The Will: Predestination & Free Will: Part 3

Free Will?

I recently watched as two outdoors men attempted to free an adult bull elk from a mud pit.  These are enormous animals.  His entire rear half was submerged and the mud was so think he had no hope of getting out.  This was going to be the bull’s final resting place.

The men approached cautiously and began to try to free the huge animal.  However, as soon as they got close, the elk would swing his rack at them. The elk didn’t want them there, didn’t understand why they were there, and was actively attempting to defend himself with his antlers. The elk was simply operating freely according to his elk-ish nature. They are by nature wild animals and humans are an unwanted presence.

The elk wanted to be freed from his muddy chains but he only wanted rescue on his own terms.  The men did not abide by the elk’s wishes but worked together using various implements until the elk was rescued from its pit of despair.  This was not according to the elk’s will but once freed, the elk no longer attacked the men.  He operated in new-found (albeit muddy) freedom he did not have before the men forced their own will upon him.

I kept being brought back to this realization that in several ways each of us are like this elk was. We were in an impossible situation that had already staked its claim on our lives. However, the solution was something that we opposed. We didn’t see Jesus rightly – we saw Him as a threat.  We resisted Him, we swung our rack at Him, we bellowed at Him, and ran from the scene.

But God, in His mercy, overcame our foolishness, lifted us out of the miry pit. In our newfound life we suddenly saw clearly what was once considered unwanted and foolishness to us. Jesus had saved us and we didn’t do anything except falling into the trap that made His salvation necessary.

Most of the time when the discussion of free will comes up, everybody operates under the assumption that they are all talking about the same thing and that they both understand what free will is.  How we define this term will make all the difference however, so I hope to shed some light on it.

Some use free-will to refer to a person’s total autonomy to act without hindrance, influence, constraint, or pre-determined cause.  Some believe that the will of a person has some constraints but that it is morally neutral so full freedom is available to them.  Others will acknowledge that freedom doesn’t mean that there are no constraints but simply the absence of coercion forcing the decision directly.  However, rarely does the definition become clear in normal conversation.

The will consists of three things: a person’s desire/motivation, their mind (to reason), and the decision/choice they make.  When those three are operating, a person is said to be exerting his will.  Remove reason and we cannot have responsibility or rationale.  It’s a hypothetical because all things pass through the mind consciously or subconsciously.  Remove desire and a person is left motionless because nothing motivates them toward any action.  Remove decision, and the desired and reasoned thing never comes to pass in the first place, so it remains a hypothetical.

We do not make moral choices without our minds approving the direction of our choices.  Our desire is inextricably linked to our decisions.  The will acts by reason of the mind, action of body, and motivating desire.  That’s a crash-course in basic philosophy 101. It is also predicated on what scripture says about our heart from which our will comes.

The great theologian Jonathan Edwards gave an iron rule for determining the will of man.  He said, “Free moral agents always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.”  In other words, any time that you sin, that action indicates at the moment, your desire to commit the sin was greater than your desire to obey Christ.

Every decision we make is according to our strongest inclination to either do what we freely want, or according to what we freely want to avoid (if the effect of the consequence outweighs our desire to do the first thing).

However, even though every choice we make is free, every choice that we make is also determined. My choices flow out of my strongest desires.  Additionally, my choices flow from external and internal influences that have causes and reasons behind them.  So you might ask, “Can our choices really be ‘free’ if they are influenced or constrained by desires, external and internal influences?

It depends on what you consider ‘free’.  The above is what we call self-determination.  It is the essence of human freedom.  The self gets to make its own choices, and the presence of some constraints do not eliminate freedom.

The question is not whether we can choose according to our own desires but that we DO in fact choose according to our desires, and in fact always choose according to our strongest inclination.  That is freedom.  To be able to choose what you want.  Freedom is not being able to achieve anything you can conceive of but the freedom to choose what you want.

The problem with the sinner is not that they have lost the faculty of choice.  Sinners obviously have a mind, they can think, they can evaluate options and alternatives, they have desires and wills of their own.  The will is free so that it is able to do what the sinner wants it to do. The problem is in the root of the desires of the person’s heart.  Apart from being brought back to life, scripture asserts that the sinner cannot please God nor does he even want to (1 Cor 2:14).

This brings up one final consideration in talking about the will - one’s own ability.  The will does not contain a person’s ability however, a person’s will is constrained by their ability.

Man has an evil inclination and by his very nature, he chooses to sin freely (Gen 6:5) - not once but continually.  In our fallen state, we sin freely according to our will.  Sinners reject Christ because they want to reject Christ and they do so freely and without restraint.

However, before a sinner can respond positively to the Christ-centered solution to sin, he must have an ability to desire Christ and a Christ-centered solution.  Jonathan Edwards makes a distinction in this discussion of ability between moral ability and natural ability.

Natural ability has to do with what is afforded to me by my own physical nature.  I can walk, think, eat, and sleep.  However, I do not have the ability to flap my arms and begin to fly into the air.  I’m limited by my nature and do not possess the nature of a bird who can flap and fly.  I do not possess the faculties to do something outside of my natural ability.

Moral ability has to do with the capacities inside my spiritual nature (to be righteous or sinful).  What makes this more challenging is what we’ll discuss at greater length in the next post.  Namely, that a man is not in a neutral state spiritually (Pelagianism) but has fallen in his sin, and in that fallen state, is no longer able to be righteous or reach God’s standard (Rom 3:23).  He is born in sin and his very nature is completely fallen.  This makes it impossible for him to achieve righteousness on his own.  He still has the ability to make choices and think but he lacks a capacity toward godliness.

Augustine taught something similar more than a millennium before Edwards, stating that while man has a free will, he has lost his moral liberty in the fall.  He has lost his freedom to be righteous as a result of the fall from grace.  He is now expertly inclined toward evil and disinclined to be righteous (to put it lightly). Genesis 6:5 and Gen 8 give us keen insight into the nature of mankind after the fall and reveals that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Our basic ontology (state of being) is no different from the men before the flood in that passage.  The hearts of pre-flood mankind were not more evil than ours.  We have not somehow managed in our hearts to be more righteous than they were.

Paul emphatically denies this in quoting the 14^th and 53^rd Psalms of David, stating, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one (Romans 3:10-12).”  That should set you back in your seat, and create some dreadful situational awareness.

Jesus also spoke about how the fruit of the tree proceeds from the nature of the tree (Matt 7:17-20).  He said that good trees produce good fruit and bad trees can only produce bad fruit.  There is something wrong within us deeply that affects us completely.  Sin is a pervasive deadly disease that has leeched its way into every tendril, branch, leaf, and root of our being.  It is no surprise then that Jesus said, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing John 15:5.”

The world would have you believe that deep down inside you are basically good.  However, the Bible confirms repeatedly that we are in no way ‘good’.  As sinful people we make that assessment based on what we see with our human eyes from the outside.  However, the heart of man is deceitful and wicked beyond a man’s own understanding (Jeremiah 17:9).  In Matthew 15:19 Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.”

That is extremely significant for the discussion of free will then.  In the garden, without the influence of sin, mankind still chose to rebel and sin against God.  Forever humanity was changed to an evil nature and we are astonishingly intertwined with this corruption so that we cannot rid ourselves of it, operate outside of it, nor do we even want to.  In that corruption we continue to sin and invent new ways to sin.

So then, our wills are indeed free to choose but are in fact constrained by the nature within us, which is where those choices of the desire-to-mind-to-body take place.  Do we have a freedom of the will? Yes.  Is it free to make any choice on the moral spectrum? Absolutely not.  Not because God constrains it capriciously but because our own sinful nature has stifled our moral liberty completely.

What’s this mean then?

You may have heard it said, “God is a gentleman and would never force His will upon us.” However, I fail to see any mention of God as a ‘gentleman’ in scripture.  That’s a human anthropomorphism.  It is a quality that we value as people but for which is never an attribute of the only holy God.  He instead describes Himself as a Father, who is jealous for His sheep.

Consider this analogy: A father watches his rebellious child run away from him and into a busy street.  The father can call the child back (without success because she is rebelling). The father can do nothing. The father can run after the child and take hold of her pulling her away from certain death.

What kind of good father allows his child to run into the road and simply responds, “Well, I don’t want to violate their free will. I would save them but they didn’t ask me first.”  In fact, I’m willing to bet that the majority of your child-rearing was characterized by you interjecting your will on your kids for their good.  They didn’t ask to be born; you chose that for them.  They didn’t want their diaper changed but you did it anyway. They didn’t like vegetables for dinner but you fed it to them anyway. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  How often does God liken Himself to a Father caring for His children (us) in scripture? It’s the predominate image and relationship of God to us.

Consider the difference from an earthly father to his child in terms of reason and ability. Now compare that difference with the almighty eternal God to His lost sheep? It’s literally infinite.  If you being evil know how to over-ride your kids’ will for their good, how much more can your heavenly Father rightly discern this?

In the analogy, we were running from God in our rebellion. He runs after us, usurps our will to self-destruction, and pulls us from the dangerous road.  The semi-truck flies by, narrowly missing us.  Astonished at how utterly foolish we were, and the impossible consequences our father just saved us from, we turn around and embrace him in repentance and fear.  Suddenly, our will has gone from rebellious to sorrowful and grateful to God.  We could not see clearly until we were rescued.

The scripture paints an even bleaker picture than that however.  It says that we were already dead in our sins, children of wrath, rebels, hostile, enemies of God, and haters of Him (direct quotations).  The truck has already hit us and crushed us under its impossible weight.  You may ask then, “What can a dead person do?”  In that state? Nothing. 

Read and re-read the first several verses in Ephesians 2:

2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

I can only humbly praise God that after I had run off, rebelled, and was killed by my sin, He ran after me, snatched me from the road, and breathed life into my dead lungs so that I became regenerated.  Only then did I understand and have a new will.  He chose me to be a recipient of His mercy and lavish grace. In this, God – not man – is glorified.

Next time we’ll discuss more of the fallen state of man before God to demonstrate spiritually where we are coming from in this matter of salvation.