BIBLE STUDY: GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND FREE WILL
by Brett Burrowes

In our society it is common to hear people say that they act or are a certain way because of their genes, because of the way theywere raised, because they didn’t have the privileges that others had, because their father was an alcoholic or because of some other traumatic event in their childhood. While all these things may be factors that influence our behavior in the present, such a view conflicts with two scriptural teachings: God’s sovereignty and our free will. God’s sovereignty is His absolute control over the universe He created, so that everything that happens in our lives—every situation—is His perfect circumstance for us. Free will, on the other hand, is our freedom to respond to our Creator in obedience or disobedience, without coercion and without our choice being predetermined, whether by God, Satan, or by our childhood or biology. It is our freedom that distinguishes us from animals. At first glance, however, God’s sovereign control and our free will appear to contradict each other. This is just an apparent paradox, however, stemming from our faulty understanding of what free will is.

Freedom or free choice is at the core of our personhood.Why is this so?Whatmakes us persons is our capacity to have meaningful relationships with other persons, and especially with God, the One Person in the Universe. Our relationships with others are meaningful because they are moral. I don’t mean as opposed to immoral, but rather that personal relationships always have a moral quality to them; I can either treat another person rightly orwrongly,with love or in callous and selfish disregard for theirwelfare. So whateverway I treat another person, a moral quality to the relationship is always present, whether good or evil. We are inherently moral beings, as well as inherently relational beings, even ifwe are morallywrong and selfish. Right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and sin are facts of human life: God created us this way because He Himself is a moral and relational being. After all, we are made in His image (Gen 1:26-27).

When God placed Adam in the garden, the first thing He did was to give Adam the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17), for it was through this tree that humanity would become aware of themselves as moral beings. The knowledge of good and evil was a good thing, and humanity would acquire this knowledge either by obeying or disobeying God: by obeying God they would be choosing the good and rejecting the evil, and by disobeying they would be choosing evil and rejecting good. Through this choice Adam and Eve would be exercising the personhood which up until then was only a potential, a possibility. After giving Adam the command, He created a woman to be a helper to him (Gen 2:18), another person with whom he could be in relationship. Thus, from creation God created us to be moral beings who personally relate to other moral beings.We have the capacity to choose between right and wrong.Without this choice, we would not be moral beings, and therefore we would not be persons, and God could not hold us responsible for our lives. We would be nothing more than animals with a higher capacity to reason and we would be unaware of the moral quality of the effects our actions have on others. We would not have to answer to God for anything, because we would lack the awareness that our actions were right orwrong.

Someday all of us will stand before God and give an account of our lives on this earth: “It is appointed for humanity to die once and then to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27).At that time God will expose the secrets of our hearts and Christ will judge us all (Rom 2:16). So it is extremely important thatwe understand on what basis we will be judged, on what grounds God will hold us accountable. Very simply,we will be judged by our obedience or disobedience to what God has revealed to us. Since God has made Himself known in some form to all human beings, everyone is without excuse for their sin (Rom 1:20). Nevertheless, each of us has a choice to obey or disobey God. This choice must not be coerced or predetermined in anyway by God, since unless the choice is free, we cannot be held responsible for our actions.

But Scripture never uses the phrases “free will” or “free choice.” How do we know that we have such thing? In the book of Deuteronomy, God says to the people of Israel: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life” (Deut 30:19-20). God does not set before people two alternatives and then predetermine what choice they will make. It would be a mockery for God to command the people to choose when He knew very well they could not. Moreover, Elijah commanded the people to choose and said, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21). Elijah obviously believed the people were capable of making a choice to follow the Lord. In Genesis 2 and 3, God placed the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden precisely in order to give human beings a choice: He commanded them not to eat of this tree (Gen 2:17), and placed the serpent in  the garden to be the mouthpiece of Satan to tempt them. Without the tree and without Satan,Adam and Eve and all humanitywould have lived in paradise forever—but not as full persons. God wanted them to confront good and evil and make a choice. God did not predetermine the choice, although He knew beforehand which way they would choose. Free will was built into our humanity from the Garden of Eden.

But if God gave everyone free will, how can He maintain control over His universe? How can He work all things together for our good (Rom 8:28) unless He is in control of everything that happens not only in our lives individually, but in the whole world? Howcan God mean for good what human beings (and Satan through them) intend for evil?Think of it, six billion people in the world, all of them with a free will—it seems like there would be nothing but chaos with all those conflicting wills! In giving His creation free choice, did God surrender control of His universe to them? Surely not, for then howcould Jesus be crucified at the hands of evil men according to God’s definite plan and foreknowledge unless He was in control of human events (Acts 2:23)? God was not waiting around for the opponents of Jesus to make up their minds whether they were going to crucify Jesus. The plan for Jesus to die for the sins of the world was not Plan B, since the lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8).

That means that whatever human beings choose, their choices cannot disrupt the plan of God for His universe. God is sovereign over His universe: though evil truly exists in the world, nevertheless it cannot disrupt God’s plan and control over His universe. Whatever evil exists in the universe, God turns and uses it to accomplish His goals. So though the devil intends to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10), it is God who created the destroyer to do His work (Isa 54:16).We should take great comfort in this fact, since it means that absolutely nothing can stop God’s loving plans forHis people.As Paul says, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” (Rom 8:39).

So God is sovereign over all that exists and all that happens. This includes all events of nature—from the tiniest atomic reaction to hurricanes and tornadoes to the formation of stars and planets. God’s sovereignty also includes everything that happens in the human world, from the least important, such as a chance meeting with a stranger I will never meet again in my life, to the most significant— such as when we received Christ as our Lord and Savior.

But there are really no insignificant happenings in our lives, since God is behind each and every event, even if He is not the direct cause of it. Even if someone is treating us in a cruel and selfish manner,God wills us to have the experience and intends some kind of good through it; otherwise,God would not be in control of our lives and evil could take God by surprise. But God knows and declares the end from the beginning (Isa 46:10), since He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Rev 21:6; 22:13). God doesn’t simply react and use the evil for good, as if the evil stumped Him and He had to think for a few minutes about what to do. No, God intended the evil thing to occur. He intended for us to go through the pain, but always and only out of His good and loving purposes.

On the other hand, if God is in total control of His universe, what room is there for free choice?After all, ifmy choice is truly free, then God does not coerce or control it in any way; otherwise, it would not be a genuine choice. God would be making my choice for me. If everyone can do exactly what they like, how can God be sovereign?

But wait, that’s just the problem—how we define free will. Most people, including Christians, understand “free will” to mean the freedom to do whatever we choose: to control our actions, to decide what we are going to do in the next moment. But this sounds more like a definition of independent self rather than a definition of free will. I suggest that the real reason that most people and even most theologians have difficulty reconciling free will with God’s Sovereignty is that they operate from the view that they are independent selves who control their own actions. But Scripture is quite clear: we are either slaves to sin or to righteousness (Rom 6), and are operated either by the Spirit of Christ (Col 1:29, Gal 2:20) or by the Spirit of Satan (Eph 2:2. 1 John 4:4).

The choices we make about what to do next or how to react to a situation are never directly under our control at all, but the product of a spirit who operates and motivates us from within.When we were unbelievers (or if as believers) we enter into sin, it is Satan who is acting through us, making decisions through us, even perceiving our situation and other people through us.When we are obedient to God, it is Christ who is living, planning, perceiving our situation through us. Where then is our free choice? Our choice is simply this: we choose to obey or disobey, to take God at His word, or to disbelieve Him and trust what Satan tells us. This fundamental choice determines which spirit operates us and controls our actions.

That is why our free choice never threatens the sovereignty of God: God ultimately controls everything we do, since even Satan can only do through us what God permits him to do and ultimately intends him to do,  though with a far different purpose in mind. The only real—though totally free—choice we have is to determine whether we will be vessels of Christ or of Satan. As Paul has said, “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work” (2 Tim 2:20-21). We can be vessels of honor or of dishonor, of Christ or of Satan. We may not control what these two spirits do through us, but we are responsible for the consequences, since it is our choice that determined which spirit operated us. That is why God can hold us accountable for our actions, even though we do not directly control those actions: our free choice determined which spirit is expressed in our actions.

So our free will and God’s sovereign control over His universe are really not in conflict. When we realize that we are not independent selves, but vessels operated by one of two spirits, we can see that our free choice is not the ability to control our actions, but our fundamental response of obedience or disobedience to God. Free will is a central doctrine of the Christian faith, for without free will, we could not be held responsible for our actions, and God’s judgment would be a mockery. On the other hand, unless God were sovereign, His promises could not be trusted, for He would lack sufficient control over His universe to ensure that their fulfillment. Fortunately for us, God is both sovereign and entirely loving in giving humanity the same freedom that He Himself possesses.

Brett has an M.A. in New Testament and a Th. M. in Biblical Theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is currently working on his doctorate at the University of Durham in England. He currently lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is a Zerubbabel Contact and Teacher- Sharer.