Freedom to choose. We believe it is a God-given right in this country. No one should be able to tell you what to do. You are your own master. Yet this is one of the great debates among theologians. Do you truly have freedom to make your own choices in life? If God is truly sovereign over all creation (meaning that He controls everything), can mankind believe that they make choices independent of Him? These arguments get especially divisive when it comes to the question of whether and/or how God chooses to save us as individuals. Is it our choice to come to Christ by faith for salvation or did He choose you to come to Him? There are two main schools of thought on this subject.
Despite the rise of reformed thinking today, the most widely held view is that “humanity is legitimately able to choose between a range of options available to him – and does not suffer any sort of determining cause, forcing him to make one decision over the other. This view makes the most sense of how humanity can be truly responsible for their sin (and not God) since we are the only cause for our choices to sin. Unfortunately, this view also fails to answer a critical question: why do we make our decisions?” It also leaves us with a God who does not control us and therefore could have limits to His sovereignty.
The reformed answer to this is that God created us with what were “the first dominoes in a long line of cause-and-effect that brought about all of our choices. This view makes the most sense of why we make our choices and offers a powerful explanation for how God can be sovereign over this world. Unfortunately, it too fails to answer an important question: how can God causally determine our choices to do evil and not be doing evil himself?”
The Bible seems clear that God gave Adam and Eve a choice in the garden. They were told to choose to do right (and they failed). Joshua was clearly offering the nation of Israel a choice in Joshua 24:15: “If it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” There are many instances in Scripture where people are called to choose the good and flee from evil. Yet, we also know that all believers are known or “elect” of God from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).
We need to recognize God’s sovereignty and His foreknowledge in all things. However, we should also be true to the obvious Biblical and practical principle of daily life that we must choose the right and will be held accountable for all our choices in eternity. Perhaps neither of the commonly held positions on this topic really meet where the Bible stands. Perhaps our view of free will is based too much on our limited and finite perspective on life. Perhaps a life laid out before us by a truly sovereign God is designed to have choices for us to make. Not because we are boxed in like rats in a celestial maze of life but because God’s sovereignty is capable of accounting for our choices through His perfect foreknowledge.
C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other.” In other words, a world where free will exists is a world where true love and worship for the creator can exist as well. God is truly in control of all things. He is sovereign and has shown His love for us through Jesus Christ. He wants us to choose to be thankful, to love Him, and to freely worship Him because we CHOOSE to do so. Responding to God in this way and making the right choices by our free will does not limit God’s sovereignty. There is a day coming when every knee shall bow before Him – we will have no choice but to recognize His authority in all things. Until then, we have the opportunity to exercise our free will to worship Him!
References:
https://www.baselinechristianity.com/what-is-free-will.html
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/437424-god-created-things-which-had-free-will-that-means-creatures