What is free
will? According to the Random House Dictionary, free will is ‘free
and independent choice; voluntary decision.’ Our culture emphasizes free
will all the time. Christians grapple with the issue of free will and how
it fits with predestination. Predestination is ‘to destine in advance;
foreordain; predetermine.’ In Ephesians 1:11 we read, “In him 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.” God predestined us and
all that we would/will think, say, feel, or do. “The lot is cast into the
lap, but its every decision is from the LORD,” (Proverbs 16:33 .)
On what does God base His decisions in regard to our predestination? Some
say it is based on our works. Looking at Romans 9:11-13, we see this
cannot be the case: “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either
good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was
told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but
Esau I hated.”
This might seem incredibly unfair, but if we read on we see, “For he says to
Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whom I have compassion.’ So then, it depends not on human will or exertion, but
on God who has mercy.”
Now we get to the issue of free will. If God’s predestination of us does
not depend on human will or exertion, then how can we have free will?
In Deuteronomy 30, we read: “I call heaven and
earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may
live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and
holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell
in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” This clearly implies a choice that we
must make. The easiest way to understand free will is to go to the very
beginning. In Genesis 2:16-17, we read: “And the LORD God commanded the
man saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat
of it you shall surely die.” Man at this point had free will to choose
life or death. God predestined that man would fall. He knew that
Adam was going to sin, but Adam made that choice. As Christian apologist
Matt Slick says, “An illustration would be that I could arrange for my child to
choose ice cream over something else and not violate his free will. For
instance, I could put a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a bowl of dirt and
rocks in front of my child, and I know exactly which one the child will choose
to eat. But my knowing does not violate my child's free
will.” In Genesis 3, we read about the fall and Adam’s choice of death
over life. As Adam was our representative, we became dead in sin.
Dead people obviously cannot choose anything. Our free will became
enslaved to sin when Adam sinned.
Genesis 3 would leave us with no hope if it
were not for verse 16: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise his heel.” ‘He’ is clearly referring to Jesus, who came and
lived as the ‘second Adam,’ the perfect representative who died for our sins so
that we could be freed from our enslavement to sin and death, and be enslaved
instead to life and righteousness.
Until Jesus returns for the second time and completes our sanctification, we
are still plagued by indwelling sin, but we also can have full assurance that
we will one day be perfected and live in glory with Christ forever. In
conclusion, free will and predestination do not contradict each other.
God predestined that Adam would choose death over life, but it was Adam’s
decision. Jesus then came to be a second representative, and He perfectly
fulfilled the requirements to raise us from death to life. In the
meantime, while we are still wrestling with sin, we can have assurance in the
fact that our lives are not in our own sinful hands, but they are in the hands
of our gracious heavenly Father who predestines that all things work together
for the ultimate good of His children, (Romans 8:28.)
By: Siobhan aka Stella
(14)
Grade: 10th
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