a comprehensive way such that I'll never desire to sin again at all.

And that's going to be the way it works. So what I'm trying to say is that most Christians have a category for God operating on their will after salvation. And in fact, that's how we pray. So we pray, Lord, take away the sin.

Help me not want to sin anymore. Help me to desire to do the things that you call me to do. Change my desires, change my heart. And we pray in that way believing that God actually is able and willing to act and do exactly what we're asking them to do all the while acknowledging that we have freedom and responsibility to choose to do the things that he calls us to do as well.

And then we also know that when we get to heaven fundamentally that battle is over and that God is going to so decisively influence our will in such an extent that we're no longer going to sin anymore.

So as you think about this idea of libertarian human freedom or this view that a human being can only be free so long as his will is not decisively acted upon one way or the other, that doesn't seem to mesh at all with the Bible.

Compatibilistic Freedom and Divine Enablement

Now as I said though, there is this second view of human freedom and it's a view that basically many have described as a compatibilistic view of human freedom. And when you think about the compatibilistic view of human freedom, what you have to understand is that that view is asserting that God's sovereignty is compatible, it's able to be harmonized with human responsibility.

And in that way then what the proper understanding of free will is in the Bible is the view that an agent or an individual is free so long as he acts in accordance with his desires. And so it's a view of freedom that basically says that at every point I'm free so long as I'm doing the things that I want to do.

So if you imagine how a puppet works at that point, with a puppet basically if I were a puppet and someone is pulling the strings and moving my arm and I'm sitting there not wanting my arm to be moved at that point basically what you would say is that I'm not free, someone is moving my arms for me.

If someone were to tie you down and force you to do things that you don't want to do, you would say that would be an act of coercion, that isn't a free act. Because you're not able to do what you want to do and so what you desire to do.

But then the issue with compatibilistic human freedom is that it's a view that allows for God to sovereignly change fundamentally your desires. So when an individual comes to Christ, the Bible tells us that no one will come to the Father unless he's drawn by the Holy Spirit.

Basically as you read through the Bible one of the things you're going to find is that as man is described in his unbelieving state, the Bible will say can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard change his spot?

So also cannot you who are accustomed to doing evil learn to do good? The point there is just to say that we need a divine miracle to fundamentally change our heart so that we can have a heart, not a heart of stone but a heart of flesh that is going to be responsive to the commands that God actually gives us.

In that way when God chooses to save an individual he is giving them faith. So faith, the Bible tells us, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that faith is not of itself. It is the gift of God, not of works that anyone should boast.

So when God determines to save a man, he fundamentally regenerates him. He makes him into a new creation. He gives him a heart that's able to respond to the things that God is calling him to do. So in that way you have a view of human freedom.

Basically an individual is free so long as he does what he wants to do. This view of human freedom is compatible with the idea that God is sovereign and his sovereignty extends not just after salvation and not just after a human being dies and goes to heaven, but also during the salvation process in itself.

Conclusion: Free Will Defined by Desire

So the short answer to the question, do human beings have free will? The answer is yes, just depending on how you define it.

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.