Freedom of the Will.

Here are some thoughts from Scripture about the human will, including a few reflections on the "freedom" of the will:

The Bible says that God Himself is the ultimate pattern behind the human personality, including the will. We know this because God built human beings after His own image, and in His likeness.  Genesis 1:27.

God's power of choice is 100% subject to His own moral character. For example, God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19, Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2), and God cannot be successfully tempted to sin (James 1:13). This is because God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. God also cannot will contrary to His essential nature. He cannot will Himself out of existence, or make a rock too heavy for Him to lift. God's power of choice is an extension of His nature.

Does this mean that God does not have a free will? Yes indeed, that is exactly what it means, if you define "free" in a certain way.  God does not have a free will, if we define "freedom" as "the ability to sin."  

​God cannot even desire sin, let alone perform sinful acts. So God does not have a "free" will to sin, because God is morally perfect. So, in that sense, God does not have free will, because the will is nothing more than an expression of the person doing the choosing. The tail doesn't wag the dog, and the will doesn't make the person what they are.

And aren't we glad that God cannot sin!

What about the human will?  Just like the God after whom we are patterned, we are also free to choose, but only in ways that are consistent with our spiritual character and essential humanity. Christ taught this principle in Matthew 7, where He compared people to trees. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit (Matt. 7:16-18). The perfectly good tree lacks the "freedom" to grow bad fruit.

So then, why do wicked people make bad choices? Because the wicked person craves evil (Proverbs 21:10). The reason they crave evil is not because of their DNA or upbringing, but because they have wicked hearts. Their own wickedness causes craving, and then the craving controls the will.

Christ compared the soul to a box. Every heart is a treasure-box. The good man produces good things out of his heart treasure-box, because the man himself is good. The evil man produces evil things out of his treasure-box, because the man himself is evil. Matthew 12:35.

The will does not put anything into the treasure-box -- it can only take out what is already in there. Why did Jesus make perfectly loving, righteous choices? Because Jesus Himself was perfectly loving and righteous. His treasure-box was full of good things because He Himself was perfectly good. If we were perfectly good, we would lose the ability to sin.

Sin controls choice because sin controls the inner person who is doing the choosing. And the Bible says that the inner person is bad, through and through. The Bible says the whole lost world "lies in the lap" of the devil (1 John 5:19), and Satan dominates the lost (Ephesians 2:2). Satan's control of the human race is not demonic possession (though that happens, too), but simply him steering the spiritually-dead person to walk in accordance with their own foolish ideas and wicked desires.

The human will is also not immune to outside influences. We knows that the Gospels describe cases of demonic possession, like the man who was possessed by a legion of demons (Mark 5:1-10). The will of the demon-possessed person certainly is not free. But the Bible also describes cases in which the Lord influenced people to do what He wanted them to do.

For example, the Lord gave Daniel favor in the eyes of the Babylonian chief officer (Daniel 1:9).  It was the Lord who granted mercy to Nehemiah through the emperor (Nehemiah 1:11). Nehemiah credits this to the good hand of the Lord (2:8). Solomon said that the Lord could direct a king's heart whichever way the Lord wanted the king to go (Proverbs 21:1).

(Notice, by the way, that in these examples the Lord's control is always positive and beneficial, and the devil's control is destructive). 

So the idea that we are the "masters of our own fates and the captains of our souls" is a myth.  We are like God, but we are not gods. We are not born with blank-slate souls, and then form ourselves along the way. We are born bad.

God even controls evil choices. God said that He raised up the Babylonians (Habakkuk 1:6), who were definitely not nice people. Joseph said that God intended for his brothers to sell Joseph as a slave, but God's hidden plan was for Joseph to turn around and save all their lives. Genesis 50:20. Joseph's brothers committed that sin out of their own motives, but God steered the process, created the circumstances in which they acted, and allowed them to press on without repentance. 

Even simple common-sense tells us that we cannot want what we don't want. So, if someone asks, "Can I choose contrary to what I most want?", the answer is obviously no.  How can you want what you don't want? 

So:  If the question is, "Do I have the responsibility to make good choices?", then the answer is clearly yes. But if the question is, "Do I have the power to make choices contrary to my spiritual nature?", then the answer is no. Not even God can do that!

If the question is, "Does God ever cause people to sin?", the answer is no. When people sin, it's always because they want to. If the question is, "Does God ever knowingly mold circumstances in which certain sins result?", then the Bible answer is yes. See Acts 4:27-28.

If the question is, "Does God ever turn people into sock puppets?", the answer is no. But if the question is, "Can God's Spirit influence people so that they choose that which is good?", the answer is yes. We see many examples of that happening in the Bible.

Beware a secular view of your will that imagines it can lock God out. Human beings in our rebelliousness want to be free from God, and so we create theories of the will that paint God into a corner.